the.com/blackmail
the polite cousin of robbery, where the gun is your own secrets.
means To extort money or favors from someone by threatening to reveal damaging or embarrassing information about them.
from Far older and stranger than the crime it now names. In 16th-century Scotland and the English borderlands, 'mail' meant rent or tribute (from Old English 'mal,' meaning agreement or payment, possibly via Old Norse 'mal,' speech or bargain). The 'black' was the dark twist: chieftains and freebooters along the lawless border extracted 'black mail' — protection money paid in goods or labor — from farmers, in contrast to 'white mail,' the honest rent paid in silver. Pay up, or your cattle vanish and your barn burns. Over centuries the extortion shed its rural overcoat and kept only its menace, until the threat became not fire but exposure.
- origin
- Scottish word for tribute paid to border raiders
- the mail
- means rent or tribute, not the post
- black
- contrasted with honest white-silver rent payments
- legal twist
- truth is no defense to the charge
- economics
- victims often pay forever, never just once
the fappening — 2014 hacking scandal where intimate photos of celebrities were stolen and used to extort victims
jennifer lawrence case — actress targeted in 2014 with leaked photos; extortionists demanded payment to keep images private
mandy moten case — 2018 missouri woman extorted with deepfake pornography, leading to first criminal deepfake conviction