Not really about Kitboga. The author talks to Jim Browning. Very interesting. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/magazine/scam-call-centers.html
[Edit: adding the text of the article which was sent to me by a friend from a call center]
Who’s Making All Those Scam Calls?
One afternoon in December 2019, Kathleen Langer, an elderly grandmother who lives by herself in Crossville, Tenn., got a phone call from a person who said he worked in the refund department of her computer manufacturer. The reason for the call, he explained, was to process a refund the company owed Langer for antivirus and anti-hacking protection that had been sold to her and was now being discontinued. Langer, who has a warm and kind voice, couldn’t remember purchasing the plan in question, but at her age, she didn’t quite trust her memory. She had no reason to doubt the caller, who spoke with an Indian accent and said his name was Roger.
He asked her to turn on her computer and led her through a series of steps so that he could access it remotely. When Langer asked why this was necessary, he said he needed to remove his company’s software from her machine. Because the protection was being terminated, he told her, leaving the software on the computer would cause it to crash.
After he gained access to her desktop, using the program TeamViewer, the caller asked Langer to log into her bank to accept the refund, $399, which he was going to transfer into her account. “Because of a technical issue with our system, we won’t be able to refund your money on your credit card or mail you a check,” he said. Langer made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to log in. She didn’t do online banking too often and couldn’t remember her user name.
Frustrated, the caller opened her bank’s internet banking registration form on her computer screen, created a new user name and password for her and asked her to fill out the required details — including her address, Social Security number and birth date. When she typed this last part in, the caller noticed she had turned 80 just weeks earlier and wished her a belated happy birthday. “Thank you!” she replied.
After submitting the form, he tried to log into Langer’s account but failed, because Langer’s bank — like most banks — activates a newly created user ID only after verifying it by speaking to the customer who has requested it. The caller asked Langer if she could go to her bank to resolve the issue. “How far is the bank from your house?” he asked.
A few blocks away, Langer answered. Because it was late afternoon, however, she wasn’t sure if it would be open when she got there. The caller noted that the bank didn’t close until 4:30, which meant she still had 45 minutes. “He was very insistent,” Langer told me recently. On her computer screen, the caller typed out what he wanted her to say at the bank. “Don’t tell them anything about the refund,” he said. She was to say that she needed to log in to check her statements and pay bills.
Langer couldn’t recall, when we spoke, if she drove to the bank or not. But later that afternoon, she rang the number the caller had given her and told him she had been unable to get to the bank in time. He advised her to go back the next morning. By now, Langer was beginning to have doubts about the caller. She told him she wouldn’t answer the phone if he contacted her again.
“Do you care about your computer?” he asked. He then uploaded a program onto her computer called Lock My PC and locked its screen with a password she couldn’t see. When she complained, he got belligerent. “You can call the police, the F.B.I., the C.I.A.,” he told her. “If you want to use your computer as you were doing, you need to go ahead as I was telling you or else you will lose your computer and your money.” When he finally hung up, after reiterating that he would call the following day, Langer felt shaken.
Minutes later, her phone rang again. This caller introduced himself as Jim Browning. “The guy who is trying to convince you to sign into your online banking is after one thing alone, and that is he wants to steal your money,” he said.
Langer was mystified that this new caller, who had what seemed to be a strong Irish accent, knew about the conversations she had just had. “Are you sure you are not with this group?” she asked.
He replied that the same scammers had targeted him, too. But when they were trying to connect remotely to his computer, as they had done with hers, he had managed to secure access to theirs. For weeks, that remote connection had allowed him to eavesdrop on and record calls like those with Langer, in addition to capturing a visual record of the activity on a scammer’s computer screen.
“I’m going to give you the password to unlock your PC because they use the same password every time,” he said. “If you type 4-5-2-1, you’ll unlock it.”
Langer keyed in the digits.
“OK! It came back on!” she said, relieved.
For most people, calls like the one Langer received are a source of annoyance or anxiety. According to the F.B.I.’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, the total losses reported to it by scam victims increased to $3.5 billion in 2019 from $1.4 billion in 2017. Last year, the app Truecaller commissioned the Harris Poll to survey roughly 2,000 American adults and found that 22 percent of the respondents said they had lost money to a phone scam in the past 12 months; Truecaller projects that as many as 56 million Americans may have been victimized this way, losing nearly $20 billion.
The person who rescued Langer that afternoon delights in getting these calls, however. “I’m fascinated by scams,” he told me. “I like to know how they work.” A software engineer based in the United Kingdom, he runs a YouTube channel under the pseudonym Jim Browning, where he regularly posts videos about his fraud-fighting efforts, identifying call centers and those involved in the crimes. He began talking to me over Skype in the fall of 2019 — and then sharing recordings like the episode with Langer — on the condition that I not reveal his identity, which he said was necessary to protect himself against the ire of the bad guys and to continue what he characterizes as his activism. Maintaining anonymity, it turns out, is key to scam-busting and scamming alike. I’ll refer to him by his middle initial, L.
The goal of L.’s efforts and those of others like him is to raise the costs and risks for perpetrators, who hide behind the veil of anonymity afforded by the internet and typically do not face punishment. The work is a hobby for L. — he has a job at an I.T. company — although it seems more like an obsession. Tracking scammers has consumed much of L.’s free time in the evenings over the past few years, he says, except for several weeks in March and April last year, when the start of the coronavirus pandemic forced strict lockdowns in many parts of the world, causing call centers from which much of this activity emanates to temporarily suspend operations. Ten months later, scamming has “gone right back to the way it was before the pandemic,” L. told me earlier this month.
Like L., I was curious to learn more about phone scammers, having received dozens of their calls over the years. They have offered me low interest rates on my credit-card balances, promised to write off my federal student loans and congratulated me on having just won a big lottery. I’ve answered fraudsters claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service who threaten to send the police to my doorstep unless I agree to pay back taxes that I didn’t know I owed — preferably in the form of iTunes gift cards or by way of a Western Union money transfer. Barring a few exceptions, the individuals calling me have had South Asian accents, leading me to suspect that they are calling from India. On several occasions, I’ve tested this theory by letting the voice on the other end go on for a few minutes before I suddenly interrupt with a torrent of Hindi curses that I retain full mastery of even after living in the United States for the past two decades. I haven’t yet failed to elicit a retaliatory offensive in Hindi. Confirming that these scammers are operating from India hasn’t given me any joy. Instead, as an Indian expatriate living in the United States, I’ve felt a certain shame.
L. started going after scammers when a relative of his lost money to a tech-support swindle, a common scheme with many variants. Often, it starts when the mark gets a call from someone offering unsolicited help in ridding a computer’s hard drive of malware or the like. Other times, computer users looking for help stumble upon a website masquerading as Microsoft or Dell or some other computer maker and end up dialing a listed number that connects them to a fraudulent call center. In other instances, victims are tricked by a pop-up warning that their computer is at risk and that they need to call the number flashing on the screen. Once someone is on the phone, the scammers talk the caller into opening up TeamViewer or another remote-access application on his or her computer, after which they get the victim to read back unique identifying information that allows them to establish control over the computer.
L. flips the script. He starts by playing an unsuspecting target. Speaking in a polite and even tone, with a cadence that conveys naïveté, he follows instructions and allows the scammer to connect to his device. This doesn’t have any of his actual data, however. It is a “virtual machine,” or a program that simulates a functioning desktop on his computer, including false files, like documents with a fake home address. It looks like a real computer that belongs to someone. “I’ve got a whole lot of identities set up,” L. told me. He uses dummy credit-card numbers that can pass a cursory validation check.
The scammer’s connection to L.’s virtual machine is effectively a two-way street that allows L. to connect to the scammer’s computer and infect it with his own software. Once he has done this, he can monitor the scammer’s activities long after the call has ended; sometimes for months, or as long as the software goes undetected. Thus, sitting in his home office, L. is able to listen in on calls between scammer and targets — because these calls are made over the internet, from the scammer’s computer — and watch as the scammer takes control of a victim’s computer. L. acknowledged to me that his access to the scammer’s computer puts him at legal risk; without the scammer’s permission, establishing that access is unlawful. But that doesn’t worry him. “If it came down to someone wanting to prosecute me for accessing a scammer’s computer illegally, I can demonstrate in every single case that the only reason I gained access is because the scammer was trying to steal money from me,” he says.
On occasion, L. succeeds in turning on the scammer’s webcam and is able to record video of the scammer and others at the call center, who can usually be heard on phones in the background. From the I.P. address of the scammer’s computer and other clues, L. frequently manages to identify the neighborhood — and, in some cases, the actual building — where the call center is.
When he encounters a scam in progress while monitoring a scammer’s computer, L. tries to both document and disrupt it, at times using his real-time access to undo the scammer’s manipulations of the victim’s computer. He tries to contact victims to warn them before they lose any money — as he did in the case of Kathleen Langer.
L.’s videos of such episodes have garnered millions of views, making him a faceless YouTube star. He says he hopes his exploits will educate the public and deter scammers. He claims he has emailed the law-enforcement authorities in India offering to share the evidence he has collected against specific call centers. Except for one instance, his inquiries have elicited only form responses, although last year, the police raided a call center that L. had identified in Gurugram, outside Delhi, after it was featured in an investigation aired by the BBC.
Now and then during our Skype conversations, L. would begin monitoring a call between a scammer and a mark and let me listen in. In some instances, I would also hear other call-center employees in the background — some of them making similar calls, others talking among themselves. The chatter evoked a busy workplace, reminding me of my late nights in a Kolkata newsroom, where I began my journalism career 25 years ago, except that these were young men and women working through the night to con people many time zones away. When scammers called me in the past, I tried cajoling them into telling me about their enterprise but never succeeded. Now, with L.’s help, I thought, I might have better luck.
I flew to India at the end of 2019 hoping to visit some of the call centers that L. had identified as homes for scams. Although he had detected many tech-support scams originating from Delhi, Hyderabad and other Indian cities, L. was convinced that Kolkata — based on the volume of activity he was noticing there — had emerged as a capital of such frauds. I knew the city well, having covered the crime beat there for an English-language daily in the mid-1990s, and so I figured that my chances of tracking down scammers would be better there than most other places in India.
I took with me, in my notebook, a couple of addresses that L. identified in the days just before my trip as possible origins for some scam calls. Because the geolocation of I.P. addresses — ascertaining the geographical coordinates associated with an internet connection — isn’t an exact science, I wasn’t certain that they would yield any scammers.
But I did have the identity of a person linked to one of these spots, a young man whose first name is Shahbaz. L. identified him by matching webcam images and several government-issued IDs found on his computer. The home address on his ID matched what L. determined, from the I.P. address, to be the site of the call center where he operated, which suggested that the call center was located where he lived or close by. That made me optimistic I would find him there. In a recording of a call Shahbaz made in November, weeks before my Kolkata visit, I heard him trying to hustle a woman in Ottawa and successfully intimidating and then fleecing an elderly man in the United States.
Image Murlidhar Sharma, a senior police official, whose team raided two call centers in Kolkata in October 2019 based on a complaint from Microsoft. Credit...Prarthna Singh for The New York Times
Although individuals like this particular scammer are the ones responsible for manipulating victims on the phone, they represent only the outward face of a multibillion-dollar criminal industry. “Call centers that run scams employ all sorts of subcontractors,” Puneet Singh, an F.B.I. agent who serves as the bureau’s legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, told me. These include sellers of phone numbers; programmers who develop malware and pop-ups; and money mules. From the constantly evolving nature of scams — lately I’ve been receiving calls from the “law-enforcement department of the Federal Reserve System” about an outstanding arrest warrant instead of the fake Social Security Administration calls I was getting a year ago — it’s evident that the industry has its share of innovators.
The reasons this activity seems to have flourished in India are much the same as those behind the growth of the country’s legitimate information-technology-services industry after the early 2000s, when many American companies like Microsoft and Dell began outsourcing customer support to workers in India. The industry expanded rapidly as more companies in developed countries saw the same economic advantage in relocating various services there that could be performed remotely — from airline ticketing to banking. India’s large population of English speakers kept labor costs down.
