Retro Movie Review: The Blue Bird (1940)
This Shirley Temple film vehicle, The Blue Bird, attempts to be a then modern fairy tale. It also wants to be technically trendy (for 1940) all while attempting to reboot Shirley Temple’s career. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fully succeed at any of these. At the same time, it has some oddly creepy moments. The artwork created within the pages of the book used in the title sequence is quite impressive. Makes you wonder if the book survived the production. Let’s explore.
The 1940s
This film was released in 1940, but portions may have been filmed in 1939, the same year that the MGM’s Wizard of Oz released, starring Judy Garland. Apparently, Shirley Temple was considered for the role of Dorothy Gale, but we know the part was ultimately given to Judy Garland… and the rest was history. However, this film may have been designed to be a similar vehicle to compete with The Wizard of Oz.
The Blue Bird
It’s easy to draw many parallels between 1940’s The Blue Bird and 1939’s The Wizard of Oz’s in technical execution, in that both films begin with a black and white opening sequence. Each film then segues into a full Technicolor fantasy romp. One might even argue that The Blue Bird’s producers lifted this Technicolor idea directly from The Wizard of Oz film. Still, with The Blue Bird, switching to color portions makes sense strictly because of the story. Since the story revolves around a blue bird, filming this one black and white throughout would make it difficult to understand this color aspect of the film. Some black and white films have tried this with marginal success. With that said, the producer’s lack of vision around the use Technicolor leaves the film somewhat poorly executed.
However, as a viewer in 2023, seeing Shirley Temple perform in color is actually treat, but strictly for nostalgic reasons, not for reasons of story. For story purposes, the Technicolor sequences are more or less dictated by the color of the bird, even though the Technicolor sequences are mostly wasted because the audience literally won’t see the blue bird until the final 2 minutes of the film. Talk about slow burn.
Story Analysis
Even though there are obvious technical execution similarities between The Wizard of Oz and The Blue Bird, the stories themselves are wholly dissimilar. Here’s where a lot of reviewers drop the review ball. The Wizard of Oz is more or less a modern story (at the time) about a girl and her dog seeking to get back home after being thrust into the fantasy world of Oz.
The Blue Bird hearkens back to ye olde traditional Germanic fairy tales (complete with Lederhosen, Dirndl dresses and even includes a character devoted to toy wood carving). This film’s story, like many fairy tales, features children in peril all throughout the tale. Where The Wizard of Oz uses modern names like Dorothy for the main character, The Blue Bird chooses the odd fairy tale names of Mytyl and Tyltyl for the two main children.
Honestly, what sane parent would ever name their child Mytyl or Tyltyl? Ignoring these oddly strange fairy tale Mxyzptlk-style names and the Technicolor sequence, the story itself remains mostly dissimilar to The Wizard of Oz.
The Blue Bird‘s story starts off with two children, Mytyl and Tyltyl in a forest.. the primary character of the two being played by Shirley Temple as Mytyl, pronounced as me till. The boy child is played by Johnny Russel as Tyltyl, pronounced as till till. Unfortunately, the character of Tyltyl remains more or less background fodder throughout this film and is intentionally underused to focus the spotlight on Shirley Temple. Clearly, the person intended to carry this fantasy fairy tale romp is Shirley Temple. This is also one of Shirley Temple’s later films in her career, where she had lost much of her younger child cuteness and exuberance. However, a small amount of that allure does remain, but in only a few scenes.
By the filming of The Blue Bird, Temple was clearly on the edge of losing her child actor badge when filming began. Still, some of her child charisma does remain, but in many scenes it’s entirely gone. Mostly this is due to the story seeing the Mytyl character waver between being an ungrateful, unhappy, selfish spoiled brat and, much more rarely, being a loving, thoughtful, sweet child; the latter being what you’d expect from a Shirley Temple film.
The story opens in a “Royal Forest” with Mytyl and Tyltyl capturing a bird in a small trap. If you’re clueful enough, you might even see where this is leading. From here, the children head home with the bird (ignoring the separate “sick kid” scene that’s solely used to establish how selfish Mytyl is). After a contentious dinner exchange where Mytyl more or less tongue lashes her parents, further establishing Mytyl’s grumpy selfishness, Mytyl and Tyltyl head to bed.
