Grifter shows like The Tinder Swindler, The Dropout, Inventing Anna and Bad Vegan motivate us to look at ourselves. To ask important questions like: "If a chubby loser can convince a beautiful, smart New York health nut to give him six million dollars, how come I can't get a girlfriend?"
Matt Heath: Tinder Swindler, Inventing Anna - what grifter shows say about us
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The Tinder Swindler. Photo / Supplied
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Tricking people is easy as long as you're a shameless piece of crap. Take the scammer on the Netflix docuseries Bad Vegan. He looks, talks and walks like a fraud but still manages to play on his victim's weaknesses. She wants to feel safe, she's open to spirituality, and she loves her dog.
So he pretends to be an undercover soldier and then claims he can make her dog immortal. Boom, she's in for millions. It's heartless, but it works. The toast of NYC loses her raw food vegan restaurant and ends up arrested in Tennessee after ordering a Domino's pizza.
Watch the trailer for Bad Vegan here:
A lot of people get excited by wealth. That's why the Tinder Swindler pretends to be the heir to a diamond empire. A couple of easily faked Insta shots on boats is all it takes to fool his victims he's loaded. Then counter-intuitively, they give him all their money.
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Scams come in all shapes and sizes. Some defraud people for money others just want to trick you into liking them. Love scams are all about game playing. In The Art of Seduction, Robert Greene explains this across 468 pages.
I reckon his message can be summed up in a single sentence. If you want someone to like you, pretend you're more interesting than you are, then periodically act like you don't like them. It works because people want what they can't have. Many of us don't rate ourselves, so we don't rate people who rate us. We're keen when we are treated mean.
Most people are too nice to play on human failings. We want real earned connections. We want to be liked for who we are. We will always lose to a fake German Trustafarian.
Meeting someone nice, having a good time and telling them you did is a huge mistake. Better to turn up, imply you are a wealthy undercover black ops soldier, enter into intense communication for a few weeks and then disappear. When you resurface, immediately ask for 20k.
If they question why a rich person needs cash tell them someone is trying to kill you. They'll lap it up. Honest regular chats can't compete with sporadic, exciting untruths. A random pattern of contact creates interest. The lack of a reply builds tension and anxiety.
When the scammer finally comes through, the victim experiences a dopamine hit—communicating as a decent human being gets you nowhere. There's no build-up or pay-off. Mr Hot and Cold wins every time. Add some fake glamour and intrigue, and the scammer becomes irresistible.
A critical difference between successful people and scammers is cash flow. Actual billionaire's sons don't need to drain your money. They have their own. If a rich person asks you to wire them cash, they're not rich. It doesn't matter how elaborate and exciting their story is; if they want your money, they don't have their own.
Thankfully there appears to be gravity in the system. The scammer is never happy. Whether they're after romance, money or both, they never get enough. They don't save the money they steal or build healthy lives with the people they win over. Scammers are trying to escape themselves. Wherever they go, whoever they're with and however much they have, they're still there, so they have to move on. They are compelled to keep going until their luck runs out. Most of them end up worse off than the people they have scammed.
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The best a successful grifter can hope for is a public shaming on Netflix.
