Tag: Money

A Sales Problem, Not a Marketing Problem

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The goal of the game is to make money. You make money by selling. You sell with a playbook, not a bigger funnel.

A person I met yesterday is looking for marketing help. I think he’s wrong. 

He’d paid someone $25,000 to post constantly and drive traffic to his site. He was dissatisfied, given the large outlay (his whole company only makes a few hundred thousand dollars a year). I looked at his website. He doesn’t have a marketing problem. He has a sales problem.

What is marketing, and what is sales?

Marketing is not an intrinsic good.

To a company, money is an intrinsic good. One could reasonably argue that revenue and costs are therefore intrinsic. Even culture – which is incredibly impactful – is only instrumental, since for this particular game, the goal is money. Marketing is also instrumental: what you actually want is to sell.

Take sales and marketing to their logical extreme: 

  • A pure salesperson with no marketing is a traveling salesman knocking on doors. It’s slow and expensive, but it works. 
  • All marketing and no sales is the reverse: every eyeball on earth is on your company, but you have no way to take their money.

So what does a good salesperson actually do? Not just put the product in front of people. For something complex, like a SaaS tool, they’re handling objections, talking through integrations, working out which pain points it solves. They’re getting to the right person: is it the college IT guy, the professor, or the dean? The fundraiser, or the head of the university? Sometimes that means bouncing through a few people to get there.

Sales is also theatrical: taking someone on a journey that ends at the solution to their problems.

Sales is the funnel: wide at the top, narrowing as people move down, with customers at the bottom. People drop out at any stage; the good fits make it down, the bad fits fall away.

Marketing is different. Marketing sits above the funnel and feeds it: catching attention, nudging people toward interest.

And marketing is often much more wishy-washy (I say this as someone who’s worked in it most of my life). It’s about how we want to be perceived, how we want to relate. 

Removing people from the equation: 

  • Marketing is the ads you see on another site.
  • Sales is the checkout flow on the site. 

A sales process is a repeatable playbook for getting someone to buy. It covers:

  • Which personas actually buy
  • What they find convincing
  • What they fear, and how you assuage it
  • The pricing

A salesperson also runs field research: selling in the wild, then coming back with data.

Back to my guy

Let’s say he sells IT software to universities, through what look like channel partners, and that has gotten him to reliable revenue. If you’re a go-getter CEO who was active at your own school, with a big-enough family wired into a few other alumni networks, you can probably close three or four deals on warm intros alone.

So you think: I just need more people in the funnel, then I’ll close them. But if your process is a handful of local channel partners (one runs hackathons, another chess clubs, another debate), more volume does nothing when your hackathon guy doesn’t know how to sell. He can’t expand his close past the set of folks who he understands. Enthusiasm can take you from 0 to 1, but you need a reliable process to go from 1 to N. 

An ideal playbook, once you’ve stood up the sales team, looks like:

  • How to filter for the people worth talking to
  • Which stakeholders to reach
  • The objections you’ll hit
  • How to overcome them
  • Then the soft stuff: rapport, persuasion, all the convincing

So now, my question: 

  • What happens when I tell this guy that he doesn’t need a marketer; he needs a salesperson? 
  • Will he hire me to stand up his sales team? 
  • I bet I could do it. I’m hungry for exactly this sort of role with exactly this sort of impact. The product is one I’m interested in. I’ve done all the pieces that this role has (sales, travel, small-team hustle, bushwhacking in a novel area, coaching); this role is just combining them in a new way. 

I’ve already marketed to him. The question: Can I close the sale? 

Games Played

I saw a play today about the House Un-American Activities Committee investigation of Hollywood. I did not expect the play to increase my sympathy toward the investigator’s position. But it did. 

Before the play, my perception of the investigation can be summed up as “it was a witch-hunt”. 

After the play, my new conclusion: Yes, it was a witch hunt. But – as made clear by the Korean War – there actually was witchcraft (Communism), and there actually were witches (people who wanted to replace the US constitutional government with communism). But these people (the Hollywood actors) were not the witches. 

