Deborah Hill Cone: Cute offers come with a catch

Deborah Hill Cone

Are we getting more gullible? When I interviewed freakishly energetic television presenter Phil Keoghan - he had just biked across America - I asked him how he kept going. "Asahi," he said. I said "Oh," thinking it seemed a strange thing for him to keep his energy up with a Japanese beer. Maybe he had it with some healthy sushi. Later I realised he meant the Acai berry. I had seen the emails in my spam. "Stop dreaming. Acai berry makes it happen before your eyes. Get the power of Acai berry ... Lose weight without dieting."

The Acai (pronounced ah-sah-EE) is a fast-growing palm tree in Central and South America. Its berries are promoted as a dietary supplement that marketers claim does everything from make you thinner and sexier to start your car on cold mornings. Well, practically. There are no controlled studies backing up any of these claims. There seems to be some sort of pyramid scheme operating to flog this stuff, with everyone from Oprah

Winfrey's frequent guest Dr Mehmet Oz to local Get Rich Quick spruiker Phil Jones recommending the supplement. Although why anyone would take weight-loss advice from Oprah is beyond me.

I don't know if the Acai berry works. But the marketing frenzy around this snake-oil remedy confirmed one thing for me: we are getting more gullible. It is counterintuitive; although we have access to more information than ever before, we are more easily sucked in by hooey. It is not only flakey dietary supplements. The internet offers never-before-seen opportunities to be sucked in.

"Is this the stupidest woman in New Zealand?" asked Kiwiblog's David Farrar about a widow who got sucked in by a conman over the internet and, believing herself to be "in love", sent him $680,000. Not $5000 to buy him an air ticket so they could actually meet, but almost three quarters of a million dollars. What was she thinking? A local policeman said the woman was "intelligent and it showed almost anyone can be sucked in". It is true. Even the late John Fernyhough was fleeced of a six-figure sum by some Nigerian scam artists.

Speaking of gullibility, how could the woman supposedly harassed by Richard Worth be considered for a job as a director on a government board when she had no idea what "xxx" meant?

It is not just scams. I still keep getting recommended homeopathy tinctures for my baby. Read my lips. It. Is. Hooey. And check out the bestsellers on Amazon. If they are not about vampires or cupcakes, they have titles like Quantum Wellness Cleanse: The 21 Day Essential Guide to Healing Your Mind, Body and Spirit, and The Ultramind Solution: Fix Your Broken Brain by Healing Your Body First.

I have a theory for why we're still so gullible. For years people watched as their money "magically" increased in dumb-arse property developments and life got more prosperous, seemingly like magic. Now all that has been revealed to be smoke and mirrors, they are desperate for some other magic bullet.

Understandable, really. It is so much easier to think you can get rich through The Secret or get thin by eating an obscure berry or get well by drinking expensive water than to admit the truth. It is simple. To make money you have to work grindingly hard, to get thin you have to exercise self-control, while cleansing your toxins, whatever they are, is not going to make you well. It's hooey.

* deborah@coneandco.com