The Security of Giving

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Start your week smiling with your friends. Kathy's aunt and Michelle Frechette. It's time to get ready for some weekly motivation with Wp motivate. Happy Thursday, Kathy. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Happy Thursday, Michelle. How are you? [00:00:18] Speaker A: I'm just frustrated. Just frustrated. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Oh, dear. Why? You were angry last week, and now you're frustrated this week. What's going on? [00:00:28] Speaker A: I know, right? So, anger. I've discovered in the last, oh, 20 minutes that anger and frustration can also be very closely tied, just like anger can, to other things. Right? Helplessness. We talked about last week. [00:00:42] Speaker B: Sure. [00:00:43] Speaker A: All right. So you and I have big voices in the WordPress community. I often get referred to, and I know you do, too, as a WordPress celebrity. Now, I don't like that word. I don't apply it to myself, but. [00:00:56] Speaker B: I'm saying it was an a lister. Oh, yes, a lister. [00:01:00] Speaker A: Okay, so you're an a lister. I'm a celebrity. First of all, I've never seen a freaking red carpet anywhere. But that's another story. [00:01:06] Speaker B: Yes, you have. Well, did you come to my party in St. Louis? Well, it wasn't my party. It was our party. But we had a red carpet there. But you were probably invited. Okay. [00:01:17] Speaker A: You weren't invited. [00:01:18] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. How were you not invited? [00:01:21] Speaker A: I. [00:01:22] Speaker B: That's like my personal oversight. [00:01:24] Speaker A: I wasn't a celebrity back then. [00:01:27] Speaker B: You weren't me. [00:01:29] Speaker A: It doesn't matter. I was very happy for you. All right, I got to see the. [00:01:33] Speaker B: Film, Mia and I'll have to talk about this, like, what happened, because I know Mia was looking, brought you presents and. Oh, my gosh. [00:01:41] Speaker A: It's okay. No worries. I never. Or if it got. If I was invited, it was. It ended up in spam or something. It does not matter. I was so happy for you. And I still have Brady, but seed. [00:01:51] Speaker B: Anyway, the only red carpet I've ever been around was one I had to pay for my. With my company's money, I had to buy it. [00:01:58] Speaker A: The only red carpet I've been on was in a really ugly church that just was their wall to wall. [00:02:03] Speaker B: Oh, gosh. [00:02:05] Speaker A: Okay, rewind, though. So back to the. Back to the purpose of our story. Oh, my God, my laughter is so loud, I've probably blown out the ear drums of half of our listeners at this point. Sorry, Mike. I haven't given deference to my Kindle in a while. Mike, hope you're still listening. Sorry about your eardrums. Anyway, so as somebody who has a lot of followers, I'll say it that way, whether you want to call it a list celebrity, big mouth, annoying woman, whatever, however you want to call me, I get a minimum of five DM's, cold DM's a week, and anywhere from 20 to 30 a week, and in heyday type peak hours during wordcamps and things like that even more now, a lot of people will say, why do you answer your DM's? And the truth is, I answer DM's because oftentimes, that's how I've gotten people on my podcast. That's how I've gotten people on one of the podcasts. That's how I've gotten connected with people. There are a lot of people who I didn't realize, I didn't follow back, who I should be responding to their DM's. And so unless a DM is written entirely in a foreign language and the picture is a half naked lady, because I get those all the time, too. And I'm not counting those among the five to 25 a week where it's. It'll say something along the lines of. In English, it'll say, my brother saw you and thought that you were great. If you want to apply to meet him, I'm like, okay, apply to meet your brother is such a scam anyway. But I get from what appear to be real people, I'll start that way, who want help finding a job or who want me to hire them. Okay, so I'm actually working with a guy in Manila right now who hit me at a weak moment. It's like, I admire the work you do in the community. I want to learn from you, which is a lot of people start that way. So if you're listening, don't dm me with that, because I literally one person in five years have I actually responded to and actually given work to. But this, this guy hit me in a weak spot. My Wednesday tweet list of the jobs, I wish I'd never done it on Wednesday. It's the busiest day of my week after Monday, and sometimes that's why they don't go out till Thursday or Friday even, or I ended up skipping a week. So I said to him, I don't have any WordPress work, but I could really use somebody to pull together the job thread for me. Put it in a doc. I started the doc. I showed him what I wanted, and I said, but I won't let you do it for free. And I don't