Keep Your Joy Closed?

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Oh, Julian! 

After seeing my favorite Broadway show I have ever seen (Oh, Mary!, starring Maya Rudolph), I was unusually open to the world. Filled with joy and sharing it with the world.

Walking toward the subway, a man in Times Square hands me a flier for his music. I take it and keep walking. He catches up and says, “you won’t shake a black man’s hand?” I shake his hand and keep going. He says, “what’s the hurry?” I say, “I gotta catch the train.” He says, “wait, I gotta sign it.”

Another guy says, “keep walking, it’s a scam.”

The flier-hander retorts: “what’s a scam? A scam is my dick in your mouth!”

I give back the flier and keep walking. I ask the guy who warned me, “what’s the scam?”

“He asks you for money and acts intimidating.”

This wasn’t a random encounter. It’s a scripted hustle running a reciprocity ladder: 

  • The “free” flier creates obligation. 
  • The handshake escalates it. 
  • “I gotta sign it” – him writing my name – makes it mine. 
  • Then the ask plus some menace closes it. 

I don’t think the lesson is to keep my joy closed. What a sad, sad world that would be. 

The last time I had my joy open in Midtown Manhattan, someone punched me in the chest. 

I think the lesson is something closer to: be fast, funny, or fight. I shook his hand; we would have escalated further. I’m pretty speedy: would simply sprinting have been my move? 

The scam and the sadness: that’s the toll for living in the greatest city in the world. 

Oh, New York!

A Conservatory-Trained Beggar

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The goal of the game is to survive. You survive by earning a living. You earn a living by choosing the corner, not perfecting the song.

His sign reads “food for my baby and / my family can you help / me with a job / God bless you”, and hot damn can this guy play violin.

The last time I saw a violinist of such emotional expression, I located her on instagram, spotted she was recently married, and messaged her anyway to ask her out. She did not respond. 

This guy stations on Broadway between 88th st and 89th st, outside the shuttered retail store beside the Wells Fargo. He plucks. He strums. He fingers. He twangs. He draws a crowd.

The crowd contains a woman sitting on her walker, her caretaker, a woman of about 60 who offers me a tissue when she hears me sniffle, and Yours Truly. Not a bad crowd for a horrendous location.

Five children pass with their two adults. They stop. The male adult says “this is Mozart”.

When passing through Lisbon, I met a local trumpeter. He asked where I live. I told him New York. He loves New York. He can earn $800 or $900 per day in 3 or 4 hours of play, he told me. He played on the east side of Central Park, by the fountain where the summer sailboats swim.

This violinist, in 15 minutes, made maybe $5. $20 per hour is not the rate you’re looking for, my guy. You want a spot with greater throughput.

Just as musical skill does not determine a musician’s popularity, musicality does not determine a busker’s success.

A busker sells music. And like any retail in New York, location matters. But his store is even more tailored.

His sign asks for a job. He doesn’t need a job. He needs to make this one work.

He plays a few classical pieces, then a jewish one. He might know he’s on the Upper West Side (a Jewish hub). I wonder if he knows something I don’t know. I don’t think he does. But how would I know? 

I thanked him for decorating my space via a $3 venmo donation. I had just spent $3 on 18 ounces of blackberries. The least I can do is contribute an equivalent amount of thanks to him.

Hold up: he’s now looping. I’ve heard this song before. From him, like 10 minutes ago.

Are these his only songs? His only moneymakers? Does he loop the same 10-minute concert? That would be very New York of him. My first time living in New York, I donated to a guitarist in Central Park when he played a song of emotional resonance to me. I only realized when I returned the following day that he plays that same set on loop because my song has emotional resonance for everyone.

Most of the donations come from passers-by, not from the crowd. The crowd helps: without us, fewer would stop and listen. But this guy is good enough that he would grab attention even if I weren’t here.

Around 15 minutes in, the battery on his backing track died.

Location and preparation: not his strengths. Violin: absolutely.

