Romance scams

You're right of course, but the guys buying the bathwater were buying into an idea rather than buying some water in a jar. It comes from the same place as guys buying stuff for a camgirl or being scammed by someone online. They've bought into a fantasy and aren't thinking logically about any of it.

I would never victim blame generally but whilst I can sort of understand people - women usually, but not exclusively - talking to someone online, mortgaging your house and sending hundreds of thousands to someone you have never even spoken to is nuts!

I'm on Facebook and I got one of these the other day "my beautiful Squirrels, I absolutely had to reach out to you as your profile picture took my breath away and made my heart sing, I must get to know you better dear heart!!"

My photo is my dog. She says thanks but no thanks!

All this digs into a primal and very deep rooted need many of us have for attachment, and when we don't have it we're likely to jump at perceived chances for int, even fictional ones. This is why so many otherwise intelligent people might fall for scams like this.

In the past months I've been scambaiting "Big-butchering" romance scammers on Skype. Skype doesn't need ID varification, so they've been using Skype profiles. I like scambaiting these in particular becuase the current wave of them appear to be doing their messaging manually. This means I get to directly waste their time on me, instead of messing about with some boring chatbot.

The pattern is easy to spot.

• They'll request a Transated conversation (which is tragically stupid when they pretend to be an English speaker) usually because they're Chinese scammers based in Cambodia or another nearby land. Their English is crap, and to mess with them I'll switch this feature off on my end intermittedly.
• They'll send basic greeting or platitude. If you reply to them at all, they will then give you a mini (fake) bio of themselves as well as photos of some attaractive typically North American woman who they managed to scrape of the internet (or I guess AI generated in some cases)
• They'll start to address you very quickly with endearing phrases like "Dear".
• They will then attempt to get your photo (which you should never send) and proceed to get you on the hook.
• Eventually, they will ask for money. The current tactic I've seen is that they need "credit to keep their internet access going". Thus you'll get the typical request for Google Gift cards and the like.

When I've got one of them hooked, I'll play along with the scam but in a way that makes it all that more difficult for them. It's a tricky balance of not calling them right out (then they'll just block you) but also making it seem like it's worth all of the hassle for a payoff.

Usually I'll give them a hard time for trying to use Skype as a dating site, and give them an even harder time for trying to use endearing phrases with me. This is mostly to eat at their own energy for doing this, but also for my own amusement. My goal is to get them to actually request money / giftcards. Once we get there I can flag that request and forward the whole chat to get the account blocked.

Normally one account being blocked isn't all that big a deal to these people, but I have noticed sizable delays in message replys with the accounts are online. My guess is that one account will attempt to scam dozens of people at once. Blocking one account could wreck a huge amount of work and really ruin a scammer's day.

I have kind of stopped doing this lately due the Skype admins being feckless. I had forwarded blatant scammers to them and they couldn't see the problem. The scammer accounts remained open and I fear that Skype might be using mod-bots to screen these cases now instead of actually reviewing them.

As much as I enjoy messing with them, I would like to see the day when this kind of thing is extinct and we find better ways to help with lonelyness.

Just proves what a wise boardsie said years ago now, may have been @Atlantic Dawn, old wans looking for pipe often get taken for thousands.

same thing my dear.

I think better of people. Only a small percentage would take advantage of a vulnerable person. Any person who respects themselves as a human being wouldn't do it. It's not in their nature.

But I agree. In your world it is very likely the same things.

Andrew Tate seems to have done well from a certain demographic.

Its interesting that there seems to be a belief that it only happens to women? When lots of men he save been scammed as well.

Something to do with misogyny maybe?

All the data that I can find suggests men are more likely victims of romance fraud although women were more likely to lose more financially.

Overall, there were 42 per cent more cases of romance scams reported by men in 2023 compared to women. And of the total romance scam cases involving men, nearly two in five (39%) involved those aged 50-70 years old, compared to 45 per cent of women. 

It seems to be on the increase also. The video in the link suggests that men are their main victims and targetted specifically.

I just found it funny that in these situations men are described as harmless and vulnerable whereas women, in the same predicament are described as having personality disorders and being mentally unstable. It's a common trope which continues to denigrate women.

I know you mean fantasist and I understand the nature of lonliness, the point I'm making is that generally women are considered mentally ill when men, suffering from the same conditions are described as lonley and vulnerable. It's often the root cause of the lack of mental health care in men, while women occupy half the psych beds in the country.

I agree though, I think it's easy to tar everyone with the same brush when there could be any number of reasons why people get taken or scammed. The video I linked above talks more concisely about relationship needs especially with respect to men and I think a lot of it applys to these kinds of scenarios.

It might seem like unrealistic ideal from your point of view. In my world it is a norm. And I was not born yesterday.

On the other hand I don't want you to spread predatory pathology as a norm. That's why I react. And I only react, when I see that people are buying it…

You'll know when it's a scammer when they start calling you "my queen" and they're stuck in a conflict zone and can't access their bank account.