Because the overwhelming majority of call centers in the country are engaged in legitimate business, the ones that aren’t can hide in plain sight. Amid the mazes of gleaming steel-and-glass high-rises in a place like Cyber City, near Delhi, or Sector V in Salt Lake, near Kolkata — two of the numerous commercial districts that have sprung up across the country to nurture I.T. businesses — it’s impossible to distinguish a call center that handles inquiries from air travelers in the United States from one that targets hundreds of Americans every day with fraudulent offers to lower their credit-card interest rates.
The police do periodically crack down on operations that appear to be illegitimate. Shortly after I got to Kolkata, the police raided five call centers in Salt Lake that officials said had been running a tech-support scam. The employees of the call centers were accused of impersonating Microsoft representatives. The police raid followed a complaint by the tech company, which in recent years has increasingly pressed Indian law enforcement to act against scammers abusing the company’s name. I learned from Murlidhar Sharma, a senior official in the city police, that his team had raided two other call centers in Kolkata a couple of months earlier in response to a similar complaint.
“Microsoft had done extensive work before coming to us,” Sharma, who is in his 40s and speaks with quiet authority, told me. The company lent its help to the police in connection with the raids, which Sharma seemed particularly grateful for. Often the police lack the resources to pursue these sorts of cases. “These people are very smart, and they know how to hide data,” Sharma said, referring to the scammers. It was in large part because of Microsoft’s help, he said, that investigators had been able to file charges in court within a month after the raid. A trial has begun but could drag on for years. The call centers have been shut down, at least for now.
Sharma pointed out that pre-emptive raids do not yield the desired results. “Our problem,” he said, “is that we can act only when there’s a complaint of cheating.” In 2017, he and his colleagues raided a call center on their own initiative, without a complaint, and arrested several people. “But then the court was like, ‘Why did the police raid these places?’” Sharma said. The judge wanted statements from victims, which the police were unable to get, despite contacting authorities in the U.S. and U.K. The case fell apart.
The slim chances of detection, and the even slimmer chances of facing prosecution, have seemed to make scamming a career option, especially among those who lack the qualifications to find legitimate employment in India’s slowing economy. Indian educational institutions churn out more than 1.5 million engineers every year, but according to one survey fewer than 20 percent are equipped to land positions related to their training, leaving a vast pool of college graduates — not to mention an even larger population of less-educated young men and women — struggling to earn a living. That would partly explain why call centers run by small groups are popping up in residential neighborhoods. “The worst thing about this crime is that it’s becoming trendy,” Aparajita Rai, a deputy commissioner in the Kolkata Police, told me. “More and more youngsters are investing the crucial years of their adolescence into this. Everybody wants fast money.”
In Kolkata, I met Aniruddha Nath, then 23, who said he spent a week working at a call center that he quickly realized was engaged in fraud. Nath has a pensive air and a shy smile that intermittently cut through his solemnness as he spoke. While finishing his undergraduate degree in engineering from a local college — he took a loan to study there — Nath got a job offer after a campus interview. The company insisted he join immediately, for a monthly salary of about $200. Nath asked me not to name the company out of fear that he would be exposing himself legally.
His jubilation turned into skepticism on his very first day, when he and other fresh recruits were told to simply memorize the contents of the company’s website, which claimed his employer was based in Australia. On a whim, he Googled the address of the Australian office listed on the site and discovered that only a parking garage was located there. He said he learned a couple of days later what he was to do: Call Indian students in Australia whose visas were about to expire and offer to place them in a job in Australia if they paid $800 to take a training course.
Image The Garden Reach area in Kolkata. Credit...Prarthna Singh for The New York Times
On his seventh day at work, Nath said, he received evidence from a student in Australia that the company’s promise to help with job placements was simply a ruse to steal $800; the training the company offered was apparently little more than a farce. “She sent me screenshots of complaints from individuals who had been defrauded,” Nath said. He stopped going in to work the next day. His parents were unhappy, and, he said, told him: “What does it matter to you what the company is doing? You’ll be getting your salary.” Nath answered, “If there’s a raid there, I’ll be charged with fraud.”
Late in the afternoon the day after I met with Nath, I drove to Garden Reach, a predominantly Muslim and largely poor section in southwest Kolkata on the banks of the Hooghly River. Home to a 137-year-old shipyard, the area includes some of the city’s noted crime hot spots and has a reputation for crime and violence. Based on my experience reporting from Garden Reach in the 1990s, I thought it was probably not wise to venture there alone late at night, even though that was most likely the best time to find scammers at work. I was looking for Shahbaz.
Parking my car in the vicinity of the address L. had given me, I walked through a narrow lane where children were playing cricket, past a pharmacy and a tiny store selling cookies and snacks. The apartment I sought was on the second floor of a building at the end of an alley, a few hundred yards from a mosque. It was locked, but a woman next door said that the building belonged to Shahbaz’s extended family and that he lived in one of the apartments with his parents.
Then I saw an elderly couple seated on the steps in the front — his parents, it turned out. The father summoned Shahbaz’s brother, a lanky, longhaired man who appeared to be in his 20s. He said Shahbaz had woken up a short while earlier and gone out on his motorbike. “I don’t know when he goes to sleep and when he wakes up,” his father said, with what sounded like exasperation.
They gave me Shahbaz’s mobile number, but when I called, I got no answer. It was getting awkward for me to wait around indefinitely without disclosing why I was there, so eventually I pulled the brother aside to talk in private. We sat down on a bench at a roadside tea stall, a quarter mile from the mosque. Between sips of tea, I told him that I was a journalist in the United States and wanted to meet his brother because I had learned he was a scammer. I hoped he would pass on my message.
I got a call from Shahbaz a few hours later. He denied that he’d ever worked at a call center. “There are a lot of young guys who are involved in the scamming business, but I’m not one of them,” he said. I persisted, but he kept brushing me off until I asked him to confirm that his birthday was a few days later in December. “Look, you are telling me my exact birth date — that makes me nervous,” he said. He wanted to know what I knew about him and how I knew it. I said I would tell him if he met with me. I volunteered to protect his identity if he answered my questions truthfully.
Two days later, we met for lunch at the Taj Bengal, one of Kolkata’s five-star hotels. I’d chosen that as the venue out of concern for my safety. When he showed up in the hotel lobby, however, I felt a little silly. Physically, Shahbaz is hardly intimidating. He is short and skinny, with a face that would seem babyish but for his thin mustache and beard, which are still a work in progress. He was in his late 20s but had brought along an older cousin for his own safety.
We found a secluded table in the hotel’s Chinese restaurant and sat down. I took out my phone and played a video that L. had posted on YouTube. (Only those that L. shared the link with knew of its existence.) The video was a recording of the call from November 2019 in which Shahbaz was trying to defraud the woman in Ottawa with a trick that scammers often use to arm-twist their victims: editing the HTML coding of the victim’s bank-account webpage to alter the balances. Because the woman was pushing back, Shahbaz zeroed out her balance to make it look as if he had the ability to drain her account. On the call, he can be heard threatening her: “You don’t want to lose all your money, right?”
I watched him shift uncomfortably in his chair. “Whose voice is that?” I asked. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”
Image Aniruddha Nath spent a week on the job at a call center when he realized that it was engaged in fraud. A lack of other opportunities can make such call centers an appealing enterprise. Credit...Prarthna Singh for The New York Times
He nodded in shocked silence. I took my phone back and suggested he drink some water. He took a few sips, gathering himself before I began questioning him. When he mumbled in response to my first couple of questions, I jokingly asked him to summon the bold, confident voice we’d just heard in the recording of his call. He gave me a wan smile.
Pointing to my voice recorder on the table, he asked, meekly, “Is this necessary?”
When his scam calls were already on YouTube, I countered, how did it matter that I was recording our conversation?
“It just makes me nervous,” he said.
Shahbaz told me his parents sent him to one of the city’s better schools but that he flunked out in eighth grade and had to move to a neighborhood school. When his father lost his job, Shahbaz found work riding around town on his bicycle to deliver medicines and other pharmaceutical supplies from a wholesaler to retail pharmacies; he earned $25 a month. Sometime around 2011 or 2012, he told me, a friend took him to a call center in Salt Lake, where he got his first job in scamming, though he didn’t realize right away that that was what he was doing. At first, he said, the job seemed like legitimate telemarketing for tech-support services. By 2015, working in his third job, at a call center in the heart of Kolkata, Shahbaz had learned how to coax victims into filling out a Western Union transfer in order to process a refund for terminated tech-support services. “They would expect a refund but instead get charged,” he told me.
Shahbaz earned a modest salary in these first few jobs — he told me that that first call center, in Salt Lake, paid him less than $100 a month. His lengthy commute every night was exhausting. In 2016 or 2017, he began working with a group of scammers in Garden Reach, earning a share of the profits. There were at least five others who worked with him, he said. All of them were local residents, some more experienced than others. One associate at the call center was his wife’s brother.
He was cagey about naming the others or describing the organization’s structure, but it was evident that he wasn’t in charge. He told me that a supervisor had taught him how to intimidate victims by editing their bank balances. “We started doing that about a year ago,” he said, adding that their group was somewhat behind the curve when it came to adopting the latest tricks of the trade. When those on the cutting edge of the business develop something new, he said, the idea gradually spreads to other scammers.
It was hard to ascertain how much this group was stealing from victims every day, but Shahbaz confessed that he was able to defraud one or two people every night, extracting anywhere from $200 to $300 per victim. He was paid about a quarter of the stolen amount. He told me that he and his associates would ask victims to drive to a store and buy gift cards, while staying on the phone for the entire duration. Sometimes, he said, all that effort was ruined if suspicious store clerks declined to sell gift cards to the victim. “It’s becoming tough these days, because customers aren’t as gullible as they used to be,” he told me. I could see from his point of view why scammers, like practitioners in any field, felt pressure to come up with new methods and scams in response to increasing public awareness of their schemes.
The more we spoke, the more I recognized that Shahbaz was a small figure in this gigantic criminal ecosystem that constitutes the phone-scam industry, the equivalent of a pickpocket on a Kolkata bus who is unlucky enough to get caught in the act. He had never thought of running his own call center, he told me, because that required knowing people who could provide leads — names and numbers of targets to call — as well as others who could help move stolen money through illicit channels. “I don’t have such contacts,” he said. There were many in Kolkata, according to Shahbaz, who ran operations significantly bigger than the one he was a part of. “I know of people who had nothing earlier but are now very rich,” he said. Shahbaz implied that his own ill-gotten earnings were paltry in comparison. He hadn’t bought a car or a house, but he admitted that he had been able to afford to go on overseas vacations with friends. On Facebook, I saw a photo of him posing in front of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and other pictures from a visit to Thailand.
I asked if he ever felt guilty. He didn’t answer directly but said there had been times when he had let victims go after learning that they were struggling to pay bills or needed the money for medical expenses. But for most victims, his rationale seemed to be that they could afford to part with the few hundred dollars he was stealing.
Shahbaz was a reluctant interviewee, giving me brief, guarded answers that were less than candid or directly contradicted evidence that L. had collected. He was vague about the highest amount he’d ever stolen from a victim, at one point saying $800, then later admitting to $1,500. I found it hard to trust either figure, because on one of his November calls I heard him bullying someone to pay him $5,000. He told me that my visit to his house had left him shaken, causing him to realize how wrong he was to be defrauding people. His parents and his wife were worried about him. And so, he had quit scamming, he told me.
“What did you do last night?” I asked him.
“I went to sleep,” he said.
I knew he was not telling the truth about his claim to have stopped scamming, however. Two days earlier, hours after our phone conversation following my visit to Garden Reach, Shahbaz had been at it again. It was on that night, in fact, that he tried to swindle Kathleen Langer in Crossville, Tenn. Before I came to see him for lunch, I had already heard a recording of that call, which L. shared with me.
When I mentioned that to him, he looked at me pleadingly, in visible agony, as if I’d poked at a wound. It was clear to me that he was only going to admit to wrongdoing that I already had evidence of.
L. told me that the remote access he had to Shahbaz’s computer went cold after I met with him on Dec. 14, 2019. But it buzzed back to life about 10 weeks later. The I.P. address was the same as before, which suggested that it was operating in the same location I visited. L. set up a livestream on YouTube so I could see what L. was observing. The microphone was on, and L. and I could clearly hear people making scam calls in the background. The computer itself didn’t seem to be engaged in anything nefarious while we were eavesdropping on it, but L. could see that Shahbaz’s phone was connected to it. It appeared that Shahbaz had turned the computer on to download music. I couldn’t say for certain, but it seemed that he was taking a moment to chill in the middle of another long night at work.

