Snake Oil

“Snake oil” is often a derogatory term used to describe fraudulent and ineffective medicines. It comes from people in the past who have sold medicines and cures, often as concoction or potions with “secret ingredients” (maybe even real snake oil) claiming that their miracle product is a panacea for virtually every ailment.  Too many times people have bought the advertising claims, only to discover the snake oil didn;t work.  It's the kind of thing that gave snake oil salesmen, going door to door and town to town, bad reputations. 

Some people believe that real “snake oil,” is a real cure.  It's use as medicine is sometimes found in the lore of  Native American and Chinese folk medicine and perhaps this is why it is used to make susch auspicious claims.   However, numerous potions, mostly fraudulent money making schemes have been bought into by unsuspecting people, and as such snake oil gained it's reputation and now is associated with exaggerated claims that proved to be nothing more than fraud. 

But it is no surprise.  There is a certain connotation that comes from the serpent, Satan, in the Garden of Eden,.  Adam and Eve were the very first humans given the deceptively sugar coated promises of the poisonous words, they were decieving by the wicked salesman.  Duly anointed  with the serpentine wisdom he offered them, they believed his fraudulent claims and were deceived, since which time all of humanity has had to suffer the effects of the fall. 

In today’s world a lot of people make exaggerated claims for the sole purpose of making money form the unsuspecting and the gullible. More than actual exaggeration however, people will even sometimes outright lie, and this simply to take advantage of another.  We even like to say such folks, "speaketh with forked tongue” (like a snake) as they lie and cheat and double face others to deceive for mere financial gain. Such “snake-like” individuals have an incredible knack for truthfully speaking out of one side of the tongue while deceptively lying at the same time with the other. When they get really good at it, they are sometimes considered clever businessmen, shrewd individuals and perhaps even “wise,” all because he knows how to make money by doing so.

Sometimes such savvy entrepreneurship can actually swindle people.  If you know the right techniques you can get someone else to purchase just about anything, even perhaps a product that doesn’t work, (known affectionately as a "lemon.") The slick, slithery, snake–like marketing scheme is apt to catch someone sometime somewhere, and usually it catches a person (a.k.a. victim) unaware. Once they are bitten, the poison goes down smooth like oil, until it makes them sick. If not dead, the victim looks like a fool, because they have believed something false or fraudulent.  In business and is other matters of life such a one is left with nothing in their hands of value and no money in their wallet.

How about a machine that you can use to make your own Free Energy?  There is a computer firewall system that possesses extraordinary powers, of being faster than a speeding bullet, and it’s able to keep out every virus, (even the ones that haven’t been invented yet,)  from your hard drive. Then there’s the email that tells you that you are being contacted because you have been specially selected to “win a million dollars” but in order to claim the prize you have to send in your name, address, email address, and phone number right away. This is the kind of fancy salesmanship and entrepreneurial expertise that is analogous to charlatan.

Buyer, beware of the "snake oil."