Chapter 2: Screenshots in the Group Chat

Monday Night, Week 3

Marcus was late to the lab today, which has never happened before. He slid onto the stool next to me with his coat still on and his phone in his hand, and before I could say anything about the dissection tray, he turned the screen towards me. "Look at this," he said. "Just look."

It was a group chat, a big one, with more members than our whole biology year. Marcus said that someone he had met in the comments under a study video had added him to it on Saturday. The group was called something about "smart students" and "freedom", and the first thing I saw was a screenshot: a phone screen showing a number in green, with a plus sign in front of it and a little arrow pointing up. Under it, the person who had posted it had written, "Week two. Paid my rent with this."

Under that were dozens of replies, one after another. "Congratulations!" "So proud of you!" "I'm next!" "This group changed my life." Marcus read some of them out loud, in the voice people use for good news.

Marcus scrolled, and there were more. Every hour or so, another member posted another screenshot. One showed a profit that was, if I understood it, about what I earn at the café in a month, made in one afternoon. A profit, I told myself, is the money you gain above what you put in. I had to say it in my head, because I am a biology student and the word always sounds to me like something in a different language.

"I haven't put anything in," Marcus said quickly, as if I had accused him. "The rule of the group is that new people watch first. You learn, and then, when you're ready, the admin shows you how to start." The admin, he explained, is the person who runs the group. Then he looked at the screen again and said, much more quietly, "But imagine. I could send Mum twice as much."

I did not know what to say, so I said that we should probably start the dissection. We did. But all through the afternoon, while I was looking at the inside of something that used to be a frog, I kept seeing that green number. I am not proud of this, but I want to be honest in this notebook: part of me wanted to be added to the group too.

Wednesday Night, Week 3

I told Lina about the group tonight while we were making pasta in the shared kitchen. I described the green numbers and the replies, and I said that it was hard to argue with so many people who had all made money. Lina stirred the pot for a while without saying anything. Then she said, "Give me your phone for one minute. No, give me mine, actually. I don't want to touch your stuff."

She opened the page of her online course that shows her quiz results. Her last quiz was six out of ten, which she says was the lecturer's fault. She took a screenshot of it and showed me. Then she turned away, did something on the screen for less than a minute while the pasta boiled, and turned back. The screenshot now said ten out of ten. It had the same colours, the same little logo in the corner, the same time at the top of the screen. I looked at it for a long time and could not find anything wrong with it.

"I'm not going to tell you how," Lina said, "because it's boring, and because it doesn't matter. What matters is that it took me less time than the pasta, and I wasn't even trying hard. A screenshot is a picture. It's a picture of something that may or may not be real. Anyone can make a picture of anything."

Then she said something that bothered me even more. "And the people cheering? You don't know who they are either, because one person can run lots of accounts. A group can be mostly the same few people with different names and different photos. Some of them might be real people who are just hoping, and you can't tell from inside." She pointed her wooden spoon at me. "A crowd in a chat is a picture of a crowd."

I asked her how anyone could ever know what was real, then, if pictures and crowds can both be made. Lina thought about it while she drained the pasta. "You can't know from the pictures," she said. "You have to step outside them. Ask what you can check that the group doesn't control." We ate the pasta, which was very good, and I kept thinking about her quiz, which was now perfect and still six out of ten.

Friday Night, Week 3

I worked an early café shift this morning. I have been promoted from washing cups to wiping tables, which the manager says is a sign of trust. In the afternoon, Marcus and I had a free hour, and we sat in the library with his phone between us. I asked him the question Lina had given me: "What can you check about this group from outside the group?"

Marcus scrolled for a while. Every proof he found was inside the chat: the screenshots, the replies, the admin's long messages about "mindset", and a short video of a laptop screen with numbers moving on it. He could not find a single thing that he could look up somewhere else. There was no real company name that he could search for himself, no name of a person that he could check, nothing at all except the group talking about the group.

Then I noticed some other things. The replies to each screenshot came within seconds, all at once, and many of them used the same words in the same order. Most of the profile pictures were landscapes or sunsets rather than faces. And in a whole week of messages, not one member had ever posted a loss. I know very little about investing, but I know that in biology, if every single result in an experiment comes out perfectly, you check your method before you celebrate.

Marcus was quiet. Then, a little stiffly, he said that he had asked a question in the group on Wednesday. He had asked whether anyone had ever checked the results somewhere outside the group. Within a minute, three members had answered with laughing faces and the words "doubters stay poor", and a few minutes later the admin had sent him a private message. It said, kindly, that questions like his were better asked privately, because they "scare the beginners".

I asked Marcus why a question would scare anyone, if the results were real. He did not answer. He put his phone face down on the table and said, "You sound like my mother." I said that his mother sounded clever. He laughed a little at that, and the stiffness went away.

On the bus home, I thought about the person behind the group. What does that person want? I think they want the crowd to do the convincing for them, so that nobody notices there is no proof outside the chat. And what are they afraid of? Questions asked in front of everyone, because one question in public might make a hundred people start to check.

Sunday Night, Week 3

Grandma Rose was in the garden when I called, so she put me on the speaker while she picked the last tomatoes. I could hear the birds behind her voice. I told her about Marcus and the group, and about Lina's quiz that changed from six to ten while the pasta boiled. I told her that the hardest part was not the pictures, but the crowd. "All those people," I said. "It feels rude to think they're all wrong."

Earlier in the call, she had wanted the other news. I told her that I am now trusted with tables at the café, that Lina makes the best pasta in the building, and that Felix had sent me a video of a game in which he builds an entire castle and then lets a dragon burn it down, which he says is the best part. Mum and Dad had called on Wednesday as usual. Dad had asked whether I was sleeping enough, and Mum had asked whether I was eating enough, and I had said yes to both, which was about half true. Grandma said that half true is a good average for the third week of anything.

