Televised Infomercial Scam
rating: 0+x

Basic Information

Certain infomercials with slick or questionable video production value feature enthusiastic hosts and highlights of satisfied customers' testimony extolling the benefits of get-rich-quick methods such as internet auctioneering, real estate investment and marketing, for-profit toll phone business, classified advertisement and unique products of questionable value requiring active marketing by the paying customers. Infomercials which fall under the aforementioned descriptions are highly likely to be scams devised and engineered to "bamboozle" the unsuspecting viewers for the express purpose of enriching the scheme inventors who produced the infomercials (often of dubious production value) which often grossly exaggerate their claims, in conjunction with the clips of satisfied customers' over-excited testimonies with the superimposed captions of the alleged profits made.

Sources

Game and Story Use

  • In a humorous campaign, the infomercials should be even worse than in the real world. Push them over the top!
  • In a high-magic game, magic items might be sold via the equivalent of an infomercial. Even if there's no magical equivalent of a TV, this might still happen. Imagine a stage set up off to the side of a bazaar or marketplace. Low-level wizards masquerading as more powerful casters hawk faux-artifacts here, and the local thieve's guild provides an audience full of shills and dupes.
  • This is also a favourite scam amongst members of the political class … but like so many things, appears not to be considered a crime when they do it…
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License