Upon waking to the sound of confused knocking, gone is the black and white sequence and now the film reveals its now grander Technicolor portion. Clearly, this falling asleep in black and white and waking up in color is almost identical to The Wizard of Oz. Even though this Technicolor use is nearly identical between both films, this story completely diverges at this point. No tornadoes. No Toto. No witches on broomsticks.
Instead, lifting its heaviest story cues almost directly from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, The Blue Bird plods Dickens’s story onward through the veil of a fairy tale.
In fact, within moments of becoming Technicolor, Fairy Berylune (played by Jessie Ralph) appears as an old woman wrapped in what seems to be a psychedelic tattered and patched garb, like 60’s second-hand clothing. In fact, Fairy Berylune actually appears to be more of a psychedelic witch (kind of like Witchiepoo in Lidsville, played by Billie Hayes… that 1971 trippy Sid and Marty Kroft kid’s show on Saturday mornings). I’ll let this bit of misplaced psychedelia slide, however.
Fairy Berylune’s costume is probably the only costume in this entire film that seems to understand the purposes and uses of Technicolor. Just look at it! Unfortunately, that costume and the character of Fairy Berylune only appear briefly in the opening of the Technicolor sequence, never to be seen again. It’s too bad, too. The Fairy Berylune character could have been brilliantly used all throughout.
Fairy Berylune, nevertheless, works hard (a little too hard) to sell this opening setup of the film’s story along with turning a dog, a lamp and a cat into humans (Cinderella much?). Why humans? Of course, to help Mytyl and Tyltyl find “The blue bird of happiness!”, according to Berylune … duh!
After Fairy Berylune transforms such into humans, she summarily disappears and leaves the children to their own devices and fully in the care of these now very strange, newly minted companions. The kids’ dog in human form, Tylo (pictured left), becomes a cowardly man dressed in brown and white garb. Their cat, Tylette (pictured right), becomes a mischievous woman, dressed in black with white trim and a big red bow, reminiscent of Cruella De Vil. Their lamp becomes the character Light (pictured center); a blonde, blue, female dressed very much like Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz. Though while Light, in fact, comes and goes like Glinda in The Wizard of Oz, Light ultimately becomes the children’s new guardian for the remainder of this film’s tale. Though unlike Glinda, Light performs no magic other than producing light.
Before departing, Fairy Berylune asserts that the children MUST look for a blue bird to find their happiness, simply because she says so. It’s actually the whole pretext of this film. Exactly where should the children look? According to Fairy Berylune, in the past, present and future (just like A Christmas Carol). Mytyl has proven herself to be a grouchy, stingy, difficult person, too much like Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Mytyl doesn’t ever outright say “Bah Humbug”, but you can see this behavior driving her very language and body mannerisms. Further, Fairy Berylune reminds us heavily of the Fairy Godmother who appears in Cinderella to transform Cinderella, a pumpkin and some mice… even though the primary story of this film most matches the story ideas presented in A Christmas Carol. You should be able to figure out how this all ends for Mytyl. The writers, however, clearly borrowed from wherever they could to tell this story.
Because Mytyl and Tyltyl are told by Fairy Berylune to search everywhere including in the past, present and future, this is where the story ultimately begins.
Story wise, the past is taken quite literally when Mytyl and Tyltyl must traverse through a graveyard in the dark, complete with skeletons, bones and open graves. After making their way through this scary graveyard, they remember their dead grandparents and end up revisiting their grandparents’ home complete with their grandparents now very much alive; the grandfather being a wood toy carver of somewhat creepy dolls with heads that move.
