Recently, thanks to my enjoyment of the occasional scam related video on YouTube I was suggested content from the channel Catfished, a channel which, as the name suggests, targets people being catfished. More accurately, people caught in romance scams.
It’s a pretty by the books video format that always goes the same way — the victim tells their story, with cuts for a narrator and the catfished team to throw in comments, then they look into the suspected scammer account using “their tools” at socialcatfish.com… who is also their sponsor (don’t know how exactly you can be your own sponsor but okay, I guess this article is sponsored by Xadara then) which, surprise, is a pay service just like every other “look up information on people” site out there where they do research that anyone even remotely understanding of the current state of Google or Bing could do for free to find out, surprise, this handsome man or gorgeous woman they are talking to is actually a scammer from Lagos, Nigeria, who stole pictures from someone on Instagram and you’ve been sending them $100,000 over the past few months. Congratulations, we told you what you should have been able to figure out in 5 minutes of talking to them!
Okay, clearly I’m not being nice here, but honestly, I can’t be, because the only way a vast majority of these people could fall for this stuff is if they are arrogant as all hell, and in some causes as you watch the video you see them being, honestly, horrible people.
But, to put it in perspective, what 60 year old woman who looks like she spent most of her life baking in the twin suns of Tatooine would honestly think some Latin-American human Adonis would be head-over-heels in love with them? Even more importantly, why would this person with Rolex watches who clearly lives it up need you to send them money? Oh sure, they always come up with stories but seriously, the stuff falls apart at even the most cursory thought and I honestly find it pretty fucked up that anyone does fall for this stuff.
What’s more, while the people in the catfished team show sympathy to the victims, it becomes apparent at any glance that the entire program is just a drawn out advertisement for their website. While they may, in the end, successfully help people to learn how they had been scammed and to know what to look out for in the future, it’s still a level of exploitation, especially given again how, save for a very few people who you honestly feel pity for, most of these people are kind of, quite honestly, deserving of what happens to them. A glance at the comments of most videos will generally have this sentimen No, I’m sorry miss butterface, Johnny Depp is not in love with you, and him selling you an NFT for $6000 is not a good investment. Yes, this is actually in one of the videos.
I’m honestly considering doing breakdowns of some of the videos, not only as a method of boosting content production around here but also to really be able to nit-pick as, honestly, the team has a few annoying elements about it (example, they seem to think you have to use the word “actually” every sentence) and the fact they act like their website is the only thing that can find out trivial information is beyond annoying, but hey, it’s their prerogative: they are selling a service, after all, even if I think it’s a waste of money to anyone who has even an ounce of actual critical thinking skills.
That’s not to knock the entertainment value the program has, which is like watching a car crash. If you like that kind of thing then sure, binge it. I just kind of laugh because it’s just something I feel really, honestly, shouldn’t be in the format it is and is exploitative, but at the same time a lot of the “victims” really set themselves up as easy targets and are so full of themselves I lost compassion. It’s really that simple.
More to come, as always.
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