pay him a lot, but I pay him like $50 a month. And now we are meeting on a semi regular basis. I'm teaching him how to build a website. He's going to be building the next WP career pages website, like the next iteration of it. And he's turned out to be a real human being who's not asking for me to, like, do anything right. He just wanted to work for free. But I don't believe in letting people work for free because I don't want to work for free anyway. So that's the, that's the outlier. Most of people just want me to, they want me to hire them. And I say, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not hiring. You know, but you posted this job. If you read the beginning. I didn't post the job. I posted somebody else's job. It's not my job. I'm not hiring. Blah, blah, blah. Or do you have any positions that I saw your company's hiring or, I admire the work you're doing and I want to learn from you and. But it's literally a lot. Sometimes five or six a day. It's a lot. [00:05:40] Speaker B: Wow. Wow. [00:05:42] Speaker A: And today I have somebody who is just not taking no for an answer. Now, I know I could block this person, but I also fear for blocking people because I don't want it to then be talking about me without me knowing what they're talking about me, because now they're following me in all the places, threads, Mastodon, LinkedIn, like Twitter, all the places. Right? And the podcasts. And they listened to our podcast from last week and said, oh, I didn't know you had anger issues. And I'm like, I don't have anger issues. I have being taken advantage of and used issues like, dude, yeah. And then he's like, commenting on thread saying that using me today, that, like, hire him as a va. I can say, michelle knows how good I am. And I had to reply and say, I don't. I've never worked with you. I cannot give you a testimonial for your work. I know nothing about your work. [00:06:40] Speaker B: That's so manipulative. [00:06:42] Speaker A: It's so manipulative. And his reply publicly on threads was, but, but we've dmed. And so, you know, I can communicate well. And I'm thinking, no, no, that's not how this, that's not how any of this works. So all that to say, I don't want people to not dm me if there's a way that I can truly be quickly helpful. I am not a job placement bureau. I am not a resume review service. He wanted me to look at his website on Squarespace. And I'm like, nope, I don't review people's websites. He wanted me to comment on how he could meet a woman. I'm like, nope, I don't comment on people. What personal lives? I know. And I could have blocked this guy early on, but there's just something about understanding how these things work so that I can help other people be aware of how these things work, right? So eventually, I'll block people. That kind of stuff. But. But the. But the frustration is real. And it got to a point where I'm feeling angry again because the frustration is real. Now, do I think this is a real person? I do. I do think this is a real person. I don't think it's a bot I have in the past through. Okay, this is bearing my soul. Yes, I've been on Tinder. No, I don't use it for hookups, actually. Looking for love in my life. The last guy I dated for over a year, I met there. So I'll just putting that out there that way. But somebody on Tinder pretended to be Idris Elba, and I couldn't even say it with a straight face. I cannot believe that people fall for this shit, but they must, because these people are persistent in doing it right. Seti was Idris Elba, and this is a few years ago. And so I played the game like, it played along because I wanted to see where was this going, right. And really wanted to be with me and thinks I'm beautiful and all the things. And, like, first of all, I'm not saying that I'm a dog. I don't think I'm a incredibly unattractive person. However, I am not a supermodel. I am not tall. I am not thin. I do not have long, blonde hair like my counterpart over here in Texas. I think I'm perfectly fine, but I am nobody's epitome of the greek goddess, and that's okay. I'm fine with that. I am who I am, and I'm happy with who I am. But I don't think that my photos on Tinder scored Idris Elba. [00:09:09] Speaker B: I don't think that's good. [00:09:11] Speaker A: So then. But I started texting back. Like, texting within the app. I'm not giving him my phone number, right? But texting within the app back and forth. Like, oh, wow. But I played it. I'm like, who are you? I don't. You know, you're talking to me like, I should know who you are. Like, oh, I've been in movies and everything. I go, oh, let me look you up. Of course, I knew who else was. So I go, oh, wow, you're really impressive. I don't think I've ever seen any of your work, though. Just playing the game. Right? And so then it's like, oh, I think it was like with Marvel or something. Sends me a link where you can invest in the next Marvel movie. [00:09:48] Speaker B: Interesting, right? [00:09:50] Speaker A: And wants me to invest some money in the movie to prove that if I were in a relationship with him, I would not be relying on his millions and millions of dollars. I was self sufficient at that point. I just did a little bit of research. I actually found a video clip of the real Idris Elba saying, look, people are using my face. They're using my name. They're pretending to be me. Do not give these people money. And so I sent him that link, and then I blocked him. But I played the game a little bit because I want to see how are they trying to scam people now. [00:10:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:24] Speaker A: Which brings us to the next thing. So even though I think this guy's a real guy, I still think he's manipulative. I still think that. And I understand sometimes manipulation comes from desperation. This guy says he's in a place in Africa that's really downtrodden. And I believe that. I do. And I think that sometimes desperate moves call for desperate actions. And reaching out to somebody like me is an act of desperation. It does not mean that I have to become that person's savior or safety net or job placement officer or fill in the blank. Okay. I'm going to drink some water. You talk? [00:11:02] Speaker B: Yeah. It's one thing to. I mean, the threads you do every week is a service that people could take advantage of and then take the ball and run with it. Right. But that's where the boundary is. That's where the line is, and you do the service. And if somebody has a question of, like, is this company like your company or not? Like, those are very reasonable. [00:11:28] Speaker A: No. [00:11:29] Speaker B: Nope. Just doing this as a service. Good luck to you. That type of thing, those types of DM's and those types of questions of just getting clarity are one thing, but to try to use it just bothers me when people. I mean, when I lived in downtown Chicago and there were tons of homeless people asking for money, and it was, like, not something I grew up around, and I just kind of watched it, you know, and watch. And I felt for people, and instead of, like, giving money to them, I would be, like. I would send them energy or say a prayer for them or just like, ask that they would have protection or whatever it is that they need, but that's all I've got to give them. And that's what I would do. Then there was one time I was at this grocery store, and I lived on the way far north side up, like, almost by Evanston. And I'm in this grocery store and I look over and I'm like, hey, you, you're not. I didn't say that to him, but in my head, I was like, where's. [00:12:29] Speaker A: Your cup, Mister Lamborghini? [00:12:32] Speaker B: Yeah. It was this guy, he used to, like, sell american flags on toothpicks, and he would pretend like he had something wrong with him, but he was just fine in the grocery store. And I was just like, man, I just like, it got me right. But then there was this other situation where I was. I was with the kids in reading, California. We were down shopping from Mount Shasta, and we were going to Chipotle. We walk in and this guy asked me for money, and I'm like, no, I'm not giving you money. Then he gets in line behind us at Chipotle and says, I only have this much money. I'm $0.50 short. And they're like, we'll cover you. The got to the cashier and I said, put that man's burrito on my bill, because I knew he needed it, right? It was like. Then it was just like, keep. Keep your money. It was way different, you know, it's like. And I just. When you get this kind of. When I hear, like, the manipulation that you're having to deal with, it just gets me. It's. There's a disingenuousness, there's a. There's a lie. And having been in the industry of, like, dealing with hackers and scammers and all of that stuff, it just gets my blood boiling a little bit that people do this to each other, and I just want to protect everyone and firewall Michelle. [00:13:55] Speaker A: It makes me think of. It makes me think of the story of the giving tree. Remember the story of the giving tree? [00:14:01] Speaker B: Yes, I do. [00:14:02] Speaker A: Where it's like, you can have my apples. You can sit in my shade here, take my branches to build your house. I have nothing left. You can sit on my stump. I'm not going to be the fucking stump. Like, I'm going to keep my branches. I'm going to eat a cup of my own fucking apples. Use my language. But if you think back to that story, like, yes, we all read it and thought, what a beautiful story. What a story of selflessness. To give until you have nothing left is not helpful to anybody. Yeah. And the idea of, you can't pour from an empty vessel. Right. It makes sense. You have to self preserve at some point. And I think I give a lot. I give more than a lot of people do. But that doesn't mean you can continue to take what I'm not offering. And that's where my frustration level comes in. And I'm not sure