Scam callers have upped their game.

There’s a person I know who works for an IT company we shall not name. He works in security. Once upon a time we were talking about junk mail and his theory was that junk e-mailers intentionally used broken English and odd graphics, they put all that stuff in there as part of their plan.

And their plan? To filter out smart people, to put it bluntly, to filter out people who would say to themselves, gee, this e-mail from the IRS is addressed to “Dear Customer” and spells “audit” with a double “d.” I think I’ll just delete it.

But what if instead of bad grammar the scammers rethought their whole approach and premised it on irony and self-reference? If the pitch was a recorded phone call would the sophisticated crowd at least listen to the whole thing? Would they record the audio and play it back for family and friends, all of them laughing in delight? Would someone post the audio to their web page?

It’s a scam call warning you about scam calls! They insist that you report any scam phone calls to the FCC and to the phone companies!

I’m so glad I didn’t hang up as I usually do.

My favorite part: “Most importantly, if someone with a foreign accent claims to be the IRS, Social Security Administration office, Microsoft, Amazon, Cash Out, or any other questionable source that generally doesn’t call you…”

This piece belongs in a museum.