Last week I began to notice what looked like bug bites on my limbs. I asked two dermatologists and ChatGPT what they were, and everyone said they looked like bed bug bites. Shit. My timeline checked out - I went to a big resort in the Bahamas, and it was the kind of place one could imagine people picking up bed bugs and bringing them home (ironically, I told a friend I was going there, and he mentioned he and his family got bed bugs on their last visit).
When it comes to health and bed bugs, I would describe myself as totally neurotic, so naturally, I wanted to make sure they weren’t infesting my home in Brooklyn. People dislike talking about bed bugs because they’re gross and stigma-y. We searched for them in our home but didn't see any trace of them, but I still thought they were certainly there because I was itchy and noticed new bites emerging. So I searched on Google for bed bug detectors and stumbled on the world of K9s who can sniff them out. Obviously, a dog would do the trick and find them and confirm my fears. Plus, one of our friends had a K9 do this before.
Searching for local services on google is tricky. Looking for restaurants is fine, one can usually cross-reference places with reviews and articles, but local services are another story. It's difficult to triangulate what is real on google reviews, yelp, and elsewhere. And when you are searching for things that are psychologically urgent and scary or uncomfortable, like bed bug inspections, the internet is an excellent place for scammers to take advantage of people.
So I clicked on a couple of different services that looked legitimate and ultimately ended up texting with a K9 dog service. I paid them and they sent a dog to our home that walked through it in five minutes, was promptly given a treat, pawed at our bed and only our bed, and then left. A minute later I got a call from the service saying "We got the report and your room definitely has bed bugs and let's get you some quotes from exterminators we work with." They mentioned they could pass through discounted rates. They called back in 30 minutes with a quote. I asked for the other quotes and names of companies because my spidey senses were beginning to scream "Scam." Then things got sketchy. The companies didn't have any internet presence. What I could find was a series of LLCs all tying back to the same address, a bunch of reviews that looked "off," shared last names across the various business operators, and a web of SEO-optimized bed bugs websites all operated by the same team. I confronted the person I was speaking with about all of this and they surprisingly admitted to everything and that this was just the way bed bug business was done.
This was very discomforting but not surprising to me at all. These types of entanglements are common in small businesses and large. It reminded me of the recent Hindenburg Research report about Carvana that told a story about a web of interconnected businesses and self-dealings. When it comes to these types of things you don't want to feel like you are being scammed and lied to. Whether it's seeing if you have bed bugs, buying or selling a car, or investing in a public company, you want to work with people you can trust. However, the platforms we use to discover things are easily gamed and make it easy for companies large and small to program us to believe or behave in a certain way.
Self-dealing and misleading and taking advantage of people in business are not uncommon. Incentives drive behavior, and unfortunately, a lot of businesses large and small do not care about their customers. They care about making money. Sometimes that means running scams and saying you have bed bugs and need to treat them today even when you don't have them. Sometimes that means letting customers get fleeced with no recourse.
One problem is that in certain categories like local services it's really difficult to understand if a business truly cares about its customers or not. I consider my ability to navigate the internet somewhat sophisticatedly to be above average, and I almost completely fell for this scam. It's hard to imagine how many people have been taken advantage of by services like this in times of need. And it's especially top of mind right now as people in Los Angeles flee their homes and figure out their lives after this disaster. Couple that with the ability for AI to empower scammers to flood the zone with fake information and it's a recipe for a crisis in trust and truth.
This week at USV we were discussing how people have always been programmed by the media and technology for ages, and how it now feels like there is a growing realization and awakening that this has been happening. As a result, we are beginning to question this programming and ask "Why?" more often. Why am I seeing this? Is this real? Can I trust it? What is the motivation behind the thing?
The crisis of trust on the internet is exploding, and we need solutions in every nook and cranny of it. How do we make sure reviews of local businesses and service providers are real? Is it possible? Is the only solution referral networks? How do we gauge the authenticity of those? Will it be too difficult to institute global solutions (e.g., platforms like Google and Angie's List are gamed and compromised), and therefore, everything must be local and more tight-knit (e.g., a local blog or trusted listserv)? To scale do things need to get small and trusted again? Can new networks or technologies solve these problems? How do we know what is real and who or what we can trust? I want to see and understand more of the unique ways to tackle these issues.
For now, I suppose, what we can do is remember that the information we consume comes from somewhere and through something, and that those things have their own incentives and vulnerabilities. We should continue to ask ourselves the question "Why?" and ingest it all with a healthy dose of inquisitiveness.
P.S. The working hypothesis is that the "bites" are a viral rash, and if you want a trusted bed bug inspector and exterminator I highly recommend John Furman in Brooklyn and Michael Fleck in Ulster County. They gave me peace of mind that we are devoid of bed bugs and delivered my favorite line of this saga: "With that many "bites" Stevie Wonder could find your bugs."