Fascinating piece published today by NY Times Magazine on scammer call centers in India. The reporter even tracks one scammer down, travels to India and confronts him. Link and article below:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/magazine/scam-call-centers.html

NY Times: Who’s Making All Those Scam Calls?

Every year, tens of millions of Americans collectively lose billions of dollars to scam callers. Where does the other end of the line lead?
One afternoon in December 2019, Kathleen Langer, an elderly grandmother who lives by herself in Crossville, Tenn., got a phone call from a person who said he worked in the refund department of her computer manufacturer. The reason for the call, he explained, was to process a refund the company owed Langer for antivirus and anti-hacking protection that had been sold to her and was now being discontinued. Langer, who has a warm and kind voice, couldn’t remember purchasing the plan in question, but at her age, she didn’t quite trust her memory. She had no reason to doubt the caller, who spoke with an Indian accent and said his name was Roger.
He asked her to turn on her computer and led her through a series of steps so that he could access it remotely. When Langer asked why this was necessary, he said he needed to remove his company’s software from her machine. Because the protection was being terminated, he told her, leaving the software on the computer would cause it to crash.
After he gained access to her desktop, using the program TeamViewer, the caller asked Langer to log into her bank to accept the refund, $399, which he was going to transfer into her account. “Because of a technical issue with our system, we won’t be able to refund your money on your credit card or mail you a check,” he said. Langer made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to log in. She didn’t do online banking too often and couldn’t remember her user name.
Frustrated, the caller opened her bank’s internet banking registration form on her computer screen, created a new user name and password for her and asked her to fill out the required details — including her address, Social Security number and birth date. When she typed this last part in, the caller noticed she had turned 80 just weeks earlier and wished her a belated happy birthday. “Thank you!” she replied.
After submitting the form, he tried to log into Langer’s account but failed, because Langer’s bank — like most banks — activates a newly created user ID only after verifying it by speaking to the customer who has requested it. The caller asked Langer if she could go to her bank to resolve the issue. “How far is the bank from your house?” he asked.
A few blocks away, Langer answered. Because it was late afternoon, however, she wasn’t sure if it would be open when she got there. The caller noted that the bank didn’t close until 4:30, which meant she still had 45 minutes. “He was very insistent,” Langer told me recently. On her computer screen, the caller typed out what he wanted her to say at the bank. “Don’t tell them anything about the refund,” he said. She was to say that she needed to log in to check her statements and pay bills.
Langer couldn’t recall, when we spoke, if she drove to the bank or not. But later that afternoon, she rang the number the caller had given her and told him she had been unable to get to the bank in time. He advised her to go back the next morning. By now, Langer was beginning to have doubts about the caller. She told him she wouldn’t answer the phone if he contacted her again.
“Do you care about your computer?” he asked. He then uploaded a program onto her computer called Lock My PC and locked its screen with a password she couldn’t see. When she complained, he got belligerent. “You can call the police, the F.B.I., the C.I.A.,” he told her. “If you want to use your computer as you were doing, you need to go ahead as I was telling you or else you will lose your computer and your money.” When he finally hung up, after reiterating that he would call the following day, Langer felt shaken.
Minutes later, her phone rang again. This caller introduced himself as Jim Browning. “The guy who is trying to convince you to sign into your online banking is after one thing alone, and that is he wants to steal your money,” he said.
Langer was mystified that this new caller, who had what seemed to be a strong Irish accent, knew about the conversations she had just had. “Are you sure you are not with this group?” she asked.
He replied that the same scammers had targeted him, too. But when they were trying to connect remotely to his computer, as they had done with hers, he had managed to secure access to theirs. For weeks, that remote connection had allowed him to eavesdrop on and record calls like those with Langer, in addition to capturing a visual record of the activity on a scammer’s computer screen.
“I’m going to give you the password to unlock your PC because they use the same password every time,” he said. “If you type 4-5-2-1, you’ll unlock it.”
Langer keyed in the digits.
“OK! It came back on!” she said, relieved.
For most people, calls like the one Langer received are a source of annoyance or anxiety. According to the F.B.I.’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, the total losses reported to it by scam victims increased to $3.5 billion in 2019 from $1.4 billion in 2017. Last year, the app Truecaller commissioned the Harris Poll to survey roughly 2,000 American adults and found that 22 percent of the respondents said they had lost money to a phone scam in the past 12 months; Truecaller projects that as many as 56 million Americans may have been victimized this way, losing nearly $20 billion.
The person who rescued Langer that afternoon delights in getting these calls, however. “I’m fascinated by scams,” he told me. “I like to know how they work.” A software engineer based in the United Kingdom, he runs a YouTube channel under the pseudonym Jim Browning, where he regularly posts videos about his fraud-fighting efforts, identifying call centers and those involved in the crimes. He began talking to me over Skype in the fall of 2019 — and then sharing recordings like the episode with Langer — on the condition that I not reveal his identity, which he said was necessary to protect himself against the ire of the bad guys and to continue what he characterizes as his activism. Maintaining anonymity, it turns out, is key to scam-busting and scamming alike. I’ll refer to him by his middle initial, L.
The goal of L.’s efforts and those of others like him is to raise the costs and risks for perpetrators, who hide behind the veil of anonymity afforded by the internet and typically do not face punishment. The work is a hobby for L. — he has a job at an I.T. company — although it seems more like an obsession. Tracking scammers has consumed much of L.’s free time in the evenings over the past few years, he says, except for several weeks in March and April last year, when the start of the coronavirus pandemic forced strict lockdowns in many parts of the world, causing call centers from which much of this activity emanates to temporarily suspend operations. Ten months later, scamming has “gone right back to the way it was before the pandemic,” L. told me earlier this month.
Like L., I was curious to learn more about phone scammers, having received dozens of their calls over the years. They have offered me low interest rates on my credit-card balances, promised to write off my federal student loans and congratulated me on having just won a big lottery. I’ve answered fraudsters claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service who threaten to send the police to my doorstep unless I agree to pay back taxes that I didn’t know I owed — preferably in the form of iTunes gift cards or by way of a Western Union money transfer. Barring a few exceptions, the individuals calling me have had South Asian accents, leading me to suspect that they are calling from India. On several occasions, I’ve tested this theory by letting the voice on the other end go on for a few minutes before I suddenly interrupt with a torrent of Hindi curses that I retain full mastery of even after living in the United States for the past two decades. I haven’t yet failed to elicit a retaliatory offensive in Hindi. Confirming that these scammers are operating from India hasn’t given me any joy. Instead, as an Indian expatriate living in the United States, I’ve felt a certain shame.
L. started going after scammers when a relative of his lost money to a tech-support swindle, a common scheme with many variants. Often, it starts when the mark gets a call from someone offering unsolicited help in ridding a computer’s hard drive of malware or the like. Other times, computer users looking for help stumble upon a website masquerading as Microsoft or Dell or some other computer maker and end up dialing a listed number that connects them to a fraudulent call center. In other instances, victims are tricked by a pop-up warning that their computer is at risk and that they need to call the number flashing on the screen. Once someone is on the phone, the scammers talk the caller into opening up TeamViewer or another remote-access application on his or her computer, after which they get the victim to read back unique identifying information that allows them to establish control over the computer.
L. flips the script. He starts by playing an unsuspecting target. Speaking in a polite and even tone, with a cadence that conveys naïveté, he follows instructions and allows the scammer to connect to his device. This doesn’t have any of his actual data, however. It is a “virtual machine,” or a program that simulates a functioning desktop on his computer, including false files, like documents with a fake home address. It looks like a real computer that belongs to someone. “I’ve got a whole lot of identities set up,” L. told me. He uses dummy credit-card numbers that can pass a cursory validation check.
The scammer’s connection to L.’s virtual machine is effectively a two-way street that allows L. to connect to the scammer’s computer and infect it with his own software. Once he has done this, he can monitor the scammer’s activities long after the call has ended; sometimes for months, or as long as the software goes undetected. Thus, sitting in his home office, L. is able to listen in on calls between scammer and targets — because these calls are made over the internet, from the scammer’s computer — and watch as the scammer takes control of a victim’s computer. L. acknowledged to me that his access to the scammer’s computer puts him at legal risk; without the scammer’s permission, establishing that access is unlawful. But that doesn’t worry him. “If it came down to someone wanting to prosecute me for accessing a scammer’s computer illegally, I can demonstrate in every single case that the only reason I gained access is because the scammer was trying to steal money from me,” he says.
On occasion, L. succeeds in turning on the scammer’s webcam and is able to record video of the scammer and others at the call center, who can usually be heard on phones in the background. From the I.P. address of the scammer’s computer and other clues, L. frequently manages to identify the neighborhood — and, in some cases, the actual building — where the call center is.
When he encounters a scam in progress while monitoring a scammer’s computer, L. tries to both document and disrupt it, at times using his real-time access to undo the scammer’s manipulations of the victim’s computer. He tries to contact victims to warn them before they lose any money — as he did in the case of Kathleen Langer.
L.’s videos of such episodes have garnered millions of views, making him a faceless YouTube star. He says he hopes his exploits will educate the public and deter scammers. He claims he has emailed the law-enforcement authorities in India offering to share the evidence he has collected against specific call centers. Except for one instance, his inquiries have elicited only form responses, although last year, the police raided a call center that L. had identified in Gurugram, outside Delhi, after it was featured in an investigation aired by the BBC.
Now and then during our Skype conversations, L. would begin monitoring a call between a scammer and a mark and let me listen in. In some instances, I would also hear other call-center employees in the background — some of them making similar calls, others talking among themselves. The chatter evoked a busy workplace, reminding me of my late nights in a Kolkata newsroom, where I began my journalism career 25 years ago, except that these were young men and women working through the night to con people many time zones away. When scammers called me in the past, I tried cajoling them into telling me about their enterprise but never succeeded. Now, with L.’s help, I thought, I might have better luck.
I flew to India at the end of 2019 hoping to visit some of the call centers that L. had identified as homes for scams. Although he had detected many tech-support scams originating from Delhi, Hyderabad and other Indian cities, L. was convinced that Kolkata — based on the volume of activity he was noticing there — had emerged as a capital of such frauds. I knew the city well, having covered the crime beat there for an English-language daily in the mid-1990s, and so I figured that my chances of tracking down scammers would be better there than most other places in India.
I took with me, in my notebook, a couple of addresses that L. identified in the days just before my trip as possible origins for some scam calls. Because the geolocation of I.P. addresses — ascertaining the geographical coordinates associated with an internet connection — isn’t an exact science, I wasn’t certain that they would yield any scammers.
But I did have the identity of a person linked to one of these spots, a young man whose first name is Shahbaz. L. identified him by matching webcam images and several government-issued IDs found on his computer. The home address on his ID matched what L. determined, from the I.P. address, to be the site of the call center where he operated, which suggested that the call center was located where he lived or close by. That made me optimistic I would find him there. In a recording of a call Shahbaz made in November, weeks before my Kolkata visit, I heard him trying to hustle a woman in Ottawa and successfully intimidating and then fleecing an elderly man in the United States.
Although individuals like this particular scammer are the ones responsible for manipulating victims on the phone, they represent only the outward face of a multibillion-dollar criminal industry. “Call centers that run scams employ all sorts of subcontractors,” Puneet Singh, an F.B.I. agent who serves as the bureau’s legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, told me. These include sellers of phone numbers; programmers who develop malware and pop-ups; and money mules. From the constantly evolving nature of scams — lately I’ve been receiving calls from the “law-enforcement department of the Federal Reserve System” about an outstanding arrest warrant instead of the fake Social Security Administration calls I was getting a year ago — it’s evident that the industry has its share of innovators.
The reasons this activity seems to have flourished in India are much the same as those behind the growth of the country’s legitimate information-technology-services industry after the early 2000s, when many American companies like Microsoft and Dell began outsourcing customer support to workers in India. The industry expanded rapidly as more companies in developed countries saw the same economic advantage in relocating various services there that could be performed remotely — from airline ticketing to banking. India’s large population of English speakers kept labor costs down.
Because the overwhelming majority of call centers in the country are engaged in legitimate business, the ones that aren’t can hide in plain sight. Amid the mazes of gleaming steel-and-glass high-rises in a place like Cyber City, near Delhi, or Sector V in Salt Lake, near Kolkata — two of the numerous commercial districts that have sprung up across the country to nurture I.T. businesses — it’s impossible to distinguish a call center that handles inquiries from air travelers in the United States from one that targets hundreds of Americans every day with fraudulent offers to lower their credit-card interest rates.
The police do periodically crack down on operations that appear to be illegitimate. Shortly after I got to Kolkata, the police raided five call centers in Salt Lake that officials said had been running a tech-support scam. The employees of the call centers were accused of impersonating Microsoft representatives. The police raid followed a complaint by the tech company, which in recent years has increasingly pressed Indian law enforcement to act against scammers abusing the company’s name. I learned from Murlidhar Sharma, a senior official in the city police, that his team had raided two other call centers in Kolkata a couple of months earlier in response to a similar complaint.
“Microsoft had done extensive work before coming to us,” Sharma, who is in his 40s and speaks with quiet authority, told me. The company lent its help to the police in connection with the raids, which Sharma seemed particularly grateful for. Often the police lack the resources to pursue these sorts of cases. “These people are very smart, and they know how to hide data,” Sharma said, referring to the scammers. It was in large part because of Microsoft’s help, he said, that investigators had been able to file charges in court within a month after the raid. A trial has begun but could drag on for years. The call centers have been shut down, at least for now.
Sharma pointed out that pre-emptive raids do not yield the desired results. “Our problem,” he said, “is that we can act only when there’s a complaint of cheating.” In 2017, he and his colleagues raided a call center on their own initiative, without a complaint, and arrested several people. “But then the court was like, ‘Why did the police raid these places?’” Sharma said. The judge wanted statements from victims, which the police were unable to get, despite contacting authorities in the U.S. and U.K. The case fell apart.
The slim chances of detection, and the even slimmer chances of facing prosecution, have seemed to make scamming a career option, especially among those who lack the qualifications to find legitimate employment in India’s slowing economy. Indian educational institutions churn out more than 1.5 million engineers every year, but according to one survey fewer than 20 percent are equipped to land positions related to their training, leaving a vast pool of college graduates — not to mention an even larger population of less-educated young men and women — struggling to earn a living. That would partly explain why call centers run by small groups are popping up in residential neighborhoods. “The worst thing about this crime is that it’s becoming trendy,” Aparajita Rai, a deputy commissioner in the Kolkata Police, told me. “More and more youngsters are investing the crucial years of their adolescence into this. Everybody wants fast money.”
In Kolkata, I met Aniruddha Nath, then 23, who said he spent a week working at a call center that he quickly realized was engaged in fraud. Nath has a pensive air and a shy smile that intermittently cut through his solemnness as he spoke. While finishing his undergraduate degree in engineering from a local college — he took a loan to study there — Nath got a job offer after a campus interview. The company insisted he join immediately, for a monthly salary of about $200. Nath asked me not to name the company out of fear that he would be exposing himself legally.
His jubilation turned into skepticism on his very first day, when he and other fresh recruits were told to simply memorize the contents of the company’s website, which claimed his employer was based in Australia. On a whim, he Googled the address of the Australian office listed on the site and discovered that only a parking garage was located there. He said he learned a couple of days later what he was to do: Call Indian students in Australia whose visas were about to expire and offer to place them in a job in Australia if they paid $800 to take a training course.
On his seventh day at work, Nath said, he received evidence from a student in Australia that the company’s promise to help with job placements was simply a ruse to steal $800; the training the company offered was apparently little more than a farce. “She sent me screenshots of complaints from individuals who had been defrauded,” Nath said. He stopped going in to work the next day. His parents were unhappy, and, he said, told him: “What does it matter to you what the company is doing? You’ll be getting your salary.” Nath answered, “If there’s a raid there, I’ll be charged with fraud.”
Late in the afternoon the day after I met with Nath, I drove to Garden Reach, a predominantly Muslim and largely poor section in southwest Kolkata on the banks of the Hooghly River. Home to a 137-year-old shipyard, the area includes some of the city’s noted crime hot spots and has a reputation for crime and violence. Based on my experience reporting from Garden Reach in the 1990s, I thought it was probably not wise to venture there alone late at night, even though that was most likely the best time to find scammers at work. I was looking for Shahbaz.
Parking my car in the vicinity of the address L. had given me, I walked through a narrow lane where children were playing cricket, past a pharmacy and a tiny store selling cookies and snacks. The apartment I sought was on the second floor of a building at the end of an alley, a few hundred yards from a mosque. It was locked, but a woman next door said that the building belonged to Shahbaz’s extended family and that he lived in one of the apartments with his parents.
Then I saw an elderly couple seated on the steps in the front — his parents, it turned out. The father summoned Shahbaz’s brother, a lanky, longhaired man who appeared to be in his 20s. He said Shahbaz had woken up a short while earlier and gone out on his motorbike. “I don’t know when he goes to sleep and when he wakes up,” his father said, with what sounded like exasperation.
They gave me Shahbaz’s mobile number, but when I called, I got no answer. It was getting awkward for me to wait around indefinitely without disclosing why I was there, so eventually I pulled the brother aside to talk in private. We sat down on a bench at a roadside tea stall, a quarter mile from the mosque. Between sips of tea, I told him that I was a journalist in the United States and wanted to meet his brother because I had learned he was a scammer. I hoped he would pass on my message.
I got a call from Shahbaz a few hours later. He denied that he’d ever worked at a call center. “There are a lot of young guys who are involved in the scamming business, but I’m not one of them,” he said. I persisted, but he kept brushing me off until I asked him to confirm that his birthday was a few days later in December. “Look, you are telling me my exact birth date — that makes me nervous,” he said. He wanted to know what I knew about him and how I knew it. I said I would tell him if he met with me. I volunteered to protect his identity if he answered my questions truthfully.
Two days later, we met for lunch at the Taj Bengal, one of Kolkata’s five-star hotels. I’d chosen that as the venue out of concern for my safety. When he showed up in the hotel lobby, however, I felt a little silly. Physically, Shahbaz is hardly intimidating. He is short and skinny, with a face that would seem babyish but for his thin mustache and beard, which are still a work in progress. He was in his late 20s but had brought along an older cousin for his own safety.
We found a secluded table in the hotel’s Chinese restaurant and sat down. I took out my phone and played a video that L. had posted on YouTube. (Only those that L. shared the link with knew of its existence.) The video was a recording of the call from November 2019 in which Shahbaz was trying to defraud the woman in Ottawa with a trick that scammers often use to arm-twist their victims: editing the HTML coding of the victim’s bank-account webpage to alter the balances. Because the woman was pushing back, Shahbaz zeroed out her balance to make it look as if he had the ability to drain her account. On the call, he can be heard threatening her: “You don’t want to lose all your money, right?”
I watched him shift uncomfortably in his chair. “Whose voice is that?” I asked. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”
He nodded in shocked silence. I took my phone back and suggested he drink some water. He took a few sips, gathering himself before I began questioning him. When he mumbled in response to my first couple of questions, I jokingly asked him to summon the bold, confident voice we’d just heard in the recording of his call. He gave me a wan smile.
Pointing to my voice recorder on the table, he asked, meekly, “Is this necessary?”
When his scam calls were already on YouTube, I countered, how did it matter that I was recording our conversation?
“It just makes me nervous,” he said.
Shahbaz told me his parents sent him to one of the city’s better schools but that he flunked out in eighth grade and had to move to a neighborhood school. When his father lost his job, Shahbaz found work riding around town on his bicycle to deliver medicines and other pharmaceutical supplies from a wholesaler to retail pharmacies; he earned $25 a month. Sometime around 2011 or 2012, he told me, a friend took him to a call center in Salt Lake, where he got his first job in scamming, though he didn’t realize right away that that was what he was doing. At first, he said, the job seemed like legitimate telemarketing for tech-support services. By 2015, working in his third job, at a call center in the heart of Kolkata, Shahbaz had learned how to coax victims into filling out a Western Union transfer in order to process a refund for terminated tech-support services. “They would expect a refund but instead get charged,” he told me.
Shahbaz earned a modest salary in these first few jobs — he told me that that first call center, in Salt Lake, paid him less than $100 a month. His lengthy commute every night was exhausting. In 2016 or 2017, he began working with a group of scammers in Garden Reach, earning a share of the profits. There were at least five others who worked with him, he said. All of them were local residents, some more experienced than others. One associate at the call center was his wife’s brother.
He was cagey about naming the others or describing the organization’s structure, but it was evident that he wasn’t in charge. He told me that a supervisor had taught him how to intimidate victims by editing their bank balances. “We started doing that about a year ago,” he said, adding that their group was somewhat behind the curve when it came to adopting the latest tricks of the trade. When those on the cutting edge of the business develop something new, he said, the idea gradually spreads to other scammers.
It was hard to ascertain how much this group was stealing from victims every day, but Shahbaz confessed that he was able to defraud one or two people every night, extracting anywhere from $200 to $300 per victim. He was paid about a quarter of the stolen amount. He told me that he and his associates would ask victims to drive to a store and buy gift cards, while staying on the phone for the entire duration. Sometimes, he said, all that effort was ruined if suspicious store clerks declined to sell gift cards to the victim. “It’s becoming tough these days, because customers aren’t as gullible as they used to be,” he told me. I could see from his point of view why scammers, like practitioners in any field, felt pressure to come up with new methods and scams in response to increasing public awareness of their schemes.
The more we spoke, the more I recognized that Shahbaz was a small figure in this gigantic criminal ecosystem that constitutes the phone-scam industry, the equivalent of a pickpocket on a Kolkata bus who is unlucky enough to get caught in the act. He had never thought of running his own call center, he told me, because that required knowing people who could provide leads — names and numbers of targets to call — as well as others who could help move stolen money through illicit channels. “I don’t have such contacts,” he said. There were many in Kolkata, according to Shahbaz, who ran operations significantly bigger than the one he was a part of. “I know of people who had nothing earlier but are now very rich,” he said. Shahbaz implied that his own ill-gotten earnings were paltry in comparison. He hadn’t bought a car or a house, but he admitted that he had been able to afford to go on overseas vacations with friends. On Facebook, I saw a photo of him posing in front of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and other pictures from a visit to Thailand.
I asked if he ever felt guilty. He didn’t answer directly but said there had been times when he had let victims go after learning that they were struggling to pay bills or needed the money for medical expenses. But for most victims, his rationale seemed to be that they could afford to part with the few hundred dollars he was stealing.
Shahbaz was a reluctant interviewee, giving me brief, guarded answers that were less than candid or directly contradicted evidence that L. had collected. He was vague about the highest amount he’d ever stolen from a victim, at one point saying $800, then later admitting to $1,500. I found it hard to trust either figure, because on one of his November calls I heard him bullying someone to pay him $5,000. He told me that my visit to his house had left him shaken, causing him to realize how wrong he was to be defrauding people. His parents and his wife were worried about him. And so, he had quit scamming, he told me.
“What did you do last night?” I asked him.
“I went to sleep,” he said.
I knew he was not telling the truth about his claim to have stopped scamming, however. Two days earlier, hours after our phone conversation following my visit to Garden Reach, Shahbaz had been at it again. It was on that night, in fact, that he tried to swindle Kathleen Langer in Crossville, Tenn. Before I came to see him for lunch, I had already heard a recording of that call, which L. shared with me.
When I mentioned that to him, he looked at me pleadingly, in visible agony, as if I’d poked at a wound. It was clear to me that he was only going to admit to wrongdoing that I already had evidence of.
L. told me that the remote access he had to Shahbaz’s computer went cold after I met with him on Dec. 14, 2019. But it buzzed back to life about 10 weeks later. The I.P. address was the same as before, which suggested that it was operating in the same location I visited. L. set up a livestream on YouTube so I could see what L. was observing. The microphone was on, and L. and I could clearly hear people making scam calls in the background. The computer itself didn’t seem to be engaged in anything nefarious while we were eavesdropping on it, but L. could see that Shahbaz’s phone was connected to it. It appeared that Shahbaz had turned the computer on to download music. I couldn’t say for certain, but it seemed that he was taking a moment to chill in the middle of another long night at work.