how to say that politely. [00:14:55] Speaker B: Well, it's almost. It disrespects what you do give. When they try to take more, when they cross the line, when they cross the boundary where they crossed over and try to make whatever they're going through their problem, your problem, then it disrespects what you have given. And I think you just have. I would start blocking people personally. I know you don't want to block people, but. Oh, I've blocked a lot of people. [00:15:25] Speaker A: No, I have. This person went way too far, and now they've got me in all these different places, and I'm not afraid for myself. Like, I'm not really afraid that they're gonna find me. We're not even on the same continent. Like, that's not what I'm worried about so much. But I don't want my reputation tarnished because I told one person no. And I don't think that would necessarily happen. But when you block somebody, when you block somebody, you don't control the narrative. You can't see the narrative anymore, and that's when it gets a little bit scary. [00:15:55] Speaker B: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, think about it. I mean, we may be, like, a listers of a small community because we're press, you know? I mean, I still get into plenty of lifts, and people ask me what I do, and I. Yeah, for sure. You know, nobody knows. [00:16:10] Speaker A: Don't you know who I am? [00:16:13] Speaker B: It's a rarity when people know what WordPress is, so it's very. When people call me like, this a lister, I'm like, man, if I had an a lister card to play, I sure didn't play it in the. Like, I should have been on a different. Like, if I had that card, I didn't know I had that card. But, yeah, I guess now I do. Maybe I'll play it. But it's. Can you imagine people on larger stages or larger communities, celebrities, the Taylor Swift and post Malones and Beyonce's, of the world, of the stuff they have to deal with. And I know a lot of celebrities get a bad rap of being, well, women especially. Oh, well, she's just bitchy that people are attacking Blake Lively right now. I have to look at this because the rest of social media is just like, what is going on? I'm just like, I don't even wanna be on right now. Everybody's all incendiary, and, like, I just. [00:17:10] Speaker A: Wanna keep laughing at that breakdancer from Australia. Can I be just like her? [00:17:14] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. But they're, like, beating up on Blake Lively. And I'm just like, oh, good Lord. You know, it's just like, I don't. And I'm not here to defend her or attack her, whatever. But it's just like, you know, one person starts a little bit of an attack, and then there's like, all the piranhas are like, oh, or dachshunds. You know, you have one dachshund. You can deal with that. But you get six dachshunds, and one of them barks. It's like, oh, my gosh. I will never have six dachshunds. My dachshund's like, he'll start barking. He jumped up on Mark's bed while he was eating lunch, and so I growled at the dog, and he's like, who are we mad at? I'm. His whole attitude is like, if mom is mad at someone, I'm mad, too. [00:17:55] Speaker A: Could it possibly be me she's mad at? [00:17:58] Speaker B: He couldn't get. No, he did not get it. No. So these are probably at market. I'm like, get out of here. [00:18:04] Speaker A: You know? You're out, kid. [00:18:08] Speaker B: But I think, like, people get like that. You know, one person goes off, and then it's just like this feeding frenzy of people who just want to jump on and go, yeah, yeah. Michelle, what's the matter? Get his jobs. We want jobs. [00:18:23] Speaker A: You help all those people. Why can't you help me? Yeah, I help them en masse. Not individually, dude. But there was an episode job agency. [00:18:32] Speaker B: Like, okay, let's take your resume in here. Let me go find you a job. [00:18:35] Speaker A: Oh, and do it for free, by the way, so that I can end up in poverty myself. There was an episode of House. Remember the tv show House? [00:18:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:45] Speaker A: Okay, so this episode of House, very similar. It reminded me of the giving tree. It would so surprise me if they didn't, like, read that book. And one of the writers go, oh, I could do this. Where there was this tycoon kind of person who suddenly was incredibly generous giving away his money. Donated a kidney. Donated part of his liver. Like those things that you can give away and still survive, right? [00:19:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:09] Speaker A: And house is like, this guy has always been, like, the miserly, nasty kind of person. This willingness to be so generous has to be a symptom. So they, like, played a trick on him and told him there was a woman who needed his other kidney. And he's like, sure, I'll give it to her. It's like, you'll die. You'll die with no kidneys. Right? And so that was like a symptom