Last weekend, I received a text message in German that said my TAN app – the secondary verification system used by my bank – would need renewing in the next few days. Sounded like the most normal thing in the world. Perpetually behind on bureaucracy and shameful about it, about living in a country where I do not master the language, about my meager artist’s income, I clicked the link on my way to the grocery store.
I entered my bank information. It didn’t work the first few times, but, persevering, I punched it in, again and again, pin code and all, until I got through. Then I was asked to scan a QR code I had received in the mail. Since I was on my way to the supermarket, I abandoned the operation, vowing to dutifully return to it later.
After the supermarket, I went to Rossman, the drugstore, for detergent. While I was there, I thought I would buy some eyeliner because there was a look I wanted to try. I was once again embroiled in what my friend Melanie Jame acknowledges is a lifelong debate. Black or brown? Drama or subtlety? I decided on both. I think about shoplifting things all the time, but I haven’t had the guts to since my late teens. Usually, my mind goes through a familiar cycle: lifting is a radical, anti-corporate, anti-capitalist act, but it’s not worth the hassle of getting caught, but… can I just be bad, for once? No, be a grownup and pay for it.
When I got to the self-checkout, I didn’t think at all when I stole one and scanned the other. I did it in plain sight too. Back at home, one eye made up in black and the other in brown, I fished through my files looking for that darn QR code. I got a call from Frankfurt, Hesse, and picked up. The line was choppy, and I heard a man’s voice saying “Frau Trueheart, hören sie mich laut und klar?” It was Deutsche Bank. Sometimes the bank calls to offer me services or to invite me to come into the branch for a meeting about opening a savings account. I usually humor these people, assuming their job is difficult, that they are faced with rudeness day in and out. No, I told the man, I do not hear you, and also can you please switch to English?
“Okay, I think I can do it in English.” He took it from the top.
“Miss Trueheart, can you hear me loud and clear?”
“Yes I can,” I responded.
“We’ve detected some unusual activity on your account. Were you trying to effectuate a transaction 21 minutes ago?”
“No, I wasn’t,” I replied.
“There has been an increase in phishing and hacking recently. Have you clicked on any links sent to you per text message?”
“Oh my God, yes, I just did!”
“Miss Trueheart, never, ever click on links you receive in text messages! For your safety, you should never do that, it is very dangerous. I’m going to send you a push notification so that I can see about the unusual activity. Would you please approve it?”
“Sure, hold on.”
“Alright, indeed it seems as though you were trying to send about 1000 euros to someone in Russia named Jasmina. Was that you?”
“No!”
“Okay I am going to do what I can to block this transaction and keep your money safe.”
In Nikima Jagudajev’s megawork, Basically, one of the things that can happen is the CRIT. I developed this bit of material a while back, out of, among other things, my interest in one-on-one performances. CRITs are guided conversations that begin by walking up to a member of the public and asking them if there is anything they would like to get off their chest. We are strangers to one another, see, and if they wanted to share a secret, a confession, or anything that might be weighing on them, they would be safe to, because we will never see each other again. They share, the performer listens, asks questions, is attentive. Then the performer says, “I want to show you something I made.” They guide their interlocutor over to a little arrangement of objects on the ground, calling it a still life. Together, they kneel down, and and the performer asks “so, what do you think?” A formal critique of the still life ensues, in which the two people discuss the formal properties of the work, the dynamics in the composition, what the negative space is contributing. Once this task has gathered some momentum, the performer can start listening for anything that might relate back to the audience’s confession.
Two assumptions about how the audience member will behave are at play: one is that the audience member wishes to connect with the performer, and two is that humans tend to project meaning onto the mundane. Having just shared a vulnerable moment, the audience member will start to see the content of their confession in the still life they are being asked to have an opinion about – itself a vulnerable task. The performer’s role is to discreetly encourage that connection so that the still life becomes a map of whatever is going on in that person’s life.
When I am on the audience side of a participatory performance, or any kind of interpersonal encounter in a theater or art context, I make it a point to be a “good” audience. I am friendly, obedient, accepting of the fictions. I want to connect too. I want to have a cool experience. I want to make the performer’s life easier.