I was scrolling through Instagram and I stumbled across a male privilege checklist most of you are probably aware of. However, me and a friend of mine (u/FinallyReborn) still wanted to cover its points here. I will segregate the post into two sections (part I which will be addressed by me and part II which is addressed by him). Also, the points are not in order, but I don't think that matters. What matters are the points themselves.

Part I

My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed.

How do I begin to unpack this? - STEM favours women in a ratio of 2:1 - Blind hiring (that is the gender of the applicant is not known) favours men whereas non-blind recruitment favours women by a couple percentage points . - Men, on average, are more likely to be discriminated against when job hunting, which includes both male and female dominated jobs - This 2019 study also found discrimination against men in hiring. - This and this article on discrimination against women in science which examine more than hiring, find either no bias against women or more anti-male than anti-female bias in science.
The idea men won't face discrimination in hiring and the odds are skewed in their favour especially in prestigious fields like STEM is false. The narrative stems from gender stereotypes such as female vulnerability that expects women to always be the recipients of discriminaton or injustice which itself is a type of bias against men.

If I am never promoted, it's not because of my sex.

That's supported by? Most of the claims which are made in this checklist are either baseless or outright false and one-sided. (see above)

I am far less likely to face sexual harassment at work than are my female co-workers.

Perhaps, it is true "men are less likely to face sexual harassment" in the workplace, though I am skeptical of the word "far". Men represent 1 in 5 complaints of sexual harassment in the workplace in the US and the number could be heavily under-counted as men often under-report their abuse (here and here). Attitudes like this exist: "If a woman pats a man’s butt, admiringly asks whether he’s been working out, and suggestively compliments him on how good he looks, people chuckle. If the roles were reversed, those same people would be outraged (and rightfully so)". It could also be that men are less likely to be taken seriously and women are less likely to be viewed as perpetrators: "In the Horizon Oil Sands work camp in Alberta, men who are caught in women’s dorms are fired on the spot, while women are allowed in the men’s dorm rooms."
Harassment in general is reported to be proportionally equal for both sexes. This study looked at bullying at work and found that "men and women did not differ in prevalence". Another study looked at workplace bullying and found "no significant differences in the bullying experiences of men and women". A study in Sweden looked at the prevalence of mobbing in the workplace which is defined as "harassing, ganging up on someone, or psychologically terrorising others at work" and found "men (45%) and women (55%) are subjected [to workplace mobbing] in roughly equal proportions, the difference not being significant". A report by StatsCan found that "19% of women and 13% of men experienced workplace harassment in the past year".

If I'm a teen or adult, and if I stay out of prison, my odds of being raped are so low as to be negligible.

False. The odds of men being raped outside of prison (which is obviously excluded to prove a point) are not low or negligible (once you start to look at rape in a more nuanced manner and expand the definition of rape to be inclusive of victims who weren't penetrated and were instead forced to penetrate their perpetrators, the narrative crumbles apart). I also love how they say "if I stay out of prison" as if men simply choose to be in prison and there is no bias in sentencing and men's criminal behaviour is not a product of environmental causes like fatherlessness which is not true . To get back to the "the rape of men outside of prison which we will conveniently exclude because reasons is low to the point of being negligible" claim, the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey would like to disagree: - The NISVS (2010) showed that during the proceeding 12 months of the survey, 1.1% of men were made to penetrate and 1.1% of women were raped. Table 2.1 and 2.2 pages 18-19. - The NISVS (2011) showed that in the past 12 months of the survey, 1.7% of men were made to penetrate and 1.0% of women were raped. Table 1, page 5. - The NISVS (2012) showed that in the past 12 months, 1.7% of men were made to penetrate and 1.2% of women were raped. Table A.1 and A.5 on pages 217 and 222. - The NISVS (2015) showed that in the past 12 months, 0.7% of men were made to penetrate and 1.2% of women were raped.
Just as a side note: we say made to penetrate instead of rape as the CDC does not consider made to penetrate to be rape and instead puts it in the category of sexual assault which leads to media under-reporting of the problem of the rape of men. The idea that the rape of men outside of prison is low or negligible is another myth that is rooted in gender norms which are again more advantageous to women as their victimisation is universally recognised whereas men's victimisation is swept under the rug. In case anybody brings up the fact that I am only quoting annual data and not lifetime data which found a high prevalence of male victimisation once made to penetrate is lumped in the same category as rape, I am doing that because lifetime data has less accuracy as it runs into more problems such as memory loss, confusion of events, how well one interpreted their victimisation which might have taken place long ago, etc... This source notes: "Research tells us that 20% of critical details are irretrievable after one year of their occurance and 50% are irretrievable after 5 years". This could heavily skew the data in favour of women as they are less likely to internalise their victimisation and more likely to report.

If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.

Incorrect. Here and here.

If I have children and provide primary care for them, I'll be praised for extraordinary parenting even if I'm marginally competent.

Assuming that's true (for the sake of argument), it is only half of the story - that is while there are fathers, single or married, who are praised for doing "mommy's work", often for a valid reason, there are also fathers who encounter day-to-day stereotypes and hardships for not living up to their traditional role of a provider. For instance, this survey found mothers are seen as better caregivers and fathers are more likely to be pressured to work more and be financially liable for their families. We can reason that if that's the case, then a man who breaks out of his gender role and takes on a "mother's job" will be seen as a deviant and often encounter negative stereotypes about his gender and his abilities will be put to question. This video interview (skip to 6:14) as the actual video has been made private describes motherhood which it synonymously links to parenthood as the "hardest job". Additionally, anybody who has spent some time on social media platforms such as Twitter can notice a pattern of people including verified accounts turning Father's Day into a day about single mothers or mothers in general. Therefore, it is quite absurd to say that a father who is marginally competent as a caregiver will receive extraordinary praise as opposed to a mother who does the same job better.

If I seek political office, my relationship with my children, or who I hire to care for them, will probably not be scrutinised by the press.

Unless, of course you're Donald Trump in which case everything you do will be examined by the media and used against you. This article analyses Donald Trump's realationship with his son, Barron Trump and this article goes on to examine how Trump's children grew up "relatively normal" as well as who took care of them, etc, etc....

I can be somewhat sure that if I ask to see "the person in charge", I will face a person of my own sex. The higher-up in the organization the person, the surer I can be.

That benefits me, how? As a woman, if you go outside, the odds are the overwhelming majority of people at the bottom you will see such as construction workers, or the unsheltered homeless, will be men.

As a child, I could choose from an almost infinite variety of children's media featuring positive, active, non-stereotyped heroes of my own sex. I never had to look for it; male protagonists were (are) the default.

As a child, I saw myself represented as an antagonist in almost every cartoon or TV show. The servants of each villain who were killed one after another like a disposable pile of garbage were also universally male. Such "servants" continue to be almost universally male as people prefer men dying in movies to women dying or being tortured. The "default protagonist" is not male either (Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Supergirl). The existence of male protagonists in most movies especially romantic ones encouraged boys to turn into risk taking or self-sacrificing men who leave their well-being behind to protect people especially women and children.

If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has sexist overtons.

Privilege is not defined or measured by one's inability to recognise whether somebody was sexist to them or not because of how normalised society's inability to spot misandry is. Privilege is having society pander to you and your issues to the point where you become paranoid and question everything or everybody for potentially being misogynistic to you and always blaming others for your misery because of how little accountability you are expected to take for your own problems. It is not "women caused their own issues", it is almost always "society or HE caused these issues" meanwhile for men it is almost always "he caused his own issues" or "other men caused his issues".

If I am careless with my financial affairs, it won't be attributed to my sex.

As a woman, if I am incapable of earning enough money or a high income, that won't be blamed on my sex's inability to provide.

I can speak to a large group of people without putting my sex on trial.

So can women. In fact, women can freely talk about raping men on a stage that is supposed to be empowering to women and treat it like a joke

There are value-neutral clothing choices available to me. It is possible for me to choose clothing that doesn't send any particular message to the world.

So it is for women. Women can also wear their boyfriends' casual clothing and still be seen as cute. A man wearing a dress or his girlfriend's clothing is enough for him to be called a "beta male emasculated cuck" by prominent political figures such as Candace Owens or even beaten up in more traditional countries whereas women can wear traditionally masculine clothing such as suits and nobody bats an eye. Men are also expected to wear clothing and accessories which signify status to the world (expensive watches, ties, suits).

If I am not conventionally attractive, the disadvantages are small and easy to ignore.

Not if you are short and skinny. Employment opportunities decline, so do dating opportunities (I wouldn't consider that to be "easy to ignore").

I can ask for legal protection from violence that happens mostly to men without being seen as a selfish special interest, since that kind of violence is called "crime" and is a general social concern. (Violence that happens mostly to women is usually called "domestic violence" or "acquaintance rape", and is seen as a special interest issue.)

This one is so detached from any observable reality that you can lose brain cells just reading it. Crime that happens to men is not seen as a special social concern (domestic violence and rape are both called crimes, if not some of the worst crimes one can do to another - "rape is so vile that only murder is worse". If they are listed out as separate issues, that is because they are viewed as separate, more concerning crimes which we should pay more attention to), or at least not because it happens to men (the crime which is gendered against men is homicide, 77-80% male, so it might sometimes make sense to prioritise it, say, over intimate partner violence which is also 40-50% male, check out the NISVS). However, violence against men is not seen as a "special concern" - violence against women by men is seen as a special concern. You will rarely see campaigns saying "end violence against men", "teach women not to be violent", but almost all of such gendered campaigns are gendered to favour women. Domestic violence and the rape of women are put at the front of political discourse to the point where universities deny male students their due process rights when they are accused of rape. Women are systemically favoured in both police intervention and services for victims of domestic abuse. The overwhelming majority of services are for women and the overwhelming majority of batterer programs are for men, that is in spite of the consensus in family violence research being that women commit intimate partner violence equally, if not more (once you account for unilateral violence which is mostly done by women and lesbian on lesbian violence which tops heterosexual violence and gay male violence). In some other countries like India or Spain, male victims have even fewer legal protections from partner abuse which in Spain is labelled "gendered violence (the blog is in Spanish so use a translator to understand it if you are not Spanish) ". The idea male victimisation is a "special concern" and that's a privilege is laughable and not in touch with reality. In reality, violence against men is and has been minimised, dismissed or excused, especially when it takes the form of genital mutilation where boys are mutilated in the states, their foreskins are sold for profit and they have no explicit protections from the practice meanwhile FGM is seen as a separate, special kind of violence in 39 states. Men wanting more services when they have less even though they should have more are called misogynists who are stealing resources from women and researchers or activists who discover or say that DV is symmetrical are blacklisted (e.g, Straus, Pizzey, Silverman who ended up killing himself after he opened up the FIRST male only shelter in Canada and was bullied to death by the government which denied him assistance as "male victimisation is not sufficient enough to warrant the amount of protection and funding he needed", see this as well. The overwhelming majority of moral and psychological experiments also show violence against women is viewed as a more despicable and morally reprehensible phenomenon than violence against men (see here). So, yes, men are called "selfish" even though they are less protected from violence both legally and culturally. Who isn't? Those who demand more and more protection for women even at the expense of men and then call that male privilege when male victims are treated like second-class citizens not worthy of equal protection to assist them in times of need.

