What Is the Grift Economy?

Scrolling through platforms like Reddit, TikTok, and YouTube, one can’t help but notice a trending sentiment along the lines of "everything is a scam now." This reflects both the Internet’s terminal angstiness and the broader global malaise in the wake of—you name it—climate catastrophe, abuse of power, genocide. The list goes on. What’s interesting is that along with the big-picture complaints, there is a noticeable homing in on daily life’s hardships as not something that is an unavoidable part of being alive, but something that is actively benefiting another’s greed.

Let’s back up. Denotatively speaking, a scam is an attempt to defraud a person or group after gaining their trust. Scammers have been called by other names, such as con artists, grifters, swindlers, and hustlers. The concept is arguably as old as money, but it has roots in the shell games of ancient Greece. Think: hiding an object under one of three cups (or shells) and shuffling them around as audiences take bets on guessing the right cup. The point is to separate these audiences, known as marks, from their money by bolstering their false sense of confidence by letting them guess the right cup a few times. The story is a familiar one: in the end, the scammer’s legerdemain ensures that none of the mark’s guesses will ever be correct. The mark’s money becomes the grifter’s.

These days, the term grift economy refers not to some charlatan barking for shell game contestants in a crowded tourist trap, but to what seems to be the universal experience of being treated like a mark—whether it’s by shadowy scam hubs phishing for your credit card information, meme coin and designer bag peddlers inflating profits through manufactured scarcity, or your phone requiring you to pay a monthly fee to store your own photos. Handling your finances feels like an exercise in dodging pickpockets. 

This experience, which many TikTokers are calling the "grift economy," can be more formally defined as a systemic environment where scams, exploitation, and deceptive profit-making tactics have become normalized and pervasive. Unlike traditional shell game scams, which are isolated acts of deceit, the grift economy is embedded in everyday transactions and commercial practices, driven by modern infrastructures like subscriptions, surveillance capitalism, and seamless user interfaces that transform convenience into a trap. One TikToker’s example is particularly eye-opening: when you upload pictures of your important documents onto a cloud drive, not only does the corporation that owns that drive have access to your sensitive information, but they also get to charge you for it.

One of the key mechanisms of the grift economy is the proliferation of subscription models. From streaming services to productivity apps, companies increasingly rely on recurring payments that often go unchecked by users. These subscriptions are facilitated by seamless interfaces designed to minimize friction and resistance; however, this ease of use disguises the cumulative financial burden, transforming what seems like affordable convenience into a stealthy extraction of ongoing revenue.

Whereas grifts used to refer to one-off circumstances, now the language describing it as an economic system shows how it has evolved to describe a wider societal condition. Grifting no longer has to hide in the shadows; it’s accepted as a legitimate way to increase profits. Sometimes consumers balk at the bald-faced attempt at corporate grifting. BMW owners in cold climates got the car company to reverse its plans to charge U.S. $18 per month for heated seats—a feature that they are supposed to own once they buy the car. But many of us still rent (i.e., eternally pay for) things that used to be, and arguably should be, ours. Whereas people used to own DVDs and CDs, they now pay for streaming subscriptions. In certain countries, there’s an option to finance food delivery app orders, which some Philippine fintechs are posturing to do with their “available credit” and high payback rates. It’s the techified equivalent of owing a five-six heavy interest for a bangsilog. No wonder people feel frustrated. The gleam of convenience and exclusivity through subscriptions, interest rates, and other ownership dupes is quickly fading into existential fatigue.

Surveillance capitalism compounds this problem by monetizing personal data gathered through digital platforms. Constant tracking and targeted advertising condition users into a state of perpetual marketing exposure, a dull horror that erodes one’s sense of humanity. Scientific studies have shown that this endless targeting disrupts attention and fosters compulsive consumption, while anecdotal evidence—just look at people’s phone screens during 9/9 or 11/11 sales—reveals how consumers become trapped in cycles of spending driven by fear of missing out or social validation.

The grift economy represents a fundamental shift in how economic exploitation is embedded in the fabric of everyday life in our era of late-stage capitalism—so the bad news is that it’s kind of hard to opt out of. The fact that systemic and structural practices monetize surveillance and subscription traps means that while it is worthwhile, as individuals, to protest or boycott, it will take a whole lot more of us to challenge the hidden cost of constant manipulation and being marketed to.

This unsettling reality calls for, as a first step, a greater awareness of the grift economy as a whole—and what’s at stake when we subscribe to it (literally). Of course, critical consumption and active resistance to the mechanism of exploitation disguised as seductive convenience are helpful too. But…where does one even buy CDs anymore?

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