Before entering the graveyard, Light warned the children to be back within the hour or remain forever stuck in the past. As a result, the children are in a hurry to leave, watching a wooden cuckoo clock. Unfortunately, the grandparents don’t want the children to leave because they themselves will once again fade back into death’s slumber. The children spend only a tiny bit of time dawdling at the grandparents house, long enough for Mytyl to sing a song. However, the children do understand their need to leave quickly. This is the first of many segments where Tylette actively attempts to sabotage the children by moving the clock’s hands backwards. Mytyl realizes that there’s a problem afoot with the clock and quickly decides to make haste away from her grandparents home all without finding the blue bird. Note that this “hurry up” clock-ticking trope used in this segment is entirely dropped when searching all further locations.
At this point, the children again meet up with Light who urges them to check the present, but Tylette has other ideas. Tylette interrupts and instead encourages the children to visit Luxury. Even though Light tells the children they won’t find anything there, the children head to Luxury anyway.
This part of the story is solely intended to lure the children in and, once again, strand them at Luxury by Tylette. While the children are able to get all of the material things they desire while at Luxury, including a pony, the one thing they cannot get is love and compassion from Mr. and Mrs. Luxury. This makes the children grumpy and selfish. Eventually, the children realize this, come to their senses and wish to leave. The children narrowly escape Luxury after Tylette again tries to sabotage the children’s exit.
After narrowly escaping Luxury, the children meet up again with Light who urges them to try looking in a forest, located in the present. After entering the forest, Tylette once again conspires with all of the forest creatures to lure and keep the children there. This results in a forest fire that ultimately kills Tylette (more about this later), but not Tylo or the children. The children and Tylo narrowly escape a very long winded forest fire running sequence, but they leave empty handed.
Again, the children meet up with Light who then leads the children up a staircase and into the future. The future brings us to an area with a bunch of children who are not yet born. These are to be the future children of earth. To become born, the unborn load up onto a boat with silver sails destined for Earth as their destination. After various discussions with various unborn (discussions which don’t help the story), Mytyl and Tyltyl finally leave with Tylo, again without finding the blue bird. Before leaving, however, they meet their unborn sister who explains she won’t be with them for very long. Mytyl is oddly excited by this both happy and grim news. And yet, here’s another dying reference.
As they return back home, the children awake from their slumber. Unlike The Wizard of Oz which returns back to black and white at the end when Dorothy returns home, The Blue Bird remains in color… for one very obvious reason. We haven’t yet seen the actual blue bird.
As the children get some good news about their father, the mother explains the father had time to craft a cage for their bird (???); the bird that Mytyl caught the day before in the Royal Forest. I’m a little perplexed at how the father could have crafted this bird cage overnight?! That is, unless the kids were in a coma-like state for days? This bird, which we couldn’t see in the small box cage earlier and which was shrouded by black and white footage anyway, we now see has been transferred into a large, fully completed bird cage. Voila, it’s now indeed a very blue bird… and with just minutes to spare! The story has come full circle.
At this point, Mytyl is so happy at these turn of events that she appears to now be “redeemed”, in the same way as Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. In fact, she’s so elated that she decides to gives her sick friend her blue bird as a token of her generosity and friendship… when in the opening of this story, she refused and wanted nothing more than to keep the bird for herself.
Death and Dying Motifs
Unlike The Wizard of Oz, which that film only touches on the topic once in the beginning of the film and once again later with the Wicked Witch, The Blue Bird touches on this topic again and again by putting the children in mortal danger throughout, by traversing through a graveyard at night, by the death and redeath of the grandparents, the death of Tylette and the birth (and death) of Mytyl’s as yet unborn sister. Yes, a lot of death and dying references make their way into this film. A little bit overly morbid and macabre for a fairy tale.
Overall
The film is interesting for its age. It touches on many topics which are sometimes typical of actual fairy tales, but which border on the macabre. However, this film also does it in an oddly weird and creepy way. Tylette in particular is one of the creepiest characters I’ve seen in a film of this type. This character easily exceeds the creep factor of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Tylette also meets her demise in fire almost in similar, but opposite fashion to The Wicked Witch with water. These story similarities are obvious.
The Blue Bird film itself doesn’t mimic The Wizard of Oz with the exception of a handful of mostly technical similarities. The Blue Bird also bombed at the box office, unlike The Wizard of Oz, even though this film was later nominated for awards.
