I’m going to make an omission I recently joined dating site to meet lady for some companionship. It’s been mainly surreal experience. Many years ago when I got divorced I’d gone on dating site and it was quite “normal” meaning you went on a site and you paid a membership fee and corresponded with interested party if you like one another you arranged a meeting if there was some chemistry you became friends and began a relationship.
Now today for some reason it’s become a minefield, why? Minefield of lady scammers but not only that there are scammer websites intent of relieving you of your hard earned money. Most of these scams are extremely elaborate ruses! Confidence tricksters slowly drawing in their prey with amazing and fantastical stories.
Such as I’m single and I have a son or daughter who has grown up and I’d like to meet someone to share my life with. I had baby when I was young in my 20’s my partner abandon me and I had to bring her or him up on my own. Now to be fair I’ve actually researched this now over number months as a hobby surreal hobby at that! I want to write down and warn others of these tricksters. Being an older man myself the confidence trickster tells you for instance that men in Russia 🇷🇺 are all drunkards and fake-less . Which is possibly true?
Men of her own age are immature and they want an older more financial and emotionally more stable man. They’re happy to leave their country and families and friends to live new life with you? Now on first reading this you’d say this definitely is a confidence trick but this happens slowly over a number of prolonged emails.
And on the story goes it draws you in like spider drawing its prey into its web of deceit. Eastern European countries especially Russians are big confidence tricksters. They will ring you and send you voice messages of their adoring love. I believe the amount of money involved must be significant. They will say they want to visit you in your country? They say they will get a loan from travel agent to pay the visa and flight costs in instalments. Suddenly they say the travel agent has declined me so I can’t get finance they say my salary is too low. Can you help what do you think? May even send you bank details of bank Kazakhstan it’s my cousins account he lives there.? Why would these tricksters spend so much time writing elaborate stories if wasn’t rewarding for them financially? The amount of money taken from both western older men and women must be significant? Could be in the millions if a thorough confidential survey was made through a reputable newspaper such as the guardian.
I must high light another country other than Russia for a special mention is West Africa called Ghana. They’re involved in scamming on an industrial scale with call centres occupied by women probably on a commission. Now they want you to send them gift cards such as Amazon and Apple. They completely fabricate woman’s profiles with photographs of ladies from god knows where.
The one site to keep clear of, when the women ask you to connect with them, is google chat. Now there are so many younger women who always seem to wear provocative low tops to titillate their prey. Now what these women do is to start exhibiting their wares on screen and try and get you to pay them with gift cards so they can cavort in front of you. Which I feel is rather degrading for them. Making themselves become sex objects on the internet. Evidently its’s known fact that young students are involved in this practice to help pay towards their tuition fees.
I guess this is tip of the iceberg of what goes on today online. But the scammers are clever and prey on both men and women who are genuinely looking for a real relationship specially older people who probably are lonely and lacking human company and companionship. Especially after the lockdown with covid virus.
I feel it’s like the wild west and minefield of traps and snares. The internet has both a positive and negative side, but it’s this dark side I’m concerned with. I fear the internet might get far worse with AI artificial intelligence.
I called the modern AI system the equivalent to Avatars. What’s an Avatar an incarnation of human form. I know people such as Elon Musk of Tesler cars and Sam Harris podcaster neuroscientist is fearful of AI especially when it gets into the wrong hands of dangerous governmental or totalitarian regimes what they can unleash upon us all.
Take Brexit and Trump I believe Russia is a maligned actor. Which is now involved in a full scale war against a sovereign independent nation of Ukraine. What did western powers when the green men of Russia invaded Crimea do zilch! That set Putin onto his later course of action with full on invasion of Ukraine. This is an inherent weakness of messy democracies! Fortunately this war has suddenly made us realise NATO is an extremely important alliance.
Trump caused diversion like Johnson with Brexit through unprecedented lies and untruths which impacted the US with its insurrection against US democracy. Trump and his acolytes spewed out lies about the electronic accounting and tallying machines during the recent US president election.
Culminating in an insurrection of the Capital building in Washington. The voting machine companies such Dominion and others have taken Fox New’s (Rupert Murdoch’s) company to court for lies and deformation. Fox News settled with Dominion voting machines before it went to court with the largest deformation financial reward ever paid to any company of £ 700 million US dollars.