of that something was not right chemically in his brain, and they fixed that. And then he was really pissed off that he gave away part of his liver and gave away a kidney and whatever else. He went back to being miserly and everything else, like, where's my kidney? But it's, it just, it reminds me that you have to. It really does remind me that you have to be cautious, you have to self preserve, you have to take care of yourself before you can help other people. And you can't give away all of your time, all of your resources, all of your goodwill. You can be the most, the kindest, nicest person in the world, but you still have to keep some of it for yourself, or you cannot continue to give and to do and to help. And so I'm constantly reminding myself, yes, I get frustrated, and yes, I get angry, and especially when people just won't back down when I tell them no, but we have to. We cannot be the person who gives it all away and sits there as the stump at the end going, I don't understand. Why am I all here by myself? I gave everybody everything, but everybody left with all my stuff, and then now it's just me, and nobody wants to help me. And I'm not saying that people help me all the time. I am literally not saying that I don't get help, because I do. And there are some amazing people in this community who have helped get me where I am, etcetera. So that's not a comment on that. But, and by the way, the people who have helped me all along are not the people who are asking me to give everything to them either. But I guess my. And we could talk a little bit about security in a minute, because I know you have a lot to say about these people who actually are scamming, but that is to say that if somebody is generous, and even if they're generous to a fault, as we say, please be kind and be careful what you take from them, because you don't know what you may be costing somebody when all you do is take and you don't contribute. [00:21:24] Speaker B: Yes. There needs to be, there needs to be a give and take. There needs to be balance, and there needs to be a strong boundaries. Yeah. Just, it is not good to have somebody take and take and take and be a bottomless pitch black hole of, of taking. [00:21:46] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. So, but the security aspect comes in, too, because if you're not cautious. [00:21:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I see, to me, the person that you're dealing with and the manipulative language that they're using, it reminds, it just reminds me of scammers. And even though they're not pretending to be someone else, they still are being manipulative. And before the Internet, there was no anonymity of a con man. You saw a con man or a grifter, and that's who they are. And they were maybe a little more, had to be a little more stealth in what their intentions were, but you knew who they were. And so I don't think it necessarily has to be this nameless, faceless guy in someone's basement who's hacking or scamming or phishing. I think. I think you can, you know, have manipulative people who say, this is exactly who I am, and they play on emotions and they play on. Yeah, the Internet just gives them this extra layer of anonymity. But with all I'm sure you saw the news of, like, these Social Security numbers that got from. [00:23:06] Speaker A: I stuck my head in the sand like an ostrich about that, because I'm like, what am I going to do? [00:23:13] Speaker B: Well, yeah, it's, it's one of those things. It's kind of like the equifax breach that happened a few years ago where it's like the credit reporting agency had a breach and all of our information was exposed. Even though we don't have a client relationship with these companies, it's something like that where it's a company that, like large organizations, when you're applying for a job and you have to do a background check that, you know, mister manipulative, hey, get ready for that kind of stuff. They have, you know, ways of finding information. They have their own databases, and so they give these background checks of like, was this person ever involved in a crime? Probably their credit score, their Social Security number to line everything up, right? And so a bunch of personally identifiable information was exposed in this breach of, I guess there's billions of records that were exposed, and there's nothing any of us can do. There's, there's probably going to be class action lawsuits. There's probably going to be all of that, but it's not going to stop it. You know, it's done. It's done and it's been exposed. [00:24:20] Speaker A: But monitoring your own stuff and being. [00:24:22] Speaker B: Hyper vigilant about hypervigilance and being aware that you might be spearfished or receive an attack. I did a video on YouTube recently about this very sophisticated attack campaign that was not only sending a text message, but calling people and sending them to phishing pages on domains