Moral Outreach Society
Protecting American Family Values Since 1989
Because Decency Matters
Now They Are On the Payment Terminals
I had hoped, after the Arizona report, to take some time before writing again. I had hoped to gather my thoughts, review the full scope of what we are documenting, and respond with the measured tone this situation deserves. Then I received the Philadelphia photograph and I sat down immediately.
A vending machine. In Philadelphia. The sticker is not on a lamppost this time, not on a car window, not on some incidental surface that a person passes once and forgets. It is on the payment terminal. The card reader. The eport panel. The specific piece of equipment that every person who wants a bag of pretzels or a bottle of water must approach, must look directly at, must bring their hands and their wallet and their children within arm's reach of, in order to complete a transaction.
They put it right next to where the money goes.
I have now looked at this photograph for the better part of an evening. I keep returning to the placement. Not the top of the machine, not the side panel, not some out-of-the-way corner where it might go unnoticed for months. The payment terminal. Eye level for a child. Adjacent to the Visa and Mastercard logos and the Apple Pay symbol, as though it belongs in that company. As though it has earned a place alongside the legitimate institutions of American commerce.
I want to explain what bothers me most, because I think people who have not spent thirty years studying this particular operation may not see it immediately. The sticker itself says, in small text that you have to lean in to read: For a good time, scan. There is a QR code. I did not scan it. I am telling you this because I want you to understand that I know it is there and I made a deliberate choice. Someone less prepared might not make the same choice. A child, certainly, would not.
They are not just placing stickers. They are placing doorways. Each one of these stickers is an invitation with a code embedded in it, and the code goes somewhere, and the somewhere is a website that has been, as I have documented in previous correspondence, specifically designed to recruit children into what they are calling a fan club.
A fan club. On a payment terminal. In Philadelphia.
I have been at this work since 1989. I have seen campaigns come and go. I have watched organizations with far greater resources than this one attempt to do what these people are doing, and most of them eventually ran out of either money or audacity. What concerns me about the current situation — what keeps me at my desk at an hour when I should by any reasonable measure be asleep — is that this particular operation appears to be running on neither money nor audacity alone. It is running on conviction.
Convinced people are the hardest kind to stop. I know this because I am one of them.
If you see one of these stickers — on a lamppost, on a vehicle, on a vending machine, on anything — document it. Photograph it. Write to us. Do not scan the code. Do not visit the website out of curiosity, because curiosity is precisely what they are counting on.
We are three missives in now. I did not anticipate writing three. I anticipate writing more.
Vigilantly yours,
Gerald P. Whitmore
Director of Community Standards, Moral Outreach Society
Easton, Pennsylvania — Est. 1989
Editor's Note
Mr. Whitmore has been asked by several readers whether he intends to contact Philadelphia authorities regarding the vending machine placement. He has not responded to this question. We take that as a yes.