The scam I became the victim of, last weekend, was an act of violence in which I dissociated and lost 1000 euros that I will probably not get back. If there had been much more than that in my account I am sure I would have lost more. It is hard to write about it without implying that it was my fault. It is hard to think about it without thinking about everything that I did wrong. As friends have been hammering into my head, so-called “Mattias Steinberger” is the one who did something wrong, and there was very little I could do to stop him.
A warning for anyone who might find themself in this situation: at one point, when he asked me to approve the second push notification that would allow me to make the transfer to Jasmina that he warned me someone else was trying to make, I asked, “How do I know you are not also a scammer?”
“That’s easy,” he said, “just google the number I am calling you on. It is the Deutsche Bank hotline. I work for Deutsche Bank!!” Indeed, it was exactly the same number as the Deutsche Bank 24 hour hotline.
I still wasn’t totally convinced, because I couldn’t find his name anywhere and something seemed off. He told me to hurry up because I didn’t have much time. I told him his tone was weird, and he softened, and said he was just trying to help. That, really, he works for Deutsche Bank. I approved the transfer to Jasmina and got off the phone. I slowly came out of a weirdly calm daze and realized what had happened. I cried a bit, called some friends, and my partner helped me file a police report.
The next day, in one of the most superstitious acts of my life, I returned to Rossman and placed the black eyeliner back on the shelf. Speaking to a friend who knows me well, I said “I feel like God is punishing me.” She said, “babe, your God wouldn’t do that. Your God would chuckle a bit to watch you steal an eyeliner from a corporate chain. A God who punishes you for stealing but doesn’t punish anyone about Gaza? That’s not the God you believe in.”
One of my primary concerns and frameworks is our human instinct to make meaning out of what doesn’t make sense. I want each person to become aware that as authors of their meaning-making, they have a responsibility. Meaning-making can bring us together, and can put us in danger, or distance us from violence we should be aware of. I got scammed and it wasn’t my fault, and there was nothing I could have done, I know. But the ugly truth is, even though I was telling myself not to believe this disembodied voice who said he was trying to help me, I did. It was too difficult to see the possibility that he was actually lying, and trying to hurt me. I didn’t trust him, but I believed him. It’s such a slap in the face. A slap in the face of the beliefs I take responsibility for: the power of connecting with strangers, in remaining open, in living a life where you do not assume that someone you don’t know is trying to hurt you.
It would be easy to ride the wave of this traumatic experience in two different directions. One direction would be that God is testing my faith, by reminding me that everything is interconnected, God works in mysterious ways, and that stealing is bad no matter the scale and I should improve my German and increase my income. The other is that none of this is meaningful, it was a coincidence, and I am one person on a list of many who lost money that day. Life sucks, be more careful, and move on.
Both options suck, and what sucks more is how my run-in with violence traumatized me enough to make these both felt like acceptable avenues. For my own self respect and for anyone who has been scammed who is reading this and was too embarrassed to talk about it, I don’t want to downplay the fact that this was a traumatic experience. Yet I also want to insist on relativizing it: one week after the traumatic event, I am well enough to compose this nice essay for you with what I have learned. The same relativising applies to the magnitude of the effects of the crime I was victim to, the suffering I experienced.
Paraphrasing Olúfémi Táíwò in “Elite Capture,” Naomi Klein said in a podcast that “trauma is not ennobling, but it can be a bridge, and it can also be a wall.” I think this expresses the challenges I face, and maybe the challenges you face too. To stay soft in a world that is hard, to stay open to violence in obvious and deceptive places, to question unthinking obedience. Scams can happen to anyone and, in a way, they are currently happening to everyone. Trust is a great compass. Trust first, belief second, not the other way around. Belief is what you design upon trust’s solid ground.
This edition of 5, 6, 7, 8 was lovingly edited by Melanie Jame Wolf.
Please read this freshly published interview of Nikima Jagudajev in PW-Magazine! Cosmos Under Construction was a pleasure to work on. Not everyday is one lucky enough to interview a great artist, especially when that artist is your bestie.
On November 29th, I will share pieces of my yet-unfinished book, LAMB, at CO(N)VEN(T), an event series about God and menopause hosted by Maria Francesca Scaroni at Heizhaus PSR. I will share more info about it next month, but for now you can mark your calendars.