The Blue Bird wasn’t the first film to bomb for Shirley Temple. That distinction occurred one year before 1940’s The Blue Bird with 1939’s Susannah of the Mounties. This 1939 film bomb is what began the downward slide of Shirley Temple as a box office draw. The Blue Bird simply continued that trend for Temple. I can definitely see how this film might not appeal to children.
As a fantasy fairy tale style film, it’s okay. Not great. Not fantastic. It’s definitely no Disney film. Its fantasy is, at times, dark, creepy, macabre and meanders a lot for no good reason. While there’s no gore, the horror of some of the situations is all too real. With Tylette pretending to be a protector, but instead putting the children in harm’s way, that’s an odd play. The dialog in the film is also, at times, stilted and also unchildlike. It’s hard to believe that some of the dialog from Shirley Temple’s mouth would have ever been said by a child of that age. As for Tyltyl, he’s more or less used as a doormat.
As a color film curiosity from 1940, though not Temple’s first color film, The Blue Bird is worth seeing. The Technicolor isn’t as vibrant or as rich as I have seen in other Technicolor films, particularly The Wizard of Oz. It’s possible that costume colors may have been intentionally toned down to enhance the darker tone of the film.
There’s also a marked amount of chromatic aberration in this film’s imagery. I don’t know if this is due to the film transfer to video or if this was simply as a result of the cameras used to film this production.
The costumer also seems to have chosen more earthy tones for many of the costumes versus vibrant rich reds, pinks or yellows; colors which Technicolor makes super vibrant. Instead, at Luxury where you expect such color and opulence, Temple is seen wearing a pastel rose colored satin robe before bed. When riding the carousel at Luxury, she’s seen in a somewhat muted blue dress.
Part of the reason to use Technicolor is to take advantage of the vibrant rich tonal quality of certain colors, to which the filmmakers of The Blue Bird didn’t do. However, the forest fire scenes do offer rich vibrant fire colors, which served to somewhat enhance the children’s peril in a forest fire.
Unfortunately, the special effects employed during the fire scenes utilize low quality bluescreen-style effects to overlay the actors, which the questionable quality couldn’t have been lost on the producers.
The Wizard of Oz chose to employ practical effects on set; effects that at once look more realistic and make the film seem more like a stage play. The overlay special effects used in The Blue Bird, while impressive to see in a film from 1940, didn’t always sell the children’s peril, as shown in this still shot, due to the low quality result. I guess the filmmakers thought that by making the scenes shift very quickly, the viewers might not notice.
Commanding Presence
One thing that’s entirely missing from this film is a commanding adult presence. None of the adult leads in this story have enough of a role to truly lead the kids properly. Like Julie Andrews’s Maria character in The Sound of Music, Maria was front and center to always properly lead the children. This is what was needed in this film, even if the character turned out to be bad at the end. The story tried to make Tylette into that character, but the role just didn’t work. In fact, the story always attempted to shift the spotlight back onto Shirley Temple. This ultimately doesn’t work. If there had been a strong, commanding, likeable adult lead character to constantly stay with and guide Mytyl and Tyltyl, this film might have had a better chance to succeed.
Additionally, since the film also tried to introduce at least some musical elements, this film would likely have been even stronger if it had fully leaned into becoming a musical during each of the past, present, future and luxury segments, to lighten the continual dark tone of the film. Having a strong adult singer to complement Shirley’s child singing would have allowed this film to possibly have a radio hit and help carry the film. Adding a strong musical score to this film might have even made The Blue Bird a stronger film than The Wizard of Oz.
What this film all boils down to is this. The Blue Bird is a simple retelling of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, a story of redemption… sans the wintry Christmas guise, all while using a somewhat macabre fairy tale story format combined with the waning star power of Shirley Temple. Though, the screenwriter also took liberties to include concepts from the likes of Cinderella and Pinocchio along with The Wizard of Oz, but only in small amounts.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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How does Twitter Philanthropy work?
How does all of this Twitter philanthropy actually work? Let’s explore the seedier side of it.