I once spitballed with a friend the idea of A/B testing homeless beggar signs. What works, where, for whom.

The problem with that business, aside from the ethical qualms: an unreliable workforce. Data collection and reliable money collection: not good.

I wonder how much I could make as a beggar in NYC. If I cosplayed and A/B tested. What is a beggar but an emotional street performer? This violinist creates beauty. The beggar creates pity. A clown creates joy. French beggars prostrate themselves. American ones open doors to Dunkin Donuts in hopes of capitalizing on the reciprocity. 

I bet I’d enjoy A/B testing different begging in NYC. And by “begging”, I include street performing in general. Be a psychic one day, a debater another, a jokester a third.

The performer’s baby watches videos on a cell phone. Its mother (presumably his wife) swipes. The king’s kids just call him dad.

After the performance, the audience member with the tissue introduces herself as Vicky. Vicky tells me if she were eating the blackberries I was eating, she would have spilled them all over herself. I offer her a clamshell of blackberries. She declines. I tell her about my favorite fruit vendor, where they’re only $1 per 6oz clamshell. Vicky tells me the performer is conservatory-trained, from Venezuela. Everyone around her becomes successful, she says. She tells me the violinist used to play a block south. Now he’s here. Vicky asks for my information and I tell her about my trumpeter friend. I approach the performer to scan his Venmo. Vicky tells the violinist I have something to say. I ask him, through a translator: how did he choose this place? He tells me he lives in the Bronx. I say this street: how did you choose this street? He says by walking (which I interpret as arbitrary). I tell him that my buddy the trumpeter used to play at that location in Central Park and made $800 in 3-4 hours. Vicky says she’ll miss him.

I wonder if I’ll ever see him again. I’d like to. But if I don’t, is that better?

The $20 Locker

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Even when this city smacks me, I still see its beauty. 

I love New York’s reasonableness. 

Today I visited a Yankees game. The metal detector dinged on me when I passed. The bag inspector told me I can’t take a laptop inside. He summoned his teammate. His teammate pointed me to a business across the street. He said, “There’s lockers right across the street. They’re not affiliated with us but people use them all the time. When you come back, tell the security and they’ll let you skip the line.” I asked his name. He said Anthony.

The security guards moved the barriers as I shortcutted back through the zigzagging line. I sped across the street. Inside, the worker charged me $20 and ushered me to the back where the lockers live. I placed my laptop inside, pocketed the key, and told him “okay” when he said the locker rental ends 30 minutes after the game. I asked him his name. His coworker said “Ahmed”. He repeated “Ahmed.”

I spent $25 on the Yankees ticket. On one hand, $20 is expensive. On the other hand, the policies are reasonable at every step of the way. Can policy easily distinguish between a laptop and a recording device? Perhaps not. Is this policy public on their website? Yes. Did I check? No, but I could have and that’s my fault. Is there a reasonable solution to this problem? Yes, and it’s not $100 when it very well could be.

When I returned, I told the security guards that I had visited the lockers and Anthony told me to skip the line. My ticket buzzed in, and I retrieved my limited-edition Yankees soccer jersey. For which I paid an additional $10 over the cost of normal tickets. Not because I care about the jersey, but because my father was in town, and he’s always wanted to visit Yankee Stadium. 

Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can buy the ingredients. 

Rules for Wagering

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To win, follow the rules.

Last night, a new friend challenged me to the video game Pong for $100 a game. He’s a brash guy: aggressive, cocksure; the sort of guy who makes new friends by testing their boundaries. I asked if he knew Pong. He declined to answer. I declined the bet. 

I offered ping-pong instead, also $100 a game. We’d just played doubles on the same team. I’d seen his game. I suspected I could beat him.

Today, I called him a gambler. He corrected me: he doesn’t gamble, he wagers. Gambling is about uncertainty, luck, and chance. Wagering is about wagers (bets). Ironically, this guy’s given name literally means “randomness.”