My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is.

My inability to take risks, be competent, make life or death decisions and be emotionally stable will be challenged more than a woman's regardless of what time of the month it is.

The decision to hire me will never be based on assumptions about whether or not I might choose to have a family sometime soon.

The capacity of a man to provide for his wife and children or his future family can be taken into account in some hiring practices.

Most major religions argue that I should be the head of my household, while my wife and children should be subservient to me.

Feminists and their cherry-picking abilities. "Husbands love your wives the way Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her (King James Bible)", "Husbands should love their wives the way Christ loved the church and gave his life for it" (Contemporary English version). Source . Yes, the Bible and other religions alike did tell women to be submissive to their husbands, but they also expected mutual and similar obligations of husbands. (the Bible being one example). Also, the term "the head of the household" is another word for a wage slave - as being the head of the household entails having to be fully financially liable for the support of your family. In some countries like Japan, women and men often take on traditional gender roles, but the wife usually controls most of the budget while her husband is left with pocket money in spite of working more .

If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, chances are she'll do most of the childrearing, and in particular the most dirty, repetitive and unrewarding parts of childrearing.

Historically and presently men were and are pushed away from childrearing (in marriage and post-marriage due to custody problems). Women, on the other hand, are given a flexible option and the source shows the overwhelming majority of women choose and prefer flexibility to work life, so they end up doing more childcare and housework. In many countries, men struggle to get access to paternity leave and can't take on the caregiver role which is traditionally associated with women because they are expected to work. Feminists, as per usual, only give us half of the story which in fact shows women have more flexibility than men.

Magazines, billboards, television, movies, pornography, and virtually all of media is filled with imagines of scantily-clad women intended to appeal to me sexually. Such imagines of men exist, but are much rarer.

Of course that also ignores how often men are depicted as deadbeats, irresponsible, clumsy, easily controlled, macho, incapable of being a decent parent, etc... by many TV shows and commercials alike or how often the media plays the sexual assault of men especially in prison and the sexual assault of men by women for laughs . This is a follow up video .
"But oh, well, we will only show you how attractive women are displayed on billboards to get men's dicks hard so companies can profit."

If I am heterosexual, it's incredibly unlikely that I'll ever be beaten up by a spouse or lover.

Wrong, wrong. Just so wrong. - This study found women inflict severe violence on their partners more than men and men are more likely to sustain severe abuse. - This study found women are more likely to inflict severe violence on their partners than men are and men are more likely to sustain violent abuse. However, women reported being beaten up more (2.4% of women compared to 1.4% of men) than their male counterparts - men were much more likely to be kicked/bitten/hit with fists or an object and threatened with a knife/gun. They were also just as likely to experience the use of a knife/gun. - The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey found that over 40% of victims of severe psychological and physical violence which includes being punched, kicked, etc... are men. - These studies and reviews (here and here) find no evidence that women abuse in retaliation or self-defense or that women are less likely to strike the first blow/more likely to exercise violence in self-defense than men are. In fact, this survey found 70% of one-sided abuse is committed by women and the majority of intimate partner violence is bilateral (committed by both partners) with women hitting first more often. This blog post responds to feminist claims on domestic abuse and criticism of the CTS scale. The claim that men are rarely abused by their partners and women are innocent victims who rarely commit intimate partner violence (just like the claim that men outside of prison are rarely raped and men are not discriminated against in hiring) comes from gender stereotypes which put women in a vulnerable position to men and such gender stereotypes are inherently advantageous to women as they lead to female victims of violence being believed and or taken seriously more often than male victims.

On average, I am not interrupted by women as often as women are interrupted by men.

That darling oppression - being interrupted or letting others interrupt you due to your agreeableness and incapability of displaying dominance or assertiveness. Poor women. Here's an actual undeserved privilege: as a woman, your opinions will be rarely dismissed and called "womansplaining" purely because you are a woman. As a woman, you won't be accused of "womanterrupting" when you interrupt another woman or man while men will be accused of both, sometimes on TV or in official settings .

As a child, chances are I got more teacher attention than girls who raised their hand just as often.

This "male privilege" is addressed in the book The War Against Boys . Even if what was said is true, it's not necessarily evidence of actual discriminaton against girls as it could be caused by a multitude of factors including the fact that girls outperform boys, are the majority of A students, get better grades on average, are more likely to attend higher education and are less likely to be subjected to punishment for their behavior, so naturally when a boy raises his hand, teachers might be inclined to pick him instead because he rarely gets the chance to talk or show his skills. The idea of "male privilege" in the classroom is laughable, almost as laughable as saying violence against women is taken less seriously than violence against men (which is what you did not so long ago) once one looks at the stats on who is getting the upper hand and overacheiving. Before somebody stops me and says "but that outcome is a consequence of girls working harder than boys", well no, it isn't. Boys and girls actually get identical grades, if not boys outperform girls on subjects traditionally associated with masculinity such as mathematics and science, but are systemically downgraded on teacher assessments which causes them to underperform and be discouraged from competing alongside girls. Teacher bias is a strong predictor for the disparities in achievement between the sexes (here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here). 92% of sex-selective scholarships are reserved for women, too and the system sides with female complaints of discrimination more than it does with male complaints in almost every sector - from grading discrimination to the denial of due process rights to accused men. Some schools admit to gender bias such as this one . Additionally, this study which analysed economic spending on children's education by parents from 1972 to 2007 found that parents spend more on girls' education than boys' education and this article explores the relationship between gender stereotypes and the suppression of boy behavior which is deemed to be aggressive in schools. Could disruptive behavior explain part of the disparity in achievement? Yes, but it doesn't dispute the existence of bias either. It is rather simplistic to look at disruptive behavior as "boys doing it to themselves" when such behavior can be caused by factors which are outside of boys' control such as family breakdowns as well as single parenthood and the lack of a father figure at home which might impact boys differently than girls. This 2008 report from HRW also found that in places where corporal punishment is still practiced or was practiced, boys were subject to punishment disproportionately to girls and while it would be irrational to attribute all of the disparity to bias, it would be no surprise if bias played a role in it. The article notes: "One high school teacher suggested one possible reason for the gender disparity in paddling, noting that at her school it was common practice to “stay away from hitting the girls. I guess they’re more fragile, and a lot of them could be pregnant and we wouldn’t know it.” A father of two boys and a girl felt that it was more acceptable for boys to be paddled than girls. He explained, “My little girl—don’t you put your hands on her…. As far as my boys, I am super hard on them. For one, they are young black men and they are faced with different obstacles in life. I get on them every day, and I know they say, ‘Man, my dad is tough." Many interviewees reported that boys were beaten more harshly than girls. A middle school boy in Mississippi observed that one of his teachers “paddle the boys real hard and when he paddled the girls he don’t really hit them.” One student reported that there are smaller paddles for girls: “They use a short one for girls and a long one for the boys."

I have the privilege of not being aware of my male privilege.

Women have the privilege of lying, giving society one-sided narratives, half truths and still being believed. Men do not have such a privilege ;).