that looked very much like the actual legitimate business. And so they were getting people with three mediums of communication. And I have a friend, one of my friends from college, I'm like, this is the same thing. It's the exact same thing. She got it started as a text message, and then there was a phone call with someone who spoke perfect English. It wasn't, it didn't have all the markers, but imagine now you have that, but then you have somebody who knows your Social Security number, knows where you bank knows some transact, knows where you lived in the 1990s or something, like really old, like, well, of course, it's my bank that's calling me and saying that my account has been drained if I'm going to help and get this solved. And so there's going to be all of this, like, personally identifiable information that's going to be used to sort of add to spoof the veracity of the caller or the text message or the email message, and it's going to make it seem like it's so legitimate. So people really need to get educated about this stuff. And I'll have, oh, here's my own video. [00:25:54] Speaker A: Here's my advice. So they always, you know, your banks and everybody else will have those security questions, right? Like, what street did you live on? What's your mother's maiden name? I don't use real information. I have a mother's maiden name in my brain that I pretend was my mother's maiden name. That way, if somebody actually knows my mother's maiden name, they can't use that to actually access my security. I know what street I grew up on. I use a fake street. I use it religiously. Nobody knows what it is, so you can't guess it kind of thing, you know? [00:26:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:25] Speaker A: And also, like, all those little things, like, I've participated in them before. The stuff on, on Facebook was like, oh, you know, like, yeah, 20 questions about me kind of thing. I can promise you that every single one of those questions, it's not an answer to any of my security questions because I'm smarter than the average bear. But be careful about those things because you're putting out your information when you answer those fun little quizzes and things like that. If you're actually using information that you've also used as security questions in the past. [00:26:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's not the same world it was 20 years ago. And you just have to be extremely vigilant and there's just going to be, there's just going to be more and more attempts and. Yeah. So we just all have to get smarter. [00:27:12] Speaker A: Yep. Absolutely. Get smarter. Protect yourself in multiple ways and don't give away the farm. Don't be the giving tree. [00:27:23] Speaker B: Yes, yes. The security of giving. How about that for a title? [00:27:27] Speaker A: Oh, I think that's good. I like it. I also think, you know, it's okay that a tree gives away its apples because it grows new ones every year. [00:27:35] Speaker B: Give away your purpose. [00:27:36] Speaker A: Give away your apples. Don't let people cut you down and leave you with nothing. [00:27:40] Speaker B: Yes, yes. That's giving you. Everybody's got apples to give. Everybody's got their purpose. You know, an apple tree grows apples and there's a symbiotic relationship with the seeds, you know, getting eaten by a horse and, you know, pooped out in the field, and now there's a new tree, like, and it's, it's a relationship. Right. And it's purpose. It's, it's when you are on purpose, there's your gift to the world. You are then a gift to the world and you are living in your purpose. And that is something that's so dear to me. But in order for people to really be that, there has to be some level of security, right? The tree doesn't get chopped down. The tree gets sustenance and adequate sunlight and rain and fertilization from the horse's poop. [00:28:31] Speaker A: All of that. All of it. That's right. [00:28:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There needs to be, there needs to be protection. [00:28:41] Speaker A: So righteous indignation, anger, frustration, all of the emotions around any of these things are valid. Just don't let it reach you alive. Like, by the I come and I vent. Like, I'll bet if we didn't record today, I'd still be venting to you about the situation. And by the end of the day, I'd be like, oh, I'm good because I talked to somebody. I got it out of my system. Don't let it eat you up. [00:29:04] Speaker B: For sure. For sure. Totally. [00:29:09] Speaker A: Oh, who knows what next week will bring. We'll probably be talking about some other emotion. [00:29:14] Speaker B: Indeed. [00:29:15] Speaker A: And that's okay. All right. Anyway, we hope you're all having a good day. We'll see you next week. [00:29:20] Speaker B: Bye bye. [00:29:23] Speaker A: This has been Wp motivate with Kathy Zant and Michelle Freshette. To learn more or to sponsor us, go to wpmotivate.com.