Ghostbusters.. What? What?
When the pressure's on and you don't know what to do, call ghostbusters! While that may have worked in the 80's (and everyone knows that the orange jumpsuits made all the difference) that doesn't work now. Granted, ghosts aren't real. Not in the way that actual, tangible objects are real. Those you can touch, taste, and observe. Ghosts represent an ephemeral idea, real to some - those who believe.
Sometimes in life, people have to deal with situations that aren't quite real. Why would people have to deal with them then? For the same reasons people deal with not-quite-real ghosts. These situations could be made up or socially constructed, and to many, those two ideas may be one and the same. One such example of dealing with a not quite real situation is pretexting.
Prextexting, according to the American Heritage Dictionary (Online version), is an ostensible or professed purpose, an excuse. Thus, when one (or even many) engages in the act of pretexting, the pretexting is not the real reason or motivations behind the action(s) that make up the pretexting. For example, scammers looking for personal information may pose as legitimate banks asking for personal information. The scammers don't want to be actual banks, they just want the information. Hiding the real reason or motivations is the why of the pretexting. For those who take the actions and motivations at face value, they are dealing with the not quite real situation of pretexting, even if they don't know it. Just like people who deal with ghosts, people who deal with a situation of pretexting do so because they think it is real, among other reasons.
Sometimes you have to miss the times when the answer to the question of "who you gonna call?" was "ghostbusters."
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