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Just after the live of "10th Anniversary Sakura Gakuin ✰ 2020: Happy Xmas" which is being distributed until New Year's Eve, we interviewed Sakura Gakuin remotely. We asked each student to look back on the turbulent year of 2020.
Sakura Gakuin 10th Anniversary Special Interview
Kokona Nonaka
3rd grade middle schooler and Student Council President. Born January 28th, 2006, from Nagasaki Prefecture. Favourite New Year's dish: Kakuni pork and crab hot pot.
In her last year at Sakura Gakuin, Kokona Nonaka has been elected as the student council president. She may have a strong comedic personality, but this year she’s taking on a leadership role and leading the group!
“I can show my true colours at my real school”
一When did you start your lessons for "10th Anniversary Sakura Gakuin✰2020～Happy Xmas～" ('Happy Xmas' for short)
Kokona: Mid-November. The lesson period was really short. Moreover we did twice as many songs as our last show, "10th Anniversary Sakura Gakuin✰2020～Departure～" ('Departure' for short) and also there were five songs we were performing for the first time, so it was tough.
This time, Miku wasn't able to participate in the lessons much, because it was during an exam period for her. However, the 8 of us were united in our commitment to level up all of our dancing, singing and MC skills.
ーWhen you first heard your new song 'Thank you...', how did you feel?
Kokona: The pitch and rhythm of the song is pleasing to the ear and the lyrics are full of memories of Sakura Gakuin, making it a perfect 10th anniversary song.
ーHow did you feel going towards the 'Happy Xmas' show?
Kokona: We've done two online lives before, "The Road to Graduation 2019 Final" ('Graduation' for short) and 'Departure', so I felt a lot more relaxed going towards this show. We aimed to give our very best performance, in order to send our passion to the Fukei on the other side of the screen.
We've all become more aware of our camerawork, which was a huge improvement, and we were able to look directly at the camera more often when it was on us. Also everyone understood their roles, and all 8 of us were highly motivated to make it work. Everyone has also been able to increase the variety of their facial expressions.
ーDid you feel a different kind of nervousness than you would for a show with a live audience?
Kokona: Yes, it's completely different. When the Fukei are there, they get hyped up from the moment we step out on stage, and it feels like we're creating the show together. But, with a no-audience online live, we can only get excited amongst ourselves, so there's sense of nervousness in that. Also, lots of different staff are involved with the show, so I feel a sense of nervousness that I might accidentally cause problems.
ーThere's also cameramen moving all around the stage, right?
Kokona: It seems like a tough job. Thanks to them, there's an opportunity for the members to have really close close-ups, which is only possible because there's no audience.
ーNonaka-san, you've been selected as the Student Council President for 2020, how did it feel when you were appointed?
Kokona: I was really surprised. This is the last year for Sakura Gakuin, so all I could think was "Is it really me....?" But now that I've been chosen, I thought about how I have to be a student council president that everyone can follow with confidence, and will help make Sakura Gakuin a wonderful place to be until the very end.
Even now, I still have doubts, but I feel that all 8 of us care and support each other in so many ways, so I'm beginning to feel more relaxed. I hope that everyone can open their hearts to one another even more.
ーSince there aren't any transfer-ins, it seems like you all began to grow a strong bond from the beginning.
Kokona: It's easy for us because we all understand one another, and know each other's strengths and weaknesses.
ーHas your frame of mind changed since becoming student council president?
Kokona: In 2019 Nendo, it was my 2nd year in Sakura Gakuin, and I heard from my seniors of previous generations that "Your 2nd year is the most difficult."
ーWhat's so difficult about it?
Kokona: Just when you think you've finally got used to Sakura Gakuin, new transfer-ins join, and you have to look after them, and you also have to support your seniors. Also, in your first year, it's easy to see where you've improved, no matter what you do, but in your 2nd year, even if you practice a lot, it's a lot harder to notice your improvement on a surface level. So I was really worried all year.
But now I'm a 3rd grader, I began asking the staff room teachers for their opinions, and I also began to give my own. It feels like I'm beginning to learn a lot more, rather than feeling worried or like I'm facing difficulties all the time. I'm a 3rd grader, and now feel I know more about Sakura Gakuin, I love it even more.
I've become student council president, and it's the first time I've ever done anything like this, so there are a lot of difficulties, but it feels like I'm working together with everyone to overcome whatever we face.
ーWhen you look back on the year at your real school, what was it like?
Kokona: I didn't really enjoy school in 1st grade, and my activities in Sakura Gakuin were much more fun. But in 2nd grade, we had a class change, and everyone there knew about my activities, and they often encouraged me, saying things like "Do your best today too!", so I began to let my guard down. Because of that, in my 3rd year, I've been able to show my true colours, just like in Sakura Gakuin.
ーWhat's been the most memorable event for you at your real school?
Kokona: It was a Sports Competition. I had an Sakura Gakuin lesson on that day, but the staff room teachers told me to just go, because it was my last one. So for the first time in my 3rd year, I was able to participate. Also, my class finished second place! We also performed a dance, and I was chosen to be the dance leader, which was a lot of fun.
ーHow do you plan to spend your New Years holiday?
Kokona: On New Year's Eve, I want to watch the archive of 'Happy Xmas', and then watch Kohaku, and spend time with my relatives. I have a lot of relatives who are the same age as me, so I'm looking forward to talking to them.
ーPlease tell us your goals for next year.
Kokona: It's Sakura Gakuin's final year, so I want to achieve perfect combustion and leave no regrets behind.
As for myself, I want to become a person who leaves a lasting impression in someone's heart and mind. I hope that my singing and dancing will remain in the hearts of the Fukei, so when they feel depressed, they will remember my performance, and it will bring a smile to their faces.
Shiratori Sana
Middle school 3rd grader and Talk chairman. Born 20th June 2005, from Kumamoto Prefecutre. Favourite New Year's Dish: Black soybeans made by her mother.
Shiratori Sana, who always has a smile on her face, when she was appointed as Talk chairman she secretly felt depressed.... How did she stay positive?
"There was a time I felt really negative when I wasn't selected to be student council president"
ーYour lessons for 'Happy Xmas' only lasted about 3 weeks, so you must have had a lot of trouble fitting everything in.
Sana: There were more difficult songs this time, so it was tough to get them right, looking back, I wish we had more time to concentrate more on each song. Regardless I think the 8 of us were able to join together and do our best.
ーDid you do anything to practice in your free time?
Sana: When I'd get back from school, I'd dance for an hour, and if that's not enough, I'd go for a run. I also practice in other ways, for example I use a mobile app keyboard to play different notes, and I try to guess what note it is to train my sense of pitch.
ーDid you find it effective for improving your sense of pitch?
Sana: The person that helps do our recordings for us told me "You're better than ever", and I feel like I can stay on key much better than before.
ーWhat did you think of the venue, when you arrived on the day of the 'Happy Xmas' show?
Sana: The 'Departure' show was in a live venue, but this time it was in a big hall, and the set was so beautiful, which made made me miss the Fukei-san even more than before, so I knew then that I had to do my best. It's the last live on the year, so I wanted to do my absolute best and go all out, and that made me feel ready to do the performance.
ーCompared to the 'Departure' show, in what aspects do you think you've improved?
Sana: Personally, I used to worry so much about looking good on camera that I only had one type of smile, and our dance teacher pointed this out to me, so since then I've tried to be more aware of using different facial expressions, and I think my repertoire of facial expressions has increased.
As a group, we have each grown emotionally and mentally, so now each of us are better at looking after one another. We haven't discussed it in particular, but we've managed to build a good atmosphere amongst one another that has formed naturally.
ーI'd like to ask about your council position, how did you feel when you were appointed as Talk chairman?
Sana: Honestly, when I was appointed, I thought "I wasn't chosen as the student council president, so I guess I'm not good enough" and I became really negative.
But my mum's friend sent me a message on LINE that said: "When I thought about who would be this nendo's talk chairman, it could only be Sana!" and that gave me confidence. And then I thought, "I have to lead everyone with my talk skills!" which made me feel more positive.
ーDid you plan what kind of MCs you were going to do for 2020 nendo?
Sana: The 2019 nendo talk chairman was Mori Momoe-chan, and she would decide on the contents of the MCs beforehand, and message it to everyone.
But for me, I discuss it with everyone in our meetings, and everyone is actively encouraged to give their input on it. I thought that this way, everyone's personalities can have a chance to shine, and it gives the MC a more chatty atmosphere. I think we did great with the MCs for 'Happy Xmas'.
ーNow there's 8 of you, there's a lot more time for each person to talk, right?
Sana: Each person has a lot of time to talk, so it's easy for me as talk chairman. It's easy to divide up everyone's roles, so for example Kokona can make a joke, and Miki can play off it, like Boke and Tsukkomi.
ーBefore the 'Happy Xmas' show, what was the atmosphere like backstage?
Sana: The 8 of us were really chatty, it was like we were all at school together. Just before the show, normally, the four 2019 seniors would usually give us all words of encouragement. But this nendo, we all encourage one another, saying "It's going to be okay!" regardless of age, or anything else.
ーThis year, what has been the most memorable Sakura Gakuin activity for you?
Sana: It was when we were practicing for the Graduation ceremony. It was a time where I was the most self disciplined I've ever been, and it also made me realise that the four 3rd graders were really graduating, so we would be trusted to lead the way.
ーWhat has your year been like at your real school?
Sana: Until now, there had been days where I couldn't go to school because of my Sakura Gakuin activities, and there was a part of me that felt like it was no wonder my test scores were bad. But the impact of corona had the reverse effect, I was able to go to school, which put more pressure on me to improve my grades.
So I was studying at home, but I haven't done that in for the past 2 years, and I wasn't able to make up for my bad grades. My grades pretty much stayed the same, and I felt like an idiot (lol).
ーWhat was the most memorable event at your real school this year?
Sana: At the Sports festival I danced the Soran-bushi. The 3rd graders were teaching the 1st graders how to dance, and I really enjoyed it. I taught them as if I was teaching someone at Sakura Gakuin, so I think I did a good job.
ーHow do you plan to spend the New Years holiday?
Sana: During New Years I always eat lots of my grandmother's cooking, but if I keep doing that I'll gain weight, so I have to exercise, right? I try to keep active every year, by going to shrines and stuff, but this year I don't know if we'll be able to do that, so I'm thinking I'll have to do a lot of exercise at home.
ーPlease tell us your goals for next year.
Sana: It's our last year as a group, so I want to treasure my time in lessons and live shows, while achieving perfect combustion, so we can create an unforgettable Sakura Gakuin.
For myself, that means leading the group. Looking back on this year, I feel like I relied on Kokona too much, so I want us to join forces as a duo so we can both do our best. Also I've been given more singing lines, so I want to put more effort into practising my singing so I can get better. I also want to grow taller.
ーIs there anything you do to try to grow taller?
Sana: I try to make sure that my diet is rich in protein and calcium. I've also heard that it's good to jump on your heels, so I jump every day (lol).
Tanaka Miku
2nd grade middle schooler and Spirit Chairman. Born 18th June 2006, from Oita prefecture. Favourite New Years Dish: Mochi with sweet soy sauce.
The lessons for "Happy Xmas" coincided with her real school exam period, Tanaka Miku says this made her feel a strong bond with the members.
"The time spent playing with my real school friends was refreshing."
ーTanaka-san, I heard you weren't able to attend as many lessons for 'Happy Xmas' as the other members.
Miku: It just happened to coincide with my real school's exam period. However, the members sent me clear instructions on where I was supposed to stand, and what I needed to be aware of for the performance. Thanks to that, I was able to keep up with them, despite being absent for my exams.
ーIt's an episode where you can really feel the bond between the members. While you were unable to attend the lessons, did you do any practicing in your free time apart from singing and dancing?
Miku: I have trouble building up muscle, and when I do, I lose it quickly. So to maintain my muscle tone I did sit-ups and squats. Also, I can't do push-ups, so I borrowed my brother's water-filled dumbbells to work out my arms too.
ーWas it effective?
Miku: The next day I had muscle pains, so I think it worked (lol).
ーWas there a particular difficult song for you to learn at practice?
Miku: There are three, first is 'Let's Dance'. The choreo is difficult at first, but also this 8 person version is different from last year, so there were lots of brand new changes. It was pretty tough.
Our new song 'Thank you...' is the highlight of this online show, but since the song is already available for streaming, the Fukei already know the song beforehand, don't they? Since it's our first time performing it, I didn't want them to think "I had high expectations for this, but this is what we get?". The first performance is so important, so I felt a lot of pressure.
ーWhat did you find difficult about it specifically?
Miku: 'Thank you...' has a cheerful melody, but the lyrics are packed full of emotions and sadness about how this is the last year, so it was difficult to express that. Also the song 'Merry Xmas to you'. With only eight of us, we had to do a lot more singing, and the order of singing and dancing changed, which made me panic.
ーHow nervous were you before the show?
Miku: I feel safe when there are Fukei there. You can hear them clapping their hands, and they make me laugh during the MCs, so naturally, it helps us get hyped up too!
But with a no-audience live, I get nervous every time because they aren't there. I'm not normally a nervous person, but the fact I now get nervous, makes me think that the Fukei really do save me from that feeling at normal shows.
ーIncluding the graduation, that's 3 online live shows you've done, in what aspect do you think you've improved since then?
Miku: We always try to make each show better than the last, so I think my dancing and singing have naturally improved, which is important, but I think the biggest development is that I've got better at quickly finding the right camera when I'm on screen.
I was frustrated when I rewatched the 'Departure' show, and saw myself not looking at the camera. But this time when the red "live" light is on that camera, I'm able to react immediately.
ーTanaka-san, you were appointed as the Spirit chairman, and I was surprised because you don't really have the "spirit" image.
Miku: I was surprised too (lol). On "Sakura Gakuin Ganbare!! FRESH Monday", before the announcement of the positions, there was a "New Nendo Orientation", where our physical abilities were measured.
For that, I was with Kokona, Miko and Sakia, all of whom are quite sporty, but I was the only one that wasn't. So I lost my motivation and was in low spirits......
ーSo you lost your fighting spirit.
Miku: It made me worried that I didn't know how to be the spirit chairman. I didn't even think that the position would be revived in the first place.
ーYou're the first since Taguchi Hana in 2014 nendo.
Miku: Hana-chan is a completely different type of girl than me, so even now I'm still wondering what I should do. But since I was appointed, I've done my best to have more of a fighting spirit than I did before (lol).
ーWhat's been the most memorable Sakura Gakuin activity for you this past year?
Miku: Things like the remote interview we're doing right now. I love doing interviews and shooting for things, I just really enjoy myself at times like this. I get so happy expressing my feelings in interviews.
I've experienced doing shoots ever since I became a Ciao Girl, so I've gotten used to it, and I always have a blast doing it with the other Sakura Gakuin members. I enjoy it because when you're singing or dancing, there are certain rules, but when you're shooting something, you have these short pauses where you can have more freedom.
ーWhat's been the most memorable thing for you at your real school?
Miku: Because of the ongoing corona situation, I couldn't go to Tokyo for a long time, so I was able to go to school every day without taking holidays or having to leave early, for the first time since I joined Sakura Gakuin.
I had a lot of free time so I'd go out with my friends. We'd go to a nearby shopping mall and eat Parfaits, take Purikura photos and go play in the arcade. It was refreshing to find out what it's like to be an ordinary middle school student.
ーHow are you planning to spend the New Years holiday?
Miku: Every year on New Year's Eve, the whole family sits together around the Kotatsu, playing games until midnight, and we eat New Years Eve soba.
At the start of the new year, we go around Oita to visit my relatives that live here, and I hope this year we can do the same.
ーFinally, please tell us your goals for next year.
Miku: I want us to push on through until the end, and cross the finish line side by side.
As for myself, I want to do more extracurricular activities. I haven't decided what I want to do in the future yet, so I'm hoping I can find out what I want to do by doing extracurricular activities.
ーIs there anything in particular you'd like to try?
Miku: I'd like to try voice acting. I'm not very good at performing using my body or facial expressions, but I love to express myself with just my voice, so I to want to try it.
Yagi Miki
2nd grade middle schooler and Student Council Vice-President. Born 11th December 2006, from Osaka Prefecture. Favourite New Year's Dish: All kinds of crab dishes.
Yagi Miki, a 2nd grade middle schooler who has been given the important role of vice president of the student council. What does she think is important in order to lead the group in the final year?
"My goal is to pass Level 2 of the EIKEN early next year"
ーWhat was the atmosphere like during the lessons for 'Happy Xmas'?
Miki: There was no tension, it was a peaceful atmosphere... Oh, I don't mean the atmosphere was bad up until this year (lol). We don't have any transfer-ins, and I've spent the past year with last year's transfer-in's, so we've got a great relationship where we can talk about anything to one another.
Going from 12 to 8 members means that there is no more hierarchy, and that we all have to work together, so everyone is free to speak their mind.
ーDuring the lessons what was the most difficult song to practice?
Miki: 'Let's Dance', because it's hard to do the your movements and also show a good facial expression. It's a song that changes rapidly - there's a snap here, then you show a smug look here, and it's hard to keep in sync with the music.
Also in our new song 'Thank you...' we have to sing with a lot of emotion, and I had a hard time expressing myself. But everyone gave me advice, and I was able to have a lot of fun performing it.
ーYou did twice as many songs than last time for 'Departure', did you do anything to build up your stamina?
Miki: I did core body training at home, and I went for frequent walks. I wore a mask and layered up in sweaters, and would end up getting out of breath by just walking.
ーHow was the 'Happy Xmas' show for you?
Miki: When I first entered the venue, it struck me how cute the set was, how it was overflowing with a Christmassy feel. Before the show, I went over my notes and watched the videos I had taken during the lessons to make sure I had reviewed them thoroughly before the performance.
ーIn what aspects do you think you've improved since your last show, 'Departure'?
Miki: I've gotten taller (lol). I've gone from 155cm to 156cm.
ーIt's not been that long since the last show, has it?
Miki: I've grown 1cm in about a month. Also this time, we were divided into 2 groups of 4 for one of the MC portions of the show, and I think my talk ability has improved. Until now, thinking of topics to bring up about wasn't really my strong point, but I was able to turn that around pretty well.
ーYagi-san, how did you feel when you first heard that you were going to be given the important role of Vice President?
Miki: I was so surprised. I wasn't expecting to be given such a position, so I felt really happy, but at the same time, as vice president, there's a lot of pressure that you have to lead everyone. I didn't know what the right thing to do was, but Kokona and Sana told me "You should support your juniors", so I want to watch over them while also leading them.
ーI've heard that you've been having long phone calls with various members during the period of self-restraint. Among which I heard you've had frequent video chats with Nozaki-san.
Miki: I was in communication with Yume everyday.
ーShe said that you've been helping teach her English personal pronouns​.
Miki: I'm pretty good at English. And Yume said she didn't know them, so I taught her.
ーYou must be very busy talking with different members on the phone so often.
Miki: I'm the type of person who can't shut up even if I'm alone, so I need to be talking to someone or else I can't relax (lol).
ーWhat's the most memorable Sakura Gakuin activity for you this past year?
Miki: The lessons. There's no hierarchy in the lessons and that's a good thing, it means everyone has such a good relationship that we can always give each other advice. We were always thinking together about ways we can make things better as a group, and the atmosphere was really amazing.
ーIs there anything that you were 'into' during the period of self-restraint, other than calling the other members?
Miki: I'm taking the EIKEN [English proficiency test] so I've been studying for that!
ーWhat's been the most memorable thing at your real school?
Miki: Instead of doing a culture festival, we did something called a "culture presentation" to give to the class next door, where we performed dances and different acts.
ーWhat did you present, Yagi-san?
Miki: I danced. I watched a video by BLACKPINK-san, and did a perfect imitation of it. We did an 8 person dance version.
ーWhat did the class next door think of it?
Miki: Many of the students know I do activities in Sakura Gakuin, so I was happy when they gave me praise like "You can also do this type of dancing!"
ーI see, so you were able to show them a new side of you. How do you plan on spending the New Years holiday?
Miki: Every year, my relatives get together at my grandfather's house to eat crab, but this year I don't know if we can do that, so I'm going to eat crab with just my family instead!
ーSo eating crab is non-negotiable (lol).
Miki: The other day, someone came to our house, and there was so much Crab Miso on the table. It was so good, that we ate more than half of it before the guest arrived (lol).
ーI think I'd get sick of it, if I was only eating crab miso.
Miki: I can't get enough of it! Of course I like crab on it's own too, since I like trivial jobs, I enjoy peeling the crab apart.
ーFinally, please tell us your goals for next year.
Miki: As a group, I want to focus on our talk. Even after graduating from Sakura Gakuin, talk skills are so important, so for the activities we have left I want keep my head straight and improve my talk skills. As for myself, I do Rakugo in the Purchasing Club, and I want to do even more Rakugo.
ーDo you actually like Rakugo?
Miki: Yes! I regularly listen to Rakugo. Ever since I was in elementary school I've loved "Shoten", and even now I always watch it without fail.
ーBy the way, when is your exam for the EIKEN?
Miki: It's in January. I'm taking Level 2. I tried Level 2 when I was in 4th year of elementary, but I didn't study very hard for it....