Then I told her that I felt a little silly for being tempted at all. Grandma stopped picking tomatoes for a moment. "Being tempted is not silly," she said. "It only means you have something you care about. Marcus wants to help his mother, and you want your two lists to stop pinching. The people who make those groups know that very well. That is the whole reason the groups exist."

Grandma said, "You don't have to think they're all wrong, love. You only have to see the pond for yourself." I asked her which pond she meant. She laughed, sat down on what I think was the old bench by the shed, and told me.

Grandma's Fable: The Pond in the Picture

One summer the rain did not come, and the pond at the bottom of the meadow began to shrink. Each morning the frogs found the water a little lower and the mud a little wider. They grew thin and worried, and they argued about what to do.

One hot afternoon a crow landed on a stone at the edge of the pond. He was carrying a large flat piece of bark, and on the bark someone had painted a picture with berry juice. It showed a wide, deep pond with lily pads, tall green reeds and clouds of fat flies dancing over the water. "This pond is just over the hill," said the crow. "I will lead you there. It costs only one beetle each."

Then, from the reeds behind him, came voices. "I have been there!" "The water is so cool!" "Best pond in the world!" There were so many voices that the frogs could not count them. A young frog looked at the picture, then at the thin brown water of her own pond, and she felt her heart beat fast. Surely so many frogs could not be wrong.

But before she gave the crow her beetle, she went to the old toad who lived under the willow root. "A picture of water has never made anyone wet," said the old toad. "And those voices in the reeds. Have you seen the frogs who make them?"

The young frog crept quietly into the reeds. There she found no crowd of frogs at all. She found one starling, puffing out his chest and making one frog's voice after another, as starlings can. When he saw her, he flew away.

That night, while the others slept, the young frog began to climb the hill. It was a long climb for a small frog, and her feet were sore. At dawn she reached the top and looked down the other side. There was a hollow there, and once it might have been a pond, but now it was only cracked mud, as dry as an old plate.

She hopped back down to her own pond as fast as she could and told the others what she had seen from the top of the hill. Some of them did not believe her, and they climbed the hill to look for themselves. When they came back, nobody gave the crow a beetle. The old toad led them all along the stream to a place where it still ran, slowly, between cool stones, and they waited there together until the rain came.

Monday Night, Week 4

I have been thinking about the young frog all day. The picture on the bark was not the dangerous part. The dangerous part was the voices, because the voices made the picture feel checked. That is exactly what the cheering in Marcus's group does. Each reply under a screenshot is like a frog saying, "I have been there." But one starling can make a hundred frog voices.

What I like about the young frog is that she did not argue with the voices. She did not try to prove that the crow was lying, and she did not call the others silly. She simply went somewhere the crow could not control, the top of the hill, and looked with her own eyes. The old toad did not tell her the answer either. He only asked her one question: "Have you seen the frogs who make them?"

I told Marcus about the fable in the lab today. He listened, and at the part about the starling he made a face and said, "All right, all right." Then he told me that he has decided to "just watch for now" and not put any money in. I was relieved, but before we finished, he showed me a new post in the group. A man who calls himself "Coach Dex" is giving a free online class next week for students who want to "learn the real system". Marcus said that a free class could not hurt, and I did not argue, but I wrote the name down.

What I Checked This Week

The claim was that members of Marcus's group were making large profits, and the proof was a stream of screenshots with dozens of cheering replies under each one. It looked like a lot of evidence. When I counted with my own paws, as Grandma says, it turned out to be two kinds of picture: pictures of numbers, and a picture of a crowd.

A picture of a profit is not proof of a profit. Lina showed me that a screen can be changed in less time than it takes to boil pasta, and so well that I could not see the difference. I do not need to know how it is done. I only need to remember that a screenshot shows me what someone chose to show me, and nothing more.

The members of a group may not be who they seem. One person can speak with many names. Some members may be real people who are hoping, and some may not be real at all. Replies that arrive within seconds, in the same words, from accounts without faces, and a group where nobody ever loses, are warning signs. The size of a crowd tells me how loud a claim is, not whether it is true.

So the check I learned this week is to ask what I can verify from outside the group, using a source that I choose myself and that the group does not control. If the answer is "nothing", then I have learned something important already. A real business can be looked up somewhere else. A group whose only proof is itself is like the crow's bark: a pond that nobody can swim in.

And one more sign: when a question makes the people in charge uncomfortable. Marcus asked a fair question in public, and he was told to ask it in private. A real opportunity is not afraid of being checked in front of everyone.

Things to Talk About as a Family

Tess puts down her pen here for the week. She has met one of the most common pictures in investment scams: screenshots of profits and a cheering crowd. Marcus is not foolish for feeling the pull of that picture. He cares about his mother, and a group that seems to be full of people who solved their money worries is hard to look away from. Tess felt the same pull, and she wrote it down honestly.

Here are some questions to talk about together. Have you ever believed something mainly because many people seemed to agree with it, online or at school or at work, and what happened? If someone in the family showed you a screenshot of something surprising, what could you check about it from outside the place where it was posted? And how would each of you like to be asked about something that worries the rest of the family, so that the question feels like care and not like an accusation?

And here is something small to do as a family. Over the next week, each person can collect one surprising claim that arrived only as a picture: a screenshot in a chat, a photo of a result, an image of a message. At the end of the week, sit down together and, for each picture, name one place outside the picture where the claim could be checked, a place that you would find yourselves. If you cannot think of any such place, that is worth noticing too.