I don’t enjoy gambling, either. I’ve liked craps once or twice, playing with someone else’s money, but I haven’t enjoyed gambling since a plastic slot machine at 10 years old. I like playing, and I like winning. I don’t gamble because it’s a losing proposition.

Wagering, though, I do frequently. My rules:

Julian’s rules for wagering

1. Don’t wager more than you’re willing to lose. Self-explanatory.

2. Clearly indicate the stakes and the rules. Most wagers fail on miscommunication. Better clear than confused. State the rules and win conditions up front. Repeat the score and the running tally, frequently. Walk over to the other side of the table if the music is too loud for him to hear you call the score. 

3. Get paid. Many wagers fail not from a loss but from a loss of receipt. If you don’t get the money, did you really win?

4. Quit at any time. A different friend doubled the stakes every time he lost, unwilling to stop until he got even. Motivating, sure. But it misreads the value of quitting while you’re behind: the alternative is quitting when you’re further behind.

5. Control your emotions. Anger can make you a better ping-pong player. It can also make you blind to the meta-games. And the meta-games are usually where the money is.

6. You don’t have to earn it back the same way you lost it. When you lose money one way, it’s tempting to win it back the same way. But funds are fungible. If you lose at ping-pong but win at poker, you can stop playing ping-pong. Lean into your comparative advantages: specialize and trade.

Games Played:

I flew out of Chicago Midway today. The metal detector beeped. The agent told me this meant I’d been “randomly selected” for extra screening. I asked if that meant the body scanner. She said yes. I told her I’d opt out. She told me to take off my shoes and run them through, then asked if I’d go through the scanner now. I said no (did she really think removing my shoes would change my opinion?). She summoned a male agent. He asked me to point out my property. I said, “My partner has it.” (She’d known the game was on the second I got flagged. She was capping my downside to enable me to play.)  “All of it?” he asked. Yes. He walked me to a separate lane. I asked how long he’d been a TSA agent. “Since there’s been a TSA.” He started the spiel: “Any sensitive areas, any painful areas?” And then, hot damn, was this guy thorough. As he ran his hands up and down my midriff, Partner made a cupping motion on one of her breasts, seemingly indicating what the agent was soon to do to me.

After the free massage, I returned to Partner with a new glow.

He offered me $4k for 15 minutes of play. 

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I said no. To win the bet, win the games. To keep the winnings, stop while he can still pay.

I’m not skilled enough at ping pong to play for $2k per game. Yet tonight I played ping-pong for $2k per game.

Here’s how:

He asked, “Ping pong?”

I said, “Sure. $100 per game?”

His eyes lit up. “Sure.”

We agreed: game to 21, 5 serves per person, serves must be cross-court.

I won the first game. We played again. I won. A third time: I won.

He said, “Double?”

I asked, “What do you mean?”

He said, “$200 per game.”

I said, “I’m up $300. You want to play for $200 per game?”

He said yes.

I won.

He said, “$500? I need to clear this out.”

We shook hands.

I won.

“$1,000?”

I won.

“$2,000?”

I won.

So now I’m up $4,000. And the biggest danger in this spot is the guy not paying. Because I’d pay a $4,000 debt if I had one. I only make bets I’ll cover. So if he doesn’t pay his debt, he was free-rolling me the whole time. (“Free-rolling” is when you have the ability to win but no ability to lose. If he would collect upon a victory but not pay upon a loss, he’s free-rolling me for the bet.)

I also 1) don’t want him to feel shitty, and 2) don’t want him to stiff me.

So when he says he wants to play for $4k, I know he’s steaming. I know he’s fuming. He’s physically pacing at the base of the ping pong table like Chris Rock on stage. And I don’t know if he’s someone who will actually pay his debt. If he is, we can play for more later. If he isn’t, I don’t want to gamble anymore.

The game is no longer ping pong. The game is: will this guy pay off an $8k debt? If not, I’m taking my ping-pong ball and going home. 

Life Advice for the Laid Off

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To win, see the silver lining. To see the silver lining, get rained on.

