Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Online Dating
I expect most of you are not living in the same online dating hell that I am, so if you're not, here's a quick report from the front lines.
As you probably know, dudes outnumber actual respirating female humans by about 4:1 (average of several stats) on dating apps. There are many more “females” who are scam accounts, trying to lure desperate guys into some trap. Research has found that the leading countries of origin of these scam accounts are Nigeria, Ghana, Malaysia, and South Africa. So when you think you’re chatting with some pretty woman and the subject of money comes up, chances are you’re really chatting with some Nigerian dude.
A lot of these are easy to spot right away: the profile photos are often of a much younger woman, magazine cover gorgeous, who acts unreasonably interested in you. The more convincing ones use real photos copied from real women’s profiles. I’ve even seen terrible attempts that show different women in the various photos; it’s hard to imagine who would be fooled by that, but some must be or the scammers wouldn’t do it.
I have had a single-digit number of text chats that lasted more than a couple of messages. Fully 50% of them have been bogus:
Two have been crypto schemes. "She" talks about investment stuff and financial security, and gradually steers you into buying some random crypto, and it’s usually some fake shite crypto available on some platform that sucks your bank account dry (this scam is called “pig butchering” for some reason). I saw both of these coming a mile away, and played along long enough to learn what the scam was.
