Science & Tech Quote by Armistead Maupin

Anxiety here doesn’t come dressed as paranoia; it arrives as a measured, almost reluctant realism. Maupin’s line is built on a careful escalation: not “fraud exists,” but “I’m acutely aware” of its increased likelihood. That phrasing frames suspicion as a kind of civic literacy, the grown-up posture of someone who’s watched the world speed up and get slipperier. It’s a novelist’s voice doing what novelists do best: tracing how technology rearranges human intimacy, then noticing the darker drafts that rush in.

The subtext is less about criminals than about architecture. “Internet and cell phones” aren’t villains; they’re amplifiers. The key clause is “instant communication with strangers,” which captures a modern paradox: connection has become effortless, while trust has become labor. In earlier eras, fraud required proximity, time, and a certain social friction. Now the con artist doesn’t need to enter your town or your life; they just need to enter your notifications. Maupin is pointing to the way speed itself erodes our customary safeguards - the pause where doubt forms, the community context that vouches for a person, the cost of sustained deception.

Context matters: Maupin, best known for chronicling chosen families and urban networks, understands how strangers can become lifelines. That’s why the line lands with a faint moral ache. The same systems that let marginalized people find one another also let bad actors find everyone. It’s not a technophobic complaint; it’s a lament about the price of a world where access is cheap and authenticity is expensive.