"Strangers on the Internet" Podcast Episode 5: Catfishing Beyond the Tinder Swindler

Why does catfishing happen and how do we stop it?

Many people were fascinated (and horrified) earlier this year when watching the Netflix documentary "The Tinder Swindler", about which I commented here. While the phenomenon of catfishing brings its share of sympathy, victim-blaming continues to abound, and few perpetrators end up bearing the consequences of their actions.

On the fifth episode (Apple Podcasts link here) of our "Strangers on the Internet" podcast--our first-ever guest episode--my co-host Michelle Lange and I spoke to two catfishing victims that saw their lives upended by heartless narcissists. One of them, British former teaching assistant Anna Rowe, wants to see legal change after she and many others became serially abused by (as it happens) a lawyer. Our other guest, Jennifer, is a former academic who had her fourth child with a man whose own employees did not know he was leading a double life for years. We explore questions such as how to detect catfish and what justice and closure look like years down the line.

Bonus: For those interested in further readings regarding love on the Interwebs, here is a roundup of recent articles that caught my attention.

1. "The Rise of Lonely, Single Men" (Psychology Today) by psychologist Greg Matos, which argues that rising standards for dating are reducing opportunities for straight men and that they need to address their skill deficits to meet healthier relationship expectations.
2. "'Phantom Touch' and the (Real) Pleasures of Virtual Dating" (NY Times) by Madeleine Aggeler, which discusses the evolution of dating in virtual worlds and transitions to the physical realm.
3. "Why Desperate Men Are Now Catfishing Women on 'Frustrating' Dating Apps" (NY Post) by Alyson Krueger, which tells the story of straight men who decided to check out their dating app competition by creating female profiles and what they learned (or didn't). Of course, that general idea is far from new and was perhaps most famously implemented by futurist scholar Amy Webb, as she discusses in her quite entertaining book "Data, a Love Story: How I Cracked the Online Dating Code to Meet My Match".

Comments

[DaivdBehar]

Hackers and scammers should be hunted, tried, tortured and executed. To deter.

The lawyer profession is in utter failure at protecting the public. An app should replace this failed lawyer profession. Crime has updated. The lawyer has not.

[DaivdBehar]

The authors should read about the Equity Theory.

A dating site would do well to check its users' backgrounds, including health records, legal records. Then match their social equities. They would charge for such a service.

Right now 90% of the accounts are fake.

[DaivdBehar]

I do not see how the Tinder Swindler made a profit with those scam production values. They including private jet trips, restaurant meals in London, travel to Africa.

[Krayt]

A female friend warned me about "dinner hos" on dating services, just out for a nice meal.

[DaivdBehar]

After the assigned, all are straight hooers. I was shocked and dismayed. Nature has totally pranked the old dude who pretty much done sexually. These old ladies don't need an 18 year old. They need 2 of them.

And... these 18 year old boys would greatly benefit from them. I made a huge mistake running away from them at that age.

[DaivdBehar]

I would like to see the sites be held financially responsible for exposing their customers to scammers. It would be like premises security liability.

This problem is ubiquitous. Half the accounts of Twitter and of Facebook may not be human. Those sites need to refund the advertising costs if seen by bots and not by humans.

[DaivdBehar]

On balance, online dating is wonderful. I wish it was around when I was 16. I met women I never conceived could exist. Most yelled at me, and slammed the phone. One Yale indoctrinated partner at a downtown law firm got me permanently banned from Match. But I greatly enjoyed talking to them.

My experiences with regular ladies has also been wonderful, spending time in a little island free of criticism and bossiness.

This stuff should be covered in high school for a total upgrade in the female experience across the country.
https://www.aarp.org/home-family/sex-intimacy/info-08-2013/best-sex-over-50-castleman.html

People say, coffee, walk on the beach. I say, OK, but you must do the above reading. They get here. No coffee. No walk on the beach.

[DaivdBehar]

A 2011 technical advance from a brain MRI study. Breast orgasms. Different.
https://www.wellandgood.com/breast-orgasm/

[Ridgeway]

I, for one, was shocked and dismayed to learn that my phone sex interlocutor was not, in fact, a horny coed, but rather an obese, chain-smoking sexagenarian who washes herself with a rag on a stick.

Where do I pick up my check?

[DaivdBehar]

In the Philippines.

[Darth Buckeye]

I was a cis-male on dating sites between 2004 and 2008. I had a number of female friends in their mid-30s who are also using the same apps. One of my friends made a match with a good man; they have been together since 2005 and have been married since 2008. He was the exception.
My other friends matched up with a number of men and ALL of them lied about major items. Mostly it was about marital status. They claimed to be "legally separated" from their wives. Of course, there were no separation agreements; these men were just taking time-outs from their wives.
One irony of all this...the one friend who found the honest man...the others thought HE was a scammer and tried to warn her off. Oy; they were so wrong.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Why do so many people think people are devoid of agency and need Big Brother to protect them?

I know, I know, rhetorical question. Big Brother hates independent thinkers and does everything in its power to reduce people's send of responsibility and accountability. It's always someone else's fault, and only Big Brother can rein them in.

[Archibald Tuttle]

What the heck does any of this stuff have to do with law; even remotely. I looked at the posting history of Irina Manta, here on VC. She wasn't always like this.

I think she needs professional help. The VC blog needs to protect itself from posters who fall off the deep end.

[gormadoc]

It also attracts spam as dating sites are especially scummy: https://reason.com/volokh/2019/04/11/final-version-tinder-lies/?comments=true#comment-9094240

[santamonica811]

Archibald,
To answer your actual question: She has written about the need for something akin to Small Claims Court, where deceived men and women can get compensation for having been lied to and strung along by dishonest dating profiles. I trust that this corrects your claim that this stuff has nothing (even remotely!!!) to do with the law. [Not sure I agree at all with her view. But it's, of course, 100% related to the law, and to legal issues in general.]

[ReaderY]

Sue is arguing, rightly or wrongly, that there ought to be laws to protect people in these situations. The law traditionally has taken the position that fornicators are crkminals and hence don’t deserve legal protection of they screw each other in ways one of them later regrets.

[gormadoc]

"Oi, you got a loicense for that online dating account?"

[AmosArch]

Online dating is in general a scam for most men rift with bots etc. You'll have far more luck meeting people in RL. Most apps including those by Match which is monopolizing the arena by buying and killing off all the good apps, are designed more to extract money from men and to a somewhat lesser degree the desperate least attractive tier of women.

The funny thing is at the same time most also adopt a woke radical feminist antagonistic antimale stance in their marketing toward the group that provides the lion's share of their money. Going on and on about how the evil men are keeping women down and raping and abusing them. And how the algorithms (they designed) are somehow unfairly benefiting men over women and should be redesigned.

[Brett Bellmore]

I found my wife of 14 years through online dating. But I will grant that when I activated my account, the first 'woman' to contact me was from Nigeria, all of fifteen seconds after my account went live.

I found that a tiny bit suspicious.

[Roberta]

What's catfishing, and why is it supposed to be bad?

[gormadoc]

Fishing is white-coded.

[Brett Bellmore]

I guess using a fake online persona to trick somebody into a date.

[TwelveInchPianist]

There was an incident where a college football player was catfished by a gay man pretending to be a woman.

When the football player figured out that it was a man, the man purportedly attacked him and he says he was forced to defend himself.

[DaivdBehar]

Should a rape victim be allowed to attack a rapist? What about a rapist by deception?

[apedad]

Since we doing love advice on the VC, can we get a weekly blog on cooking and recipes too?

Based on Open Thursday comments, there seems to be more interest in food than dating.

/sarc