Back in college, my roommate set me up on a date with the woman who is now his wife. She texted me earlier today asking for advice. Her husband was laid off in one of those massive rounds you’re hearing about. Here’s what I said:

  • People are rarely laid off from their perfect-fit, dream job. This could be a great opportunity to find something you care about more. Getting laid off is often something very stressful, but also something people are very happy about in retrospect.
    • Another friend lost his job last year. After months of tough (and often disheartening) searching, he found a job that aligns with what he studied in college. His previous job delivered a paycheck. His new job fits his values. It’s no coincidence that those people wanted him: they share values and interests, and we want to be around people with whom we share values and interests.
  • List your values, stack-ranking them. How important is it to you to stay in the house you’re in? More or less important than the industry you work in? Reasonable people might have different preferences. Only by knowing your values can you decide in accordance with them.
  • Venn diagrams are your friend. For him, the intersection could be philosophy, theater, physical awareness, and getting along with everyone. It might be a specific niche, but someone will pay you for it. Are you willing to travel for it? That’s why you need your stack-ranked values.
  • Don’t be the best: be the only. Don’t seek a job where you’re the best; find a job where you’re the only. If you lack competition, people will reward you for solving their specific need.
  • Our economy is currently in a big ol’ unpredictable cluster. (One of my favorite financial newsletters wrote about this the other day.) Consider what bets you’re willing to make. I’m taking out long-term, fixed-interest-rate debt on an income-producing asset. I could definitely be wrong (and I don’t have the license to give financial advice), but it’s a bet I believe in.
  • If you want help structuring your freelance work, give holler anytime. (I’ve helped a few freelancers make meaningfully more money without changing the work itself: just the structures around it: pricing, packaging, billing, contract drafting, and the like.) 

Half of advice is the advice itself. The other half is listening. The third half is being there for someone: kind, present, and caring. And the fourth half is knowing when to stop. 

Games Played

A recurring ledger of games observed in the wild

  • The Global Entry agent at O’Hare Airport hands you a laminated card to carry through baggage claim, then to hand to another agent upon exit. How can this possibly be the best system we’ve developed?
  • Groceries in Chicago are like $80 where the same amount would have been like 20€ (~$25) in France. And you have to use the app to clip the annoying little digital coupon. This digital coupon bullshit is so annoying that it would motivate me to shop at a different grocery store entirely.
  • I have always believed that laundry is best done naked so one can wash all of one’s clothing. When following this strategy at a guest house in a foreign city, one should recognize beforehand that one will be locked in one’s room for the duration. And may God have pity on you if the laundry machine breaks. 

Will You Take Twenty Dollars?

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The goal of the game is to play. You play by paying the entrance fee. Everyone’s invited. 

Outside the original ruin bar in Budapest, the bouncer quoted me the price to skip the line: “Ten euros.” 

“Ten euros for two?” I offered. 

“Ten euros each,” he said. 

“Will you take twenty dollars for two?” 

“Of course,” he replied, in a voice so light and generous it could only belong to commerce. ($20 is about 15% less than 20€.)

He wasn’t being sloppy. He was filtering. Part of his job is revenue generation. The other part is selecting patrons who will spend more money inside. The 15% discount doesn’t matter; if we’re willing to play his game, he’s already won. 

My favorite cities have always been the commercial ones. Vegas when I was young, then recently New York and Amsterdam. They run on a meritocracy of cash, with a cosmopolitan, equalizing energy. Nobody cares who you are or where you came from: Your money is good here. 

Everyone in these cities is trying to screw you, at least a little, and often not subtly. New York: There’s a man in an official-looking vest selling tickets to the Staten Island Ferry, which is free. Vegas casinos install ugly carpets and no clocks so you keep your eyes on the slot machines and forget what time it is. The Dutch more or less invented economic colonialism. None of these are ethical, but there is a particular brand of honesty to them. There’s an honesty in a structure being explicitly hyper-optimized for a purpose. A traveler going to Las Vegas may affectionately refer to it as “Lost Wages”, and go anyway! 

