An Exaggerated Generosity
I was thinking of something recently. Actually, there was someone I realised got away with a lot in a group, and it really got me thinking how they were able to get away with it. Frankly, I was intrigued by the whole dynamics.
What I realised, and what I started thinking about in terms of other people too, is that these kinds of people are scammers. They are nice people, really nice people, but in an exaggerated manner. You could be with them and absent-mindedly mention that you are craving groundnuts, and it would seem like they are moving heaven and earth to get you the groundnuts. But then they never pay you back for the Uber rides you take together, or contribute their own share in full for the outings you go on. This is not because they don’t have it, or because they are deliberately trying to be shady. They are just in-born scammers without really realising it.
The pattern, once I noticed it, was actually simple. They took and took and gave very little in return. Uber fares never returned. Contributions for activities quietly skipped, or shorted, or just forgotten. But it almost never registers as “taking”, because they are also the warmest person in the room. They’d be the first to wish you a happy birthday. They are fun to be around. They’d buy oranges for everyone the moment someone randomly mentioned wanting some. And that, I’ve come to think, is the whole trick.
The thing is, their generosity is the exaggerated kind. The kind you see and feel and remember. Oranges out of nowhere. Big warm gestures for small offhand things. What’s missing is the basic stuff like paying your share, sending your contributions, carrying your own weight without being chased.
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The in-born scammer leans heavily on the loud gestures and quietly defaults on everything else. And because the gestures are what we feel in the moment, while the rest is only noticed when it’s missing, the math never really gets done. They come out, in everyone’s memory, as the generous one.
It works because once you’ve decided someone is sweet and thoughtful, your brain stops auditing them. Every small slight after that gets absorbed into the bigger story you’ve already written about who they are. It works because groups reward visibility. Everyone remembers who showed up with oranges. And it works because the visible gestures are often cheap. A bag of oranges costs less than a split Uber. A birthday text costs nothing. The performance is loud but the budget is small, while the things they’re not paying for keep quietly adding up.
The part I keep coming back to, though, is that they don’t know they’re doing it. These are not calculating people. They are not sitting at home plotting how to extract value from their friends. They genuinely see themselves as warm and giving and present, and in the ways that are easy and visible, they really are. The scam is a personality structure. They have built a self-image on the loud kind of generosity, and that self-image quietly absolves them of the quiet kind. Which is, in a way, worse. You can confront a person who knows what they’re doing. You cannot easily confront someone whose entire sense of self depends on not seeing it.
There is also the matter of the promises. They will tell you they’ve got it, they’ll send it later, they’ll sort it out, they’ll bring it next time. And then they don’t. Again, I don’t think it’s deliberate, it’s just who they are. It’s not a big deal to them, which is part of why it keeps happening. And you, on your end, end up feeling almost shy to ask for your money back, because you remember that they were there for you in those little ways. The oranges. The birthday wish. The running around for groundnuts. So you let it slide. And they let it slide. And nobody ever brings it up.
I have also noticed, and this might just be me, that this behaviour is common with people who have money. Maybe it’s because they genuinely don’t realise that someone is actually paying for it, that the fare or the contribution is real money leaving someone’s account. Or maybe that’s exactly how they stay rich. shrugs
I don’t even know what to do with the observation, honestly. You can’t really call it out without sounding petty. You can’t bring it up without seeming like you’ve been keeping score. So you just notice it, and you keep noticing it, and at some point you stop offering to split the Uber in the first place.
