When I’m not writing for the Speccie, I’m counting my money. I picked up the habit attending St Nepo Baby, a private school that still hangs like a dead tooth over the Toorak-end of the Yarra, next to the Jeff Kennett freeway where it swerves around the school like a Formula 1 driver, and hovers over the rugby ovals of our bitter rival and much wealthier next door school, St Nepo Baby of the Cross. Yeah, those bastards.

This is a story about money, or at least the illusion of having it. I’ve just read a Tele article debating which generation had it toughest – and the winner is Gen X (1965 to 1979). I’d like to say I completely agree and am happy to speak at length to you about my struggles if you have the time, and if you don’t have the time that’s OK too. I’m still happy to talk about it, probably while you’re trying to eat breakfast.

Like Elon Musk and fellow impoverished X-ers, I’ve learned the real money is online.  According to my email inbox, last year I made 4.5 million dollars plus 2.6 million in a trust fund of Namibian relatives I did not know existed. I was made king in four different African principalities, inherited a Georgian mansion that used to be frequented by Tsar Nicholas before the Greens took over St Petersburg and it all went downhill. I even got propositioned by 350 Slavic women called Nikita who ‘like my photos’ even though I didn’t know I had any photos to like.

All this happened in my junk mail folder. X-er’s love their junk mail folder because like a Millennial self-help book it’s the art of the possible; like Barack Obama it’s the politics of hope but without Joe Biden.

Junk mail is the Las Vegas of email folders, the one where what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Where every link you open is a potential Mike Tyson white Bengal tiger. The one Astronomer CEO thought he was safely frequenting when caught on kiss cam at a concert engaged in non-HR activity with the head of HR. The irony not being the HR bit or being caught on camera but rather the getting physically aroused while watching Coldplay, the least amorous of legacy stadium bands. I know half-dead old rockers still in therapy because they went to see Coldplay in the late-1990s thinking they were seeing a U2 cover band, asking ‘Where’s Edge? Where’s Bono? Who has Viagra?’ during electroshock therapy.

What I’m talking about is opportunity cost. I had the opportunity to have and do these things. Junk mail is aspirational. If I was a real estate agent trying to sell you a house you can’t possibly afford because it will be good for my self-esteem I would call this an ‘opportunity cost’. As any qualified CPA not currently under investigation will tell you this is an economic term that describes the moment some grifter sticks their hand in your pocket and asks if you’re enjoying the view.

What I actually did was delete all the emails. I’ve read the government brochures on safe browsing and don’t hit hyperlinks headed ‘hit this hyperlink’  even when it also says, ‘performing seals’ or ‘free Port Douglas yacht’.  If attending St Nepo Baby taught me anything, it was how to deny myself happiness and enjoy self-flagellation. Fact is, I’m not that stupid. In fact, testing shows I have very good EI – emotional intelligence – which ironically, is a form of stupidity.

I refused to engage but then I cracked and did. So yes I hit the button, handing over bank account details. Why fight it? You can delete the junk mail message from the Las Vegas stripper but she’ll probably turn up later in your NY Times notifications because she’s a Harvard PhD with an OnlyFans side-hustle who’s just published a Gaza op-ed that Gavin Newsom liked.

Besides, no matter how many dodgy Slavic marriage proposals I delete, they still keep coming – it’s like I’m in the NSW parliament and no one will turn the CCTV off. In desperation I’ve considered marrying one, so the rest go away. But this won’t work, as most online women I’ve ever dated are relentless – then again they also say they’re religious, traditional and highly principled. It just depends on how much they’ve been drinking.

Many years ago, Peter van Onselen wrote an op-ed complaining about the female nudes junk email he was getting and asking the government to do something about it. This was before the misogyny speech or #MeToo so there was really no excuse for this simpering cravenness. Just hit delete like the rest of us. But then some wag in the comments section noted that receiving these emails is a result of algorithms thinking you regularly look at this sort of salacious material. The point being my algorithm clearly thinks I’m not getting enough sex. Another X-er cross to bear.

Recently my ‘Viva La Vida’ mobile ringtone went off and the screen lit up with ‘possible scam call’. I shouldn’t have engaged. I know the scam rules of engagement. Hang-Up-Immediately, Do Not Answer. Like Nancy Reagan and her cough medicine habit, just say No. But I didn’t do that, and we chatted. He said he was from Telstra and wanted my IP number.

I tested him by asking where he was based – he said Exhibition Street, so quickly it was almost scripted. I quickly did a side-Google to see if that is where Telstra is located. It isn’t, but then again it may be, maybe it’s unlisted, Telstra flying under the radar again like whenever they accidently leak your credit card details.  This was going along swimmingly in a passive aggressive way. He knew that I knew… and I knew that he knew. Which is what Hobbes meant by social contract.

He sounded familiar, and I asked, ‘Hey, did you used to go to St Nepo Baby, back in the Seventies’  and he said ‘Yeah, yeah. Great memories, right? So, can I have your IP number?’ And I handed it over, no questions because as my father once said, the reason you go to a school like St Nepo Baby is for the contacts.