Sometimes I'm really glad to be a practicing Catholic, EVEN IN THIS WORLD (i.e., before the true reward of God Himself and Heaven), and practicing virtue rather than wallowing in every degradation and vice -- it removes you from so many worries.
Normally, the simple version is "suffer in this life, or suffer in the next" but there are many cases where the miserable slaves of the devil suffer quite a bit in this world, only to suffer in the next! And likewise, the saints were truly happy, even in this life, and received much peace and consolation in doing God's will and loving God so strongly, only to die and receive eternal beatitude in the vision of God Himself.
In other words, just because it hurts doesn't mean it's good for you! My repeated example is marriage. I could experience a lot more suffering if I were to sabotage my marriage (commit adultery). But would God even want that, in a best-case scenario or otherwise? Of course not. He wants marital harmony (=less suffering, in this case) for me in this world, and eternal bliss for me in the next.
As St. Theresa of Avila said, "Heaven is on the way there."
Anyhow, I was inspired to write this after receiving a fake blackmail SPAM:
Good evening,
we don’t think that it’s wrong to pleasure yourself from time to time.
Certain things are just best kept private, if your relatives and friends are confronted by this it will be something to worry about.
Something any person would be totally embarrassed with.
And will be having serious affects to your personal life and wellbeing.
For a period of time we have been monitoring your computer trough a trojan virus that has been installed by yourself and has infected your computer.
You have been infected by clicking on an advert on one of our infected pornographic websites.
A trojan virus gives us access to your computer and any device that is connected to it, whether it is trough wifi or bluetooth.
We have been montoring your screen and everything you have been doing, trough a live feed, without you being aware of this.
We also have control over your camera and microphone which we can switch on and off whenever we want.
Any information that has been interesting or relevant to us has been stored privately.
For example: contacts, social media,emails,etc.
We have recorded a video where you can be seen pleasing yourself, and we have added the video you was watching as an split screen footage.
With one press of a button I can forward this video to all your contacts, social media, etc.
If you want to prevent this from happening transfer the amount of 150$ to the following bitcoin address.
Bitcoin address: 12RZQCLuA3dFM1e5omdBAJ2Rr8LmF9acS7
Buying bitcoin is very easy and straightforward ( usually verification is needed) trough the following websites:
www.coinbase.com
www.localbitcoin.com
www.coinmama.com
www.bitit.io
www.bitpanda.com
www.bittylicious.com
As soon as payment has been submitted your details and video footage will be deleted.
We will give you a timeframe of 5 days to make this payment.
Failing to do so will leave you with the consequences that you have been made aware of.
We don’t make mistakes.
Reporting this is useless, it is impossible to track this email address and these emails have been sent via an external server abroad.
These accounts have been hacked.
If you make the stupid choice to do report this or contact anybody about this message we will directly release your footage and forward it,
any other things we obtained that can possibly harm you will be used against you too.
We will get notified as soon as this email has been opened, from that moment the clock starts running.
You have 5 days exactly not a minute longer.
With kind regards
Keep in mind that all that he says is quite realistic and feasible on a technical level -- which would make it all the scarier to someone he COULD be talking about.
His scam is pretty well written -- he addresses all of your unspoken objections. Note that the way the e-mail is worded, it would work just as well for a male or female recipient! (Except for the fact that women don't use computer porn even 10% as much as men...)
But it's so comforting to know that he's clearly a lying sack of ___ as well as a thief, because I happen to know that what he alleges is impossible in my case, since that is NOT one of the sins I commit (thanks be to God).
I may have been Traditional Catholic my whole life, but I wasn't raised in a bubble. I have seen and heard plenty in the world to know how the average worldling lives. So I could imagine a lot of people getting quite worried by an e-mail like this, and sending in the $150 "just to be safe". I wonder what kind of response rate he gets on these "fake blackmail" spam campaigns? Even a few responses would be a nice chunk of change. What a bastard but a clever thief, preying on what he knows to be an epidemic of immorality in America today.
Have you ever read or talked to people out there in the world, telling their stories? They're fascinating from a human nature perspective. They speak of finding things on old people's phones, protestant ministers, and all sorts of people you NEVER WOULD EXPECT -- they turn out to be living what amounts to a double life. Adultery, pornography of the worst kind, you name it. Computers and the Internet have made a lot of this possible. That's why the Internet, computers and smartphones are actually quite dangerous.
Topic: Blackmail is powerless - Virtue is its own reward (Read 1103 times)