Sometimes I think like this. When we see criminals on TV or media, we go, “What a horrible person!” and curse at them. And we loudly speak up about why it’s wrong and how it should be regulated. With anger, and in a very noisy way.

But the moment we truly understand the “criminal’s psychology” is when we ourselves stand in that criminal’s shoes. For example, nobody is unaware that drunk driving is bad or why it’s bad. Even the person who caused an accident cognitively knows this. Just like someone who repeatedly commits assault still knows in their head that the sentence “Hitting others is wrong” is morally correct.

But cognition and the heart are different domains.

The Inner World Only the Person Can Know 

The only people who can truly understand the heart of a drunk driver are those who have actually felt the temptation in that very moment. “This distance should be fine,” “I’m still clear-headed, nothing will happen.” That fleeting moment in which the crime occurs, the feeling in that instant, can be guessed without experiencing it firsthand, but most people don’t even try to empathize because their energy is focused on rejecting the wrongdoing. So in reality, when a bad act happens, the heart behind it is often known only by the person themselves.

It’s only when I become the criminal, or get right up to that line, that I realize, “Ah, so this is how people end up as criminals…” The moment I cross that thin boundary of action, the world immediately frames me as a bad person. The line between a decent citizen and a criminal isn’t as thick as people think.

The key here is that understanding the heart doesn’t make the act justified.

That’s why the world always lets the “observer” judge and regulate the “actor.”

Understanding the Heart Clouds Judgment of Legitimacy 

The saying “If I do it, it’s romance; if others do it, it’s an affair” comes from this. When I become the actor, I fully understand the process and emotions behind the act. But when someone else does it, I only observe and cannot understand their heart. People often confuse ‘understanding’ with ‘legitimacy.’ If they understand the heart = it feels justified. If they don’t = it feels wrong. That’s how people tend to perceive it.

From this perspective, I decided to examine the act of scamming.

To a Scammer, Scamming Is Just a Skilled Survival Strategy 

For the scammer, scamming is less about thinking “I’m doing something evil by deceiving others” and more about believing they understand the hidden mechanics of the world and are skillfully using them. I realized this while building this blog.

In the beginning, I had beautiful dreams. “I’ll create a blog that provides quality information for lonely minorities.” “I’ll design the best UI that no public website offers, so whenever anxiety creeps in, people will visit first to find comfort and useful guidance.” That was my dream.

But the world doesn’t work like the dream I had. No one thinks, “Ah, I feel lonely, let me search for a blog.” They don’t even want pretty writing. My blog wasn’t a glamorous performance on a stage—it was more like a shabby street stall, desperate to catch people’s attention.

The more I opened my eyes to people’s behavior patterns and the “algorithm of the world” made from those patterns, the more my behavior started to resemble that of “typical bloggers.” With the rationalization: “There’s no other way,” “This is how you survive in the system.” If someone asked, “Why put ads in your posts?” or “Why cover such common topics?” I’d answer, “I had no choice.”

My behavior isn’t “deceiving others,” so I’m not a scammer, but the moment someone interprets their own actions as a clever strategy born of deep worldly understanding, I realized that scamming could easily happen.

Trapping the Other Person’s Actions Within My Strategy 

After that realization, I started to “understand” the actions of scammers, and the heart behind those actions.

Speech, in a way, is like a tool to “draw out the other person’s response.” For example, if I say,

“The weather’s nice today, isn’t it?”

The other person’s world is instantly trapped in the context of “responding about the weather today.” They can’t help but answer. Then they’ll probably say something like, “Yeah, it’s cooler today.” In a way, that’s “making the other person take a specific action that I prompted.”

Reading how consumers will act and guiding them to act that way could be seen as a normal marketing strategy, but to me, this is the same fundamental mechanism that makes scams work. I can predict how people will act, I create situations where they have no choice but to act, and if it’s based on truth, it’s marketing; if it’s based on lies, it’s a scam.

There are people who can’t distinguish my private lies from the truth. That’s the seed of a scam.