Twitter Philanthropy Exposed
I won’t name any specific accounts simply because there are too many of these accounts preying on people’s needs, but let me expose how these accounts REALLY work. There is one on top of this pile, but I will let you find it yourself. If you search Google for the key words “Twitter Philanthropy“, you will find this specific Twitter account within the first 10 search results. But, don’t go run over there just yet to follow it before reading this article.
Twitter Impersonation
Let’s start this out by explaining how these accounts operate. While some of these large Twitter philanthropy accounts purport to be operated by a single individual, they are not. Instead, they are operated by a team of individuals who have access to this single Twitter account so named for a single person. In fact, this situation is in violation of Twitter’s Terms of Service rules of impersonation.
Impersonation is a violation of the Twitter Rules. Twitter accounts that pose as another person, brand, or organization in a confusing or deceptive manner may be permanently suspended under Twitter’s impersonation policy.
By operating an account as a team, rather than by the single individual named on the account, this is definitely impersonation… regardless of whether the single individual has authorized that “team” for that purpose.
If you are interacting with a Twitter account who appears to be a single person, but unbeknownst to you there are actually multiple people who are not the named individual operating that account, this is entirely deceptive and misleading… and the very definition of impersonation. You are not dealing with the person you think you are. This is in violation of Twitter’s rules. Whether Twitter sees it that way is entirely subjective and based on Twitter’s whims, unfortunately.
Team Accounts
There are many team operated accounts on Twitter. Many celebrities operate such accounts. Since the celeb can’t be at the account 24/7 to answer responses, they hire staff to manage these tweets. Most times, these celebrities are represented fairly and appropriately by their hired staff, mostly because the staffers remain in close contact with the celebrity to make sure the tweets are appropriate to the celebrity’s brand.
With these philanthropy accounts, it seems these are much more loosely operated. The team is made up of people around Twitter who manage this account and have Twitter accounts of their own. They don’t always seem to have direct approval of the account owner. If you read through some of these philanthropic account tweets, they seem to show random and incoherent tweet-to-tweet messaging, espousing differing and hypocritical ideals. Why? Because different people are posting these tweets to that single account under the guise of impersonating a single person.
Philanthropy Exposed
While these accounts may have started out as genuine philanthropy, they have degraded into an odd scam that takes advantage of people’s needs… and mostly exist as ways of gaining followers. Worse, these accounts breed even more scam artists. Scam artists who WILL take advantage of you and scam you in the process. I’ll talk about the scammers at the end and how those work. Let’s focus on the actual purported philanthropy accounts first.
Why a team?
Good question and one that you’ll understand once I explain it. Basically, when more team staffers are attempting to locate money from other contributors, that means more money to share in the guise of philanthropy under that single Twitter account. Looking for contributions isn’t the problem here, though. It’s the scammy WAY that this team goes about looking for contribution money. If this single aspect doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth, keep following along as it gets so much worse.
The team that makes up the single top Twitter philanthropy account uses Twitter (and sites like GoFundMe) to gain money first. Instead of actually giving out money from the purported account owner, the team actually solicits money contributions from random people using dubious methods including begging, groveling and outright scamming using sites like GoFundMe. These team members are then adding their ill-gotten money into that Twitter account’s philanthropy fund for giveaways.
Here’s where the deceptive part comes in. This team of people collect these monies using their own personal accounts, accounts not associated with that Twitter philanthropy account. This makes it difficult to trace where that philanthropy money actually came from. Deceptive and a form of money laundering. Dirty. When other people contribute their money to one of these outside accounts for some possibly even fake purported need, this is a huge problem for these larger philanthropist accounts. Any money given out by a philanthropist shouldn’t have been obtained by using a scam. Yet, here we are.
Yes, this means this team is not actually giving out the philanthropy account owner’s money, as is implied by the account owner’s statements. Instead, that team is raising funds using outside means, possibly using deceptive means (claiming to be raising money on behalf of a veteran or claiming to have a high electric bill). Then, they take that money that has been raised and give it out on Twitter. Do they give out 100% of that contributed money? Do they use the money towards the claimed need? My guess to both of these questions is no. These philanthropy accounts might be keeping as much as 50% or more of the money they collect and, in turn, only give out 50% or less of those ill-gotten contributed funds.