INTERVIEWER
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I would like to start at the very beginning. When and why did you first decide on a career as a poet?
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JOHN ASHBERY
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I don’t think I ever decided on a career as a poet. I began by writing a few little verses, but I never thought any of them would be published or that I would go on to publish books. I was in high school at the time and hadn’t read any modern poetry. Then in a contest I won a prize in which you could choose different books; the only one that seemed appealing was Untermeyer’s anthology, which cost five dollars—a great deal of money. That’s how I began reading modern poetry, which wasn’t taught in the schools then, especially in rural schools like the one I attended. I didn’t understand much of it at first. There were people like Elinor Wylie whom I found appealing—wonderful craftsmanship—but I couldn’t get very far with Auden and Eliot and Stevens. Later I went back to them and started getting their books out of the library. I guess it was just a desire to emulate that started me writing poetry. I can’t think of any other reason. I am often asked why I write, and I don’t know really—I just want to.
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INTERVIEWER
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When did you get more serious about it, thinking about publishing and that sort of thing?
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ASHBERY
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For my last two years of high school, I went to Deerfield Academy, and the first time I saw my work in print was in the school paper there. I had tried painting earlier, but I found that poetry was easier than painting. I must have been fifteen at the time. I remember reading Scholastic magazine and thinking I could write better poems than the ones they had in there, but I was never able to get one accepted. Then a student at Deerfield sent in some of my poems under his name to Poetry magazine, and when I sent them the same poems a few months later the editors there naturally assumed that I was the plagiarist. Very discouraging. Poetry was the most illustrious magazine to be published in at that time, and for a long time after they shunned my work. Then I went on to Harvard and in my second year I met Kenneth Koch. I was trying to get on The Harvard Advocate, and he was already one of the editors. He saw my poetry and liked it, and we started reading each other’s work. He was really the first poet that I ever knew, so that was rather an important meeting. Of course I was published in the Advocate, and then in 1949 I had a poem published in Furioso. That was a major event in my life because, even though it was a relatively small magazine, it did take me beyond the confines of the college. But it was hard to follow that up with other publications, and it really wasn’t until my late twenties that I could submit things with some hope of them getting accepted.
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INTERVIEWER
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Was there ever a time when you thought you would have to make a choice between art criticism and poetry, or have the two just always worked out well together?
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ASHBERY
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I was never interested in doing art criticism at all—I’m not sure that I am even now. Back in the fifties, Thomas Hess, the editor of ARTnews, had a lot of poets writing for the magazine. One reason was that they paid almost nothing and poets are always penurious. Trained art historians would not write reviews for five dollars, which is what they were paying when I began. I needed some bread at the time—this was in 1957 when I was thirty—and my friends who were already writing for ARTnews suggested that I do it too. So I wrote a review of Bradley Tomlin, an abstract expressionist painter who had a posthumous show at the Whitney. After that I reviewed on a monthly basis for a while until I returned to France. Then in 1960 it happened that I knew the woman who was writing art criticism for the Herald Tribune. She was going back to live in America and asked if I knew anybody who would like to take over her job. It didn’t pay very much, but it enabled me to get other jobs doing art criticism, which I didn’t want to do very much, but as so often when you exhibit reluctance to do something, people think you must be very good at it. If I had set out to be an art critic, I might never have succeeded.
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INTERVIEWER
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Are there any aspects of your childhood that you think might have contributed to making you the poet you are?
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ASHBERY
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I don’t know what the poet that I am is, very much. I was rather an outsider as a child—I didn’t have many friends. We lived out in the country on a farm. I had a younger brother whom I didn’t get along with—we were always fighting the way kids do—and he died at the age of nine. I felt guilty because I had been so nasty to him, so that was a terrible shock. These are experiences that have been important to me. I don’t know quite how they may have fed into my poetry. My ambition was to be a painter, so I took weekly classes at the art museum in Rochester from the age of about eleven until fifteen or sixteen. I fell deeply in love with a girl who was in the class but who wouldn’t have anything to do with me. So I went to this weekly class knowing that I would see this girl, and somehow this being involved with art may have something to do with my poetry. Also, my grandfather was a professor at the University of Rochester, and I lived with him as a small child and went to kindergarten and first grade in the city. I always loved his house; there were lots of kids around, and I missed all that terribly when I went back to live with my parents. Then going back there each week for art class was a returning to things I had thought were lost, and gave me a curious combination of satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
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INTERVIEWER
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Those are all rather traumatic things. I think of how most critics seem to see your poetry as rather lighthearted. One critic, however, has spoken of your “rare startlements into happiness.” Is happiness so rare in your work?
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ASHBERY
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Some people wouldn’t agree that my poetry is lighthearted. Frank O’Hara once said, I don’t see why Kenneth likes John’s work so much because he thinks everything should be funny and John’s poetry is about as funny as a wrecked train. In my life I am reasonably happy now. There are days when I think I am not, but I think there are probably more days when I think I am. I was impressed by an Ingmar Bergman movie I saw years ago—I can’t remember the name of it—in which a woman tells the story of her life, which has been full of tragic experiences. She’s telling the story in the dressing room of a theater where she is about to go on and perform in a ballet. At the end of it she says, “But I am happy.” Then it says, “The End.”
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INTERVIEWER
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Do you like to tease or play games with the reader?
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ASHBERY
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Funny you should ask—I just blew up at a critic who asked me the same question, though I shouldn’t have, in a list of questions for a book she is compiling of poets’ statements. I guess it depends on what you mean by “tease.” It’s all right if it’s done affectionately, though how can this be with someone you don’t know? I would like to please the reader, and I think that surprise has to be an element of this, and that may necessitate a certain amount of teasing. To shock the reader is something else again. That has to be handled with great care if you’re not going to alienate and hurt him, and I’m firmly against that, just as I disapprove of people who dress with that in mind—dye their hair blue and stick safety pins through their noses and so on. The message here seems to be merely aggression—“hey, you can’t be part of my strangeness” sort of thing. At the same time I try to dress in a way that is just slightly off, so the spectator, if he notices, will feel slightly bemused but not excluded, remembering his own imperfect mode of dress.
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INTERVIEWER
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Butyou would not be above inflicting a trick or a gag on your readers?
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ASHBERY
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A gag that’s probably gone unnoticed turns up in the last sentence of the novel I wrote with James Schuyler. Actually it’s my sentence. It reads: “So it was that the cliff dwellers, after bidding their cousins good night, moved off toward the parking area, while the latter bent their steps toward the partially rebuilt shopping plaza in the teeth of the freshening foehn.” Foehn is a kind of warm wind that blows in Bavaria that produces a fog. I would doubt that many people know that. I liked the idea that people, if they bothered to, would have to open the dictionary to find out what the last word in the novel meant. They’d be closing one book and opening another.
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INTERVIEWER
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Were there older living poets whom you visited, learned from, or studied with as a young writer?
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ASHBERY
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I particularly admired Auden, who I would say was the first big influence on my work, more so than Stevens. I wrote honors thesis on his poetry and got a chance to meet him at Harvard. When I was at Harvard I also studied with Theodore Spencer, a poet who is no longer very well known. He actually taught a poetry-writing workshop, which was very rare in those days—especially at Harvard, where they still are rare. It wasn’t that I was particularly fond of Spencer’s poetry, but he was a “genuine” poet, a real-live poet, and the feedback I got from him in class was very valuable to me. I also read Elizabeth Bishop quite early and met her once. I wrote her a letter about one of her poems that I had liked and she wrote back, and then after I moved to New York I met her. But I was rather shy about putting myself forward, so there weren’t very many known poets then that I did have any contact with. I wish I could have visited older poets! But things were different then—young poets simply didn’t send their poems to older ones with requests for advice and criticism and “suggestions for publication.” At least I don’t think they did—none of the ones I knew did. Everyone is bolder now. This leads to a sad situation (and I’ve often discussed this with poets of my generation like Kinnell and Merwin) of having a tremendous pile of unanswered correspondence about poetry—Kinnell calls it his “guilt pile”—from poets who want help and should receive it; only in this busy world of doing things to make a living and trying to find some time for oneself to write poetry, it isn’t usually possible to summon the time and energy it would require to deal seriously with so many requests; at least for me it isn’t. But I feel sad because I would like to help—you remember how valuable it would have been for you, and it’s an honor to get these requests. People think they have gotten to know you through your poetry and can address you familiarly (I get lots of “Dear John” letters from strangers) and that in itself is a tremendous reward, a satisfaction—if only we could attend to everybody! Actually the one poet I really wanted to know when I was young was Auden. I met him briefly twice after he gave readings at Harvard, and later on in New York I saw a bit of him through Chester Kallman, who was a great friend of Jimmy Schuyler’s, but it was very hard to talk to him since he already knew everything. I once said to Kenneth Koch, What are you supposed to say to Auden? And he said that about the only thing there was to say was, I’m glad you’re alive.
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INTERVIEWER
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Why is it always Auden?
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ASHBERY
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It’s odd to be asked today what I saw in Auden. Forty years ago when I first began to read modern poetry no one would have asked—he was the modern poet. Stevens was a curiosity, Pound probably a monstrosity, William Carlos Williams—who hadn’t yet published his best poetry—an “imagist.” Eliot and Yeats were too hallowed and anointed to count. I read him at the suggestion of Kathrine Koller, a professor of English at the University of Rochester who was a neighbor of my parents. She had been kind enough to look at my early scribblings and, probably shaking her head over them, suggested Auden as perhaps a kind of antidote. What immediately struck me was his use of colloquial speech—I didn’t think you were supposed to do that in poetry. That, and his startling way of making abstractions concrete and alive—remember: “Abruptly mounting her ramshackle wheel / Fortune has pedaled furiously away; / The sobbing mess is on our hands today,” which seem to crystallize the thirties into a few battered and quirky images. And again a kind of romantic tone that took abandoned mines and factory chimneys into account. There is perhaps a note of both childishness and sophistication that struck an answering chord in me. I cannot agree, though, with the current view that his late work is equal to if not better than the early stuff. Except for “The Sea and the Mirror” there is little that enchants me in the poetry he wrote after coming to America. There are felicities, of course, but on the whole it’s too chatty and too self-congratulatory at not being “poetry with a capital P,” as he put it. Auden was of two minds about my own work. He once said he never understood a line of it. On the other hand he published Some Trees in the Yale Younger Poets series. You’ll remember, though, that he once said in later life that one of his early works, The Orators, must have been written by a madman.
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INTERVIEWER
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Tell me about the New York school—were there regular meetings, perhaps classes or seminars? Did you plot to take over the literary world?
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ASHBERY
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No. This label was foisted upon us by a man named John Bernard Myers, who ran the Tibor de Nagy Gallery and published some pamphlets of our poems. I found out recently from one of my students that Myers coined the term in 1962 in an article he wrote for a little magazine in California called Nomad. I think the idea was that, since everybody was talking about the New York school of painting, if he created a New York school of poets then they would automatically be considered important because of the sound of the name. But by that time I was living in France, and wasn’t part of what was happening in New York. I don’t think we ever were a school. There are vast differences between my poetry and Koch’s and O’Hara’s and Schuyler’s and Guest’s. We were a bunch of poets who happened to know each other; we would get together and read our poems to each other and sometimes we would write collaborations. It never occurred to us that it would be possible to take over the literary world, so that was not part of the plan. Somebody wrote an article about the New York school a few years ago in The Times Book Review, and a woman wrote in to find out how she could enroll.
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INTERVIEWER
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What was your relation to Paris at the time when you were there—you used to drink Coca-Colas . . .
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ASHBERY
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That question probably requires a book-length essay. I did at one point in Paris develop an addiction to Coca-Cola that I’ve never had before or since, but I don’t know whether that was due to nostalgia for America or the fact that the French like it so much. Paris is the city, isn’t it, and I am a lover of cities. It can be experienced much more pleasantly and conveniently than any other city I know. It’s so easy to get around on the metro, and so interesting when you get there—each arrondissement is like a separate province, with its own capital and customs and even costumes. I used to pick a different section to explore and set out on a mini expedition, often with a movie theater in mind where they were showing some movie I wanted to see, often an old Laurel and Hardy film since I love them, especially when dubbed into French with comic American accents. And then there is always a principal cafe in the neighborhood where you can sample some nice wine and look at the people. You get to know a lot of life this way. Sometimes I would do a Proustian excursion, looking at buildings he or his characters had lived in. Like his childhood home in the boulevard Malesherbes or Odette’s house in the rue La Pérouse.
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I didn’t have many friends the first years I was there—they were mainly the American writers Harry Mathews and Elliott Stein, and Pierre Martory, a French writer with whom I lived for the last nine of the ten years I spent in France, and who has remained a very close friend. He once published a novel but never anything after that, though the novel was well received and he continues to write voluminously—poems, novels, and stories that he produces constantly but never tries to publish or show to anybody, even me—the only writer of that kind I’ve ever met. I’ve translated a few of his poems but they haven’t appeared in France, where they don’t fit in with the cliques that prevail there. Some were published in Locus Solus, a small magazine Harry Mathews and I edited—the title is taken from a novel by Raymond Roussel, whom we both loved and on whom I was once going to do a dissertation. A little later I met Anne and Rodrigo Moynihan, English painters who live mostly in France, who sponsored a review called Art and Literature, which I helped to edit. They too have remained close friends whom I see often. I return to Pierre—most of my knowledge of France and things French comes from him. He is a sort of walking encyclopedia of French culture but at the same time views it all from a perspective that is somewhat American. He once spent six months in New York working for Paris-Match, for which he still works, and we sailed back to France together on the SS France. When he set foot on French soil at Le Havre he said, It is so wonderful to be back in France! But I hate ze French!
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INTERVIEWER
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What early reading did you do, say in high school or college, that has stayed with you?
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ASHBERY
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Like many young people, I was attracted by long novels. My grandfather had several sets of Victorian writers in his house. The first long novel I read was Vanity Fair, and I liked it so much that I decided to read Gone with the Wind, which I liked too. I read Dickens and George Eliot then, but not very much poetry. I didn’t really get a feeling for the poetry of the past until I had discovered modern poetry. Then I began to see how nineteenth-century poetry wasn’t just something lifeless in an ancient museum but must have grown out of the lives of the people who wrote it. In college I majored in English and read the usual curriculum. I guess I was particularly attracted to the Metaphysical poets and to Keats, and I had a Chaucer course, which I enjoyed very much. I also had a modern poetry course from F. O. Matthiessen, which is where I really began to read Wallace Stevens. I wrote a paper, I recall, on “Chocorua to Its Neighbor.” Mostly I wasn’t a very good student and just sort of got by—laziness. I read Proust for a course with Harry Levin, and that was a major shock.
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INTERVIEWER
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Why?
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ASHBERY
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I don’t know. I started reading it when I was twenty (before I took Levin’s course) and it took me almost a year. I read very slowly anyway, but particularly in the case of a writer whom I wanted to read every word of. It’s just that I think one ends up feeling sadder and wiser in equal proportions when one is finished reading him—I can no longer look at the world in quite the same way.
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INTERVIEWER
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Were you attracted by the intimate, meditative voice of his work?
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ASHBERY