Social games (status, position, politics) extract, too. They just don’t tell you the price. I’ll take the bouncer with a clear sense of haggle over a gatekeeper with an opaque shibboleth any day. He’s named his price. I haggled at it. He accepted. 

Commerce can be a brutal game. But it’s also fair, kind, and possible. I remember talking with a homeless New Yorker two blocks from Central Park in 2021. Israeli-born, formerly US military, he told me he loved homelessness in New York: the crowds, the parks, the safety, the free food everywhere. New York is a wonderful place to have nothing.  

So was Las Vegas: it was the first place I went when I moved into a van. You don’t need to gamble; you can people-watch, eat a meatball the size of your head for $10, or palm a $1 cocktail shrimp meant to lure you toward a table you’ll never sit at. Abundance runs downhill to those willing to travel for it. But you must be willing to travel. And you must accept that one day it will dry up. 

This new generation doesn’t gamble. Vegas, needing new revenue sources, raised its food prices. After my prior trip to Sin City disappointed, the last time I had the opportunity for a layover in Vegas, I went to Reno a day early instead. 

The bouncer’s “of course” was more than a discount. It felt like the loose money of my early twenties, the ZIRP years in the Bay Area, when a kid fresh out of college could get hired to write at $50 an hour because nobody was counting that closely yet. It felt like being let in.

Your money is good here. So is mine. The door is open if you’re willing to play.  

And perhaps the most beautiful part: Whenever some entity – a country or company or culture – makes rules excluding some people from playing, they’ll rapidly lose the commerce game that made them dominant in the first place. It’s self-correcting, a thing of beauty. 

Of course.

Two Service Industries

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The waiter has two jobs. So does everyone in the service industry.

A waiter who doesn’t bring your food has failed. A waiter who brings your food but ruins your experience has also failed, just in a different way. We refer to both of these elements with the same word: “service”.

Two completely different failure modes, one job title. The waiter sells a result (correct order arrives, hot) and an experience (the welcome, the rhythm of the table, the small talk, the upsells that don’t feel pushy).

Most service jobs are like this. A masseuse sometimes sells a result (your glutes stop screaming) and sometimes sells an experience (60 minutes of affectionate touch from a fellow primate). A hotel sells a result (somewhere safe to sleep, proximity to the places you want to be, a gym, food without leaving the building) and an experience (the pleasantness of all of it).

The word “service” hides two different products. Once you notice this, every purchase decision gets easier, because you stop accidentally paying for the one you don’t want.

(People miscategorize their purchases all the time. Doctors, for instance, are in the service industry. Personally, I only value “bedside manner” insofar as it impacts my medical results, generally through team cohesion.) 

The Hotel Switch

This idea showed up today while I switched hotels in Budapest.

Hotel 1 was the Kimpton BEM. $340 per night. Sauna, gym, restaurant, bar, room service, a quick walk to the Danube. A small room. No refrigerator. Paid laundry. Beautiful experience, modest result.

Hotel 2 is an aparthotel. $61 per night. A one-bedroom apartment (separate bedroom and living room). A kitchen with stove, oven, microwave, dishes, refrigerator. A laundry machine. One block from the biggest ruin bar in Budapest.

For the same money, I’d take the aparthotel every time: twice the space, a real kitchen, a better location, an in-unit laundry machine. The Kimpton costs roughly 5.5x as much. At that price, you’re buying 1) The experience of being attended to, and 2) Reliability (of room, food, and experience: Kimpton is a reputable brand.

The Preference

I’m probably odd in that I almost always want the result.

I prefer my infrastructure solves specific needs. If it solves the need, the work is done; the pleasure of the experience is secondary to the solving of the problem.

The key exception: play. I don’t play golf to get the ball in the hole. I play golf to play golf. Play is the rare context where the experience IS the product, and I’m clear on that going in.

Perhaps some people see visiting a hotel as play. I see it as infrastructure. 

The Cost

The aparthotel model isn’t free. You have to learn it. Photos lie. Hosts ghost. There’s no front desk at this residence: if you fail their check-in process, their automated system won’t email you the login code.