It’s one thing to solicit money for an intended purpose and use it for that purpose. It’s entirely another to solicit money for a purpose, not use it for that purpose and give it away to someone on Twitter. Full disclosure here? Yeah, no. Not to mention the tax ramifications of such a setup.
Giving Money Away
While giving away money might seem a good thing, this action actually preys on people in need. Worse, the way these accounts are being managed is dubious at best. Yes, it gets even worse. These accounts have so many followers that they can’t possibly manage what gets written into their Tweets. What you’ll find in most of the Tweet replies consist of people claiming to also give away money. I’d bet that at least 99.9% of these people dropping in Tweet replies are scammers looking to part you from your money. It might even be some of the team running that same philanthropy account looking for money for their next “giveaway”.
This is why this situation is a double whammy for those in need. Not only is there so little money given away from these top Twitter philanthropy accounts (they can only raise a couple hundred dollars at a time usually), the Tweet replies are chock full of scam artists willing to take advantage of you.
The act of giving away this money on Twitter might seem altruistic, but I guarantee you that it is not. There is no altruism going on here. It’s all about gaining followers on Twitter and making it SEEM like the account is altruistic. It’s just a show. The reality is, it’s a business that follows the following formula:
- Team hides behind Philanthropy account (unbeknownst to Twitter followers)
- Team is tasked to raise money (using whatever dubious means necessary) from random individuals, each team member raising money separately using their own individual accounts
- Team places raised money into Twitter account fund for “giveaways”
- Team likely keeps much of that money for themselves as “payment”
- Twitter Philanthropy occasionally awards random folks for random reasons
What if I win?
If you are one of the very few who manage to get picked to receive money from a philanthropic Twitter account, don’t think it’s all roses. To receive any money, you are required to jump through legal hoops before that money is deposited into your account.
“What legal hoops?”, you ask. Good question. You are required to agree to a long, stringent set of terms and conditions before you are awarded any money. These conditions allow this Twitter philanthropy account to do whatever they want with your win while restricting you. What document would I sign? You will need to read and sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and return it to the team operating the philanthropic account before you can take possession of that $20 or whatever small amount they are willing to give you. This is the very definition of victimizing someone in need. Someone in desperate need of money would be willing to sign just about ANYTHING to get that “free” money.
Once you agree to their restrictive terms and conditions, they will send you that money via CashApp or whatever other agreed upon payment system. If you violate these terms, they will sue you.
This is not a no-strings-attached way to get money. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to find that some of these “charity acts” might actually be loans which must be repaid at some point in the future. In other words, be very, very careful if you choose to attempt to get money out of these philanthropic accounts. They may screw you on the way in and on the way out… and perhaps even later in the future.
Twitter’s Response
Unfortunately, Twitter (the company) doesn’t monitor or manage any of these philanthropy accounts. They allow them to operate with impunity. Because it seems that these philanthropic accounts “appear” (it’s all about appearances) to be doing good for the community, Twitter (the company run by Jack Dorsey) turns a blind eye and allows this bad situation to continue and fester. Few people actually get anything good out of these accounts. Even more are getting scammed from the tweet replies claiming to also give away money for following and retweeting. Don’t fall for any tweet replies. They’re almost certainly a scam.
Essentially, Twitter is turning a blind eye to these accounts which, in fact, do not perform a “good service” for Twitter. In fact, there are likely more people being scammed out of their money than ever receive money from any Twitter philanthropy. On Twitter, it’s not okay to write about certain controversial topics, but it’s perfectly acceptable to take advantage of people in need and scam them out of even more money? Thanks for looking out for us, Jack!
Scams and Philanthropy
As I stated earlier about Tweet replies in the article, let’s now understand how you can get scammed through fake philanthropy on Twitter. There’s actually more fake philanthropy going on Twitter than there is genuine philanthropy.
In fact, it’s very easy to get scammed out of money on Twitter. This specific scam isn’t what the top philanthropy accounts are using, however. Instead, they use the model described above, which is nearly as seedy. With that, let’s look at how fake philanthropy accounts on Twitter attempt to part you from your money so they can sip champagne on a beach.