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Yes, and the way somehow everything could be included in this vast, open form that he created for himself—particularly certain almost surreal passages. There’s one part where a philologist or specialist on place names goes on at great length concerning place names in Normandy. I don’t know why it is so gripping, but it seizes the way life sometimes seems to have of droning on in a sort of dreamlike space. I also identified, on account of the girl in my art class, with the narrator, who had a totally impractical passion that somehow both enveloped the beloved like a cocoon and didn’t have much to do with her.
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INTERVIEWER
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You said a minute ago that reading modern poetry enabled you to see the vitality present in older poetry. In your mind, is there a close connection between life and poetry?
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ASHBERY
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In my case I would say there is a very close but oblique connection. I have always been averse to talking about myself, and so I don’t write about my life the way the confessional poets do. I don’t want to bore people with experiences of mine that are simply versions of what everybody goes through. For me, poetry starts after that point. I write with experiences in mind, but I don’t write about them, I write out of them. I know that I have exactly the opposite reputation, that I am totally self-involved, but that’s not the way I see it.
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INTERVIEWER
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You have often been characterized as a solipsist, and I wonder if this isn’t related to your reputation for obscurity. The way the details of a poem will be so clear, but the context, the surrounding situation, unclear. Perhaps this is more a matter of perspective than any desire to befuddle.
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ASHBERY
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This is the way that life appears to me, the way that experience happens. I can concentrate on the things in this room and our talking together, but what the context is is mysterious to me. And it’s not that I want to make it more mysterious in my poems—really, I just want to make it more photographic. I often wonder if I am suffering from some mental dysfunction because of how weird and baffling my poetry seems to so many people and sometimes to me too. Let me read you a comment that appeared in a review of my most recent book, from some newspaper in Virginia. It says: “John Ashbery is emerging as a very important poet, if not by unanimous critical consent then certainly by the admiration and awe he inspires in younger poets. Oddly, no one understands Ashbery.” That is a simplification, but in a sense it is true, and I wonder how things happened that way. I’m not the person who knows. When I originally started writing, I expected that probably very few people would read my poetry because in those days people didn’t read poetry much anyway. But I also felt that my work was not beyond understanding. It seemed to me rather derivative of, or at least in touch with, contemporary poetry of the time, and I was quite surprised that nobody seemed to see this. So I live with this paradox—on the one hand, I am an important poet, read by younger writers, and on the other hand, nobody understands me. I am often asked to account for this state of affairs, but I can’t.
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INTERVIEWER
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When you say that sometimes you think your poetry is weird, what do you mean exactly?
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ASHBERY
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Every once in a while I will pick up a page and it has something, but what is it? It seems so unlike what poetry “as we know it” is. But at other moments I feel very much at home with it. It’s a question of a sudden feeling of unsureness at what I am doing, wondering why I am writing the way I am, and also not feeling the urge to write in another way.
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INTERVIEWER
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Is the issue of meaning or message something that is uppermost in your mind when you write?
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ASHBERY
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Meaning yes, but message no. I think my poems mean what they say, and whatever might be implicit within a particular passage, but there is no message, nothing I want to tell the world particularly except what I am thinking when I am writing. Many critics tend to want to see an allegorical meaning in every concrete statement, and if we just choose a line at random, I think we will find this isn’t the way it works . . . I can’t seem to find anything that’s an example of what I mean. Well, let’s take this . . . no. Everything I look at does seem to mean something other than what is being said, all of a sudden. Ah, here—the beginning of “Daffy Duck in Hollywood,” for instance, where all these strange objects avalanche into the poem. I meant them to be there for themselves, and not for some hidden meaning. Rumford’s Baking Powder (by the way, it’s actually Rumford and not Rumford’s Baking Powder. I knew that, but preferred the sound of my version—I don’t usually do that), a celluloid earring, Speedy Gonzales—they are just the things that I selected to be exhibited in the poem at that point. In fact, there is a line here, “The allegory comes unsnarled too soon,” that might be my observation of poetry and my poetry in particular. The allegory coming unsnarled meaning that the various things that make it up are dissolving into a poetic statement, and that is something that I feel is both happening and that I don’t want to happen. And, as so often, two opposing forces are working to cancel each other out. “Coming unsnarled” is probably a good thing, but “too soon” isn’t.
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INTERVIEWER
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So for you a poem is an object in and of itself rather than a clue to some abstraction, to something other than itself?
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ASHBERY
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Yes, I would like it to be what Stevens calls a completely new set of objects. My intention is to present the reader with a pleasant surprise, not an unpleasant one, not a nonsurprise. I think this is the way pleasure happens when you are reading poetry. Years ago Kenneth Koch and I did an interview with each other, and something I said then, in 1965, is pertinent to what we are talking about: It’s rather hard to be a good artist and also be able to explain intelligently what your art is about. In fact, the worse your art is, the easier it is to talk about, at least I would like to think so. Ambiguity seems to be the same thing as happiness or pleasant surprise. I am assuming that, from the moment life cannot be one continual orgasm, real happiness is impossible, and pleasant surprise is promoted to the front rank of the emotions. The idea of relief from pain has something to do with ambiguity. Ambiguity supposes eventual resolution of itself, whereas certitude implies further ambiguity. I guess that is why so much “depressing” modern art makes me feel cheerful.
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INTERVIEWER
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Could you explain the paradox concerning ambiguity and certitude?
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ASHBERY
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Things are in a continual state of motion and evolution, and if we come to a point where we say, with certitude, right here, this is the end of the universe, then of course we must deal with everything that goes on after that, whereas ambiguity seems to take further developments into account. We might realize that the present moment may be one of an eternal or sempiternal series of moments, all of which will resemble it because, in some ways, they are the present, and won’t in other ways, because the present will be the past by that time.
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INTERVIEWER
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Is it bothersome that critics seem to have considerable trouble saying exactly what your poems are about?
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ASHBERY
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You have probably read David Bromwich’s review of As We Know in the Times. He decided that the entire book deals with living in a silver age rather than a golden age. This is an idea that occurs only briefly, along with a great many other things, in “Litany.” By making this arbitrary decision he was able to deal with the poetry. I intended, in “Litany,” to write something so utterly discursive that it would be beyond criticism—not because I wanted to punish critics, but because this would somehow exemplify the fullness or, if you wish, the emptiness of life or, at any rate, its dimensionless quality. And I think that any true work of art does defuse criticism; if it left anything important to be said, it wouldn’t be doing its job. (This is not an idea I expect critics to sympathize with, especially at a time when criticism has set itself up as a separate branch of the arts, and, perhaps by implication, the most important one.) The poem is of an immense length, and there is a lack of coherence between the parts. Given all this, I don’t really see how one could deal critically with the poem, so I suppose it is necessary for the critic to draw up certain guidelines before beginning. It was a very sympathetic review, and I admire Bromwich, but it seemed to leave a great deal out of account. I guess I am pleased that my method has given every critic something to hate or like. For me, my poems have their own form, which is the one that I want, even though other people might not agree that it is there. I feel that there is always a resolution in my poems.
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INTERVIEWER
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Did you see the controversy that erupted in The New York Review about how “Litany” should be read? Whether one should read all of voice A, then all of voice B, or intermingle them in some way . . .
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ASHBERY
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I don’t think there is any particular way. I seem to have opened up a can of worms with my instruction, which the publisher asked me to put in, that the parts should be read simultaneously. I don’t think people ever read things the way they are supposed to. I myself will skip ahead several chapters, or read a little bit of this page and a little bit of that page, and I assume that is what everybody does. I just wanted the whole thing to be, as I have said, presentable. It’s not a form that has a cohesive structure, so it could be read just as one pleases. I think I consider the poem as a sort of environment, and one is not obliged to take notice of every aspect of one’s environment—one can’t, in fact. That is why it came out the way it did.
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INTERVIEWER
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One’s environment at a single moment?
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ASHBERY
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No, it is a succession of moments. I am always impressed by how difficult and yet how easy it is to get from one moment to the next of one’s life—particularly while traveling, as I just was in Poland. There is a problem every few minutes—one doesn’t know whether one is going to get on the plane, or will they confiscate one’s luggage. Somehow I did all this and got back, but I was aware of so much difficulty, and at the same time of the pleasure, the novelty of it all. Susan Sontag was at this writers’ conference also—there were just four of us—and one night in Warsaw we were provided with tickets to a ballet. I said, Do you think we should go? It doesn’t sound like it will be too interesting. And she said, Sure, we should go. If it is boring that will be interesting too—which turned out to be the case.
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INTERVIEWER
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Given what you said about “Litany,” it seems that in a way you are leaving it up to each reader to make his or her own poem out of the raw materials you have given. Do you visualize an ideal reader when you write, or do you conceive of a multitude of different apprehending sensibilities?
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ASHBERY
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Every writer faces the problem of the person that he is writing for, and I don’t think anybody has ever been able to imagine satisfactorily who this homme moyen sensuel will be. I try to aim at as wide an audience as I can so that as many people as possible will read my poetry. Therefore I depersonalize it, but in the same way personalize it, so that a person who is going to be different from me—but who is also going to resemble me just because he is different from me, since we are all different from each other—can see something in it. You know—I shot an arrow into the air but I could only aim it. Often after I have given a poetry reading, people will say, I never really got anything out of your work before, but now that I have heard you read it, I can see something in it. I guess something about my voice and my projection of myself meshes with the poems. That is nice, but it is also rather saddening because I can’t sit down with every potential reader and read aloud to him.
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INTERVIEWER
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Your poems often have a spoken quality, as though they are monologues or dialogues. Do you try to create characters who then speak in your poems, or is this all your own voice? In the dialogues perhaps it is two aspects of your own voice that are speaking.
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ASHBERY
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It doesn’t seem to me like my voice. I have had many arguments about this with my analyst, who is actually a South American concert pianist—more interested in playing the piano than in being a therapist. He says, Yes, I know, you always think that these poems come from somewhere else. You refuse to realize that it is really you who is writing the poems and not having them dictated by some spirit somewhere. It is hard for me to realize that because I have such an imprecise impression of what kind of a person I am. I know I appear differently to other people because I behave differently on different occasions. Some people think that I am very laid-back and charming and some people think I am egotistical and disagreeable. Or as Edward Lear put it in his great poem “How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear”: “Some think him ill-tempered and queer, but a few think him pleasant enough.” Any of the above, I suppose. Of course, my reason tells me that my poems are not dictated, that I am not a voyant. I suppose they come from a part of me that I am not in touch with very much except when I am actually writing. The rest of the time I guess I want to give this other person a rest, this other one of my selves that does the talking in my poems, so that he won’t get tired and stop.
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INTERVIEWER
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So you have a sense of several selves?
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ASHBERY
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No. No more than the average person, I shouldn’t think. I mean, we are all different depending on who we happen to be with and what we are doing at a particular moment, but I wouldn’t say that it goes any further than that.
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INTERVIEWER
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Some people have thought that you set up characters who converse in several poems. One could say that in “Litany” you have character A and character B, who are very similar to one another. It is possible at times to see them as lovers on the point of separating, while at other times they look like two aspects of one personality.
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ASHBERY
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I think I am trying to reproduce the polyphony that goes on inside me, which I don’t think is radically different from that of other people. After all, one is constantly changing one’s mind and thereby becoming something slightly different. But what was I doing? Perhaps the two columns are like two people whom I am in love with simultaneously. A student of mine who likes this poem says that when you read one column you start to miss the other one, as you would miss one beloved when you spend time with the other. I once half-jokingly said that my object was to direct the reader’s attention to the white space between the columns. Maybe that’s part of it. Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.
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INTERVIEWER
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This notion of your poems being dictated makes me wonder whether, for you, composition involves something like inspiration—the poems just springing out already finished, rather than a laborious process of writing and revision.
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ASHBERY
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That is the way it has happened to me in more recent times. In fact, since I don’t have very much free time (poets seldom do, since they must somehow make a living), I’ve conditioned myself to write at almost any time. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but on the whole I feel that poetry is going on all the time inside, an underground stream. One can let down one’s bucket and bring the poem back up. (This is very well put in a passage that occurs early on in Heimito von Doderer’s novel The Demons, which I haven’t to hand at the moment.) It will be not dissimilar to what I have produced before because it is coming from the same source, but it will be dissimilar because of the different circumstances of the particular moment.
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INTERVIEWER
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Many poets have spoken of poetry coming from the subconscious mind rather than the conscious mind. Would you agree with that?
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ASHBERY
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I think that is where it probably starts out, but I think that in my case it passes through the conscious mind on its way out and is monitored by it. I don’t believe in automatic writing as the surrealists were supposed to have practiced it, simply because it is not a reflection of the whole mind, which is partly logical and reasonable, and that part should have its say too.
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INTERVIEWER
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Do you compose on the typewriter or in longhand?
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ASHBERY
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I write on the typewriter. I didn’t use to, but when I was writing “The Skaters,” the lines became unmanageably long. I would forget the end of the line before I could get to it. It occurred to me that perhaps I should do this at the typewriter, because I can type faster than I can write. So I did, and that is mostly the way I have written ever since. Occasionally I write a poem in longhand to see whether I can still do it. I don’t want to be forever bound to this machine.
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INTERVIEWER
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Do you have rituals?
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ASHBERY
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Well, one of them is to use this very old, circa 1930 I would say, Royal typewriter I mentioned. I hate to think what will happen when it finally gives out, though you can still find them sometimes in those used-office-furniture stores on West Twenty-third Street, which are themselves an endangered species. And then I procrastinate like everybody else, though surely more than most. On days when I want to write I will usually waste the morning and go for an afternoon walk to Greenwich Village. (I live nearby in Chelsea, which is a pleasant place to walk from though maybe not to.) Sometimes this takes too long and my preferred late-afternoon moment will pass. I can’t really work at night. Nor in the morning, very much, when I have more ideas but am less critical of them, it seems. I never can use the time I waste doing this for some other purpose like answering letters. It’s no good for anything but wasting. I’ve never tried Schiller’s rotten apples, but I do drink tea while I write, and that is about the only time I do drink tea. On the whole, I believe I have fewer hang-ups and rituals than I used to. I feel blocked much less often, though it still happens. It’s important to try to write when you are in the wrong mood or when the weather is wrong. Even if you don’t succeed you’ll be developing a muscle that may do it later on. And I think writing does get easier as you get older. It’s a question of practice and also of realizing that you don’t have the oceans of time to waste that you had when you were young.
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(Continues in the comments)