The variance is real: I once caught a nasty cough from a booking.com stay due to mold on the walls.

The result-first approach trades reliability for upside on the days nothing goes wrong. Most days, nothing goes wrong. And my skill at spotting good residences has improved. But I improved… by making mistakes.

The Result

As I write this I’m on the couch in our new living room, and Partner is squishing my feet. My feet hurt because the Kimpton was a 45-minute walk from the lively downtown area (from which Partner and I walked back to the Kimpton at 2am last night).

I’m enjoying the experience of a feet-squish from someone I love. Still, I’d rather we jumped to the result where my feet stopped hurting.

Budapest: Scams and Porn

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How porn, scams, and power fantasies feed each other

[Day 2 in Budapest. Written from a downtown bar.] 

In Budapest, there’s a classic tourist scam. The kind of scam that’s so common you learn about it from Rick Steves. A beautiful woman approaches you on the street, flirts, suggests a drink at a bar she knows. You go. The menu has no prices. You order a round. The bill comes: $500 for two glasses of champagne. A very large man near the door makes clear: this is not negotiable.

The scam works because the mark doesn’t expect it. He thinks he’s lucky. 

And the reason he thinks he’s lucky traces back through Soviet history.  

Here’s the loop, roughly:

1. Post-communist economic disparity creates a visible gap between local women and Western tourists with money.

2. Sex tourism follows: Guys pay for sex.

3. Some of them film it. A whole genre emerges — the “meet a girl on the street in Eastern Europe” category. The premise: “this just happens! You walk around Prague or Budapest, and beautiful woman will come home with you.”[1] 

4. Enough men absorb this trope from porn as a realistic model of how Eastern Europe works. They arrive pre-loaded with the belief that beautiful women approach foreign men on the street.

5. Scam operators notice this. They don’t even need to be aware of the porn. They just notice this story works. A woman approaches, flirts, leads the guy to the scam bar. He doesn’t question it because it matches the script he’s already running.

The porn normalized the scenario. The scam monetized the same scenario from another direction.

I like comedy, so let’s look at this from a recursive, self-parody perspective: 

Once enough guys get scammed and tell the story online (forums, Reddit, travel warnings, the Rick Steves travel guide) the scam itself becomes a known thing. It enters the cultural awareness. And what does entertainment do with any known phenomenon?

It digests it back into fantasy.

My predicted next genre: porn where the guy gets taken to the clip joint, sees what’s happening, fights the bouncer, and the girl is so impressed she actually sleeps with him. The humiliation gets rewritten as a test. The mark becomes the hero. The audience gets to engage with the anxiety of being scammed abroad, but instead of worry it gets transmuted into a power fantasy.

Reality creates the fantasy. The fantasy creates the vulnerability. The vulnerability creates the scam. The scam gets folded back into the fantasy. Someday maybe people will want to be scammed by the beautiful woman as they’ve gotten off on it so many times. 

This structure isn’t unique to Budapest. Casting couch porn followed the same loop. The real casting couch was an open Hollywood secret (producers leveraging access for sex). Exploitative, coercive, career-ending for the women who refused. Then the genre emerged: the “audition” scenario, repackaged as the fantasy itself. The power imbalance turned from a social bug into the pornographic product.

The pattern repeats because it works. A real dynamic involving real exploitation gets turned into content, and fed back to an audience that is now one step further from seeing the thing clearly. Nobody plans the full loop. Each actor in the chain is just optimizing locally — the pornographer for clicks, the scammer for cash, the next pornographer for a fresher scenario. The loop runs itself.

The economic loop feels no different from the gentrification loop seen in Brooklyn, Berlin, and Budapest: down-trodden area → cheap real estate for bars or clubs → yuppies who want to be near artists → cafes → expensive real estate 

It’s an economic loop. You’re living inside thousands every day. Try not to get fucked by them. [1] Budapest actually produces a lot of porn, and this “meet a strange woman and bring her home” is a common genre, featuring the beautiful city architecture