There’s something rather entertaining about receiving one of those scam emails out of the blue.

At times, the ingenuity is impressive (think Lynne Brown), and at times they’re just good for a laugh (Prince Harry choosing us as a Patron).

Maybe I can laugh because I’m not some gullible Baby Boomer, and I’m not handing out all of my personal details willy-nilly.

Anyway, it’s the first Thursday of the month, which means the Cape Town CBD will be awash with hipsters donning their first fedoras of the summer.

It also means it’s Throwback time, and this time around we are looking at the most popular TED Talk of all time. Uploaded back in 2016, it has (at the time of writing) a staggering 30,3 million views.

Here’s the write-up:

Suspicious emails: unclaimed insurance bonds, diamond-encrusted safe deposit boxes, close friends marooned in a foreign country. They pop up in our inboxes, and standard procedure is to delete on sight. But what happens when you reply?

Follow along as writer and comedian James Veitch narrates a hilarious, months-long exchange with a spammer who offered to cut him in on a hot deal.

It’s worth spending 10 minutes watching this, and truth be told you know your brain switched off for the day after lunch.

James, spam that spammer:

That was fun, and we are all 10 minutes closer to the weekend, now.

Rejoice.

PS – for the really hardcore time-wasters amongst us, James did a follow up:

[source:youtube]