Trump through Fox’s news has caused so much polarisation of US politics. Which takes us to Brexit. We in the U.K. are having to deal with aftermath of its damage to our U.K. economy. This was based upon pack lies spewed out by the U.K. right wing press and Politicians. Johnson being the loudest voice!
Let’s talk about authoritarian regimes such as Russia 🇷🇺 who use cyber propaganda as a weapon against open democratic nations. Fortunately we can see through the Ukrainians war with Russia how utterly corrupt and totally incoherent is the nature of its political system.
Look how poorly the Russian military has performed its military operations from the start of its invasion of Ukraine. Starting with initial airborne assault on the airfield north of Kharkiv which is close to the Russian border and the Russian city of Belgorod.
The Ukraine military in the early stages wasn’t fully prepared for an invasion it was touch and go if they could repel the Russians airborne helicopters troops. Fortunately the Ukrainian artillery was brought in and was able to destroy the Hostomel runway.
This was designed to stop heavy troop and armour transport planes landing. The Ukrainians were extremely successful with their artillery counter attack against the Russian airborne troops and evidently the Russian troops were completely isolated with no logistical support from heavy armour and artillery to counter the Ukrainians.
No ground attack forces from Belarus got through to relieve the Russian airborne. In the end the whole Kharkiv attack was scrubbed by the Russians. Lines of stranded Russian vehicles through poor maintenance of tyres and mechanical schedule maintenance broke down. They became completely vulnerable without air cover to artillery and infantry attacks using anti tank weapons. Tanks military support vehicles were decimated.
Okay now you might ask what’s this blog post really about Avatars? I suppose what I’m really saying it’s about disinformation, propaganda, corruption, deceit and lies.
My personal experience with dating apps and disinformation, deceit and lies in fabrication of human personas. Are Avatars of AI artificial intelligence algorithms at work here. You’re not actually corresponding with a human being at all it’s one massive con.
Like the Russian state it’s fabricate con of an economy. Underpinned by black money oil. Authoritarian regimes by their very nature are fear based. “Thought control” of all aspects of governmental authority. The dictator who governs by fear he doesn’t trust anyone so he creates segmented or compartmentalised power bases.
One component doesn’t know what the next is doing. What develops is fear of telling truth to power, massive corruption and siphoning off of the states financial resources so everyone in the various echelons of power are constantly looking over their shoulders . Corruption and lies are layered depending upon one’s rank in the dictators hierarchy.
Devil take the hindmost and the whole edifice of the state is totally corrupt and operates in a complete alternate reality. So when the military goes to war its whole logistics and operational combined operations doesn’t work in unison and military operations are complete fiasco.
When it comes up against a professional equipped highly motivated army it’s found wanting! When its military are being slowly destroyed the dictator blames everyone one else but himself for its catastrophe failure. With the dictator constantly blaming others and removing his underlings from power. Whole country becomes a paranoid catastrophic mess!
Ordinary citizens who have live and survive by their wits who themselves turn into corrupt scammers who attack the so called decadent western open democracies were in most cases truth and honesty prevails.
We in the west have to be fully aware of how such countries as Russia and certain other African nations operate especially with the cyber world which is another form of warfare against us to obtain monies illegally. We have to have systems in place to educate and block these scammers and unscrupulous actors operating with their disinformation designed to create division and discontent economic hardship in western democracies.
Here’s some simple advice firstly going on a reputable dating site look at the reviews carefully are they reputable. Don’t go on bad website whose layout design are linked to lots of other spurious dating sites. Don’t reply to people who aren’t members of the dating site. Don’t under any circumstances send money by PayPal western union or e-cards.
If you get contacts wanting emails or WhatsApp numbers or ask you to go On google chat be aware these will probably be scammers looking for money.
It’s best to try and meet as soon as possible to see if your match intellectually and physically. If you go into WhatsApp video call them to check them out.
https://ru.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/victims-of-crime/dating-scams/
US Government On Dating Scams
Australian Government on Scammers
Guardian Article on Dating Scammers
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/09/russias-losses-are-worse-than-anyone-thinks/
fighting in Ukraine