This next philanthropy scam is bait and switch and it’s the primary way they scam you. How this one works is that you’ll see someone Tweet replying they’re willing to give you money and all they need is your CashApp tag sent to them over a direct message (DM). You then give it to them. Seems harmless enough, right?
The Scam Begins
Over the DM area, they’ll start by asking you a lot of seemingly personal questions. If you pass all of these probing questions, they’ll explain to you that their CashApp app is broken and that they can’t use it. They’ll tell you they need to switch to using PayPal. Here’s where the scam actually begins. Any philanthropy person who switches the payment method sets up a HUGE RED 🚩. Don’t fall for this. If the person can’t use CashApp, which enticed you in, to send you the money, walk away. CashApp can be used by anyone and it can be set up quickly. Any excuse someone gives for not using CashApp is fake.
When they switch to using PayPal, they can then claim to need you to send them money to cover fees or other such nonsense to complete the PayPal cash transfer. In that goal, they’ll issue you an invoice to pay. This is the scam. First, PayPal doesn’t need money to complete a cash transfer. Anyone making this claim is scamming you. Second, you shouldn’t need to pay any money to get money. If they can legitimately pay you, they will pay you no strings attached. Third, remember that they roped you in by offering the use of CashApp, then inexplicably switched to PayPal (bait and switch).
Anyone who can legitimately pay you money can do so using CashApp. There is no need to switch to another service. You can read more about PayPal scams here, and there are plenty more just like this one.
Screenshots
To attempt to trick you further by making themselves seem legit, they will send over a screenshot showing that they paid someone else money. A screen shot is EASILY faked, let alone found on the Internet. There’s no way to verify that any screenshot they send you is in any way linked to them (or even legitimate). In other words, screenshots are not proof of anything, let alone of being charitable.
If the person is legitimate, they will send you the money without asking you for anything in return. If they ask for anything in return, it’s a scam.
Uncomfortable Questions
Other behaviors they might exhibit is asking a series of deep probing questions you might not feel comfortable answering. Specifically, question like what bank you are using, what credit card companies you have, and so on. That’s none of their business. If they’re willing to send you money under philanthropy, they don’t need any of this information. If they begin asking probing questions like social security numbers, birth dates, actual account numbers or any other deep personal information, this has the hallmark of scam all over it. Remind them that the CashApp tag is all they need to send over money. If they can’t do this simple one thing, then they’re not legitimate.
Philanthropy should be about the good in giving, not finding out as many personal details about a person as possible. If someone begins asking very deep diving personal questions about you, your location and your finances, walk away. Explain to them that they don’t need that information to be charitable. If their charity relies on this information, they can find someone else.
Chances are, the reason they are asking these personal questions is to not only scam you, but take the rest of your accounts for a ride.
The Dark Side of Twitter Philanthropy
Yes, there is actually an extremely dark side to Twitter philanthropy which has now been exposed showing just how dark it can get. No, Twitter philanthropy is not all roses, as some adamantly claim.
For a moment, let’s suppose you do win the philanthropy lottery. Let me ask you this simple question. As a recipient of that supposed good will money, do you really want to accept that money not really knowing if someone behind that philanthropy account scammed another to give you that money?
Yeah, I wouldn’t want to either. Money can be helpful, but not at the cost of someone else being scammed out of it. Be careful and tread lightly when following any Twitter philanthropy accounts. Keep your guard up and watch out for people on Twitter claiming to be altrustic do-gooders. In these especially hard times, don’t fall for fake altruism. If you are really in need of money, head over to GoFundMe and plead your own case with your money raising efforts. The money you raise at GoFundMe will be yours without such underlying strings. If you’re putting your hand out towards someone else’s wallet, particularly on Twitter, expect the worst in people.
In fact, let me point you to this exposé article describing one particular philanthropy account on Twitter. This article is a bit disjointed of a read, but if you can follow it, you will better understand this very dark and seedy side of Twitter Philanthropy in excruciating detail.
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