"The best defence against these people is self-worth" - Paul Carrick Brunson's take on catfishing

I spoke to the world's most influential matchmaker, Paul Carrick Brunson, to find out his thoughts on catfishing and the psychology behind it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia4i09kHklo

Do you think certain people are more susceptible to being targeted by online scammers or catfishes?

Yes 100% and this is going to sound very cliché but people who have lower self-esteem and lower self-worth in particular are most susceptible.

One point in example is, I just did this on my Instagram stories it was fascinating. I asked everyone to rate themselves on a scale from 1-10 with 10 being exceptional and the average score was 4. As a matter of fact, if I broke out just the ladies, I would say the average score was probably 2 to 3 or 4 for women, and imagine that. So if you’re rating yourself a 3, or a 2, or a 4 that’s how you view your self-worth.

So imagine if someone you perceive to be an 8 or a 9 or a 10 reaches out to you; you’re less reluctant to admonish them for bad behaviour, you’re less reluctant to push them away if they’re toxic. So this is exactly what happens.

Now in the Tinder Swindler, I went to the profiles of the two main subjects who were presented and quite honestly my take away was these are people who are clearly suffering from low self-worth, like clearly, without a doubt. So yes absolutely, there are people who are more susceptible than others.

Do you think there are certain generations that are more effected by catfishes?

Yeah absolutely. Obviously older, so you think baby boomers and older who are less understanding of technology but from all of the reading and the research I’ve done, even though you presume someone older would be more susceptible quite honestly, the higher likelihood is someone who has low self-worth and low self-esteem.

Even someone who is, for example, 65 and unfamiliar with how people are being catfished and unfamiliar to ask themselves relevant questions to prevent these psychopaths, in my opinion, from coming after them, I believe it’s more so predicated on self-worth and self-value.

What do you think drives or motivates a person to be a catfish?

There’s a couple of things. What we saw in the Tinder Swindler was clearly someone who was a psychopath and I think we have to recognise that a psychopath is someone that has a severe mental disorder and they truly can't recognise between right and wrong. What a non-psychopath recognises as right and wrong is not what a psychopath recognises as right and wrong and so I think that we have to understand that these are a group of people that have severe, severe mental disorders.

Now there’s something that David Botts wrote, who is one of my favourite researchers of all time; he describes the dark triad, which is not only psychopaths but also people who are narcissistic and then also people who have very Machiavellian traits. I think we have to understand that there’s a variety, or there’s a large, large group of people who want to commit harm for various reasons.

Psychopaths because they actually don’t understand what they’re doing is wrong, they don’t believe what they’re doing is wrong. Narcissists who understand but to a certain extent they believe they’re justified in doing it. So for example, 'I deserve to take your money because you’re lucky to even be in my presence'. Then you have people who go a little bit down the food chain who are just manipulative, so there’s a whole variety of people in that group.

"Everyone on this planet wants to know that they matter. In particular, they want to know that they matter to someone else."

Why do people fall for it? Are people too trusting of people they meet online?

This is something I learned from Oprah Winfrey. She said I've interviewed Kings, Queens, the Pope, CEOs, the biggest A-list celebrities and at the end of every interview all of those people, the most powerful people in the world, you know what they do? They turn to her when the cameras off and they say, did I do okay? Was that alright? Think about that.

Everyone on this planet wants to know that they matter. In particular, they want to know that they matter to someone else. That’s the reason that they’re doing it, because what he’s done is, especially in the first month, is he makes you feel as if you matter.

We need to remember that the way he swindled, it wasn't just romantically; we saw on the documentary it was romantic and platonic. But he also swindled from business people so professionally. But they all had the same thing in common, they wanted to know that they mattered. I can’t blame them for that, I can't because we’re human. They definitely made mistakes, the decision making was terrible but he’s the perpetrator of the crime not them.

What would you say to people that blame the victims; is that a societal problem?

This is a massive problem, the most startling thing I found. I watched it the day it was released and the first thing that I did was I went to the Instagram accounts of everyone who was profiled on the show, and looked again the next day and the next day and you know what happened? The swindler, his account following skyrocketed by 10s of 1000s of people. Yet the accounts of the victims were flat. People who are finding out about the psychopath chose to follow the psychopath, opposed to the victims or no one at all. THAT was the most startling and that’s scary, that’s the society that we live in now.

What sort of psychological damage do these scammers cause to the people they deceive? What do you think are the most harmful impacts they have on their victims?

I mean, death. In your research I’m sure you’re going to come across many incidents where people literally committed suicide. You also have people who were murdered so that’s the ultimate result.

But then it goes down, you have people who will be demoralised for the rest of their life. Look at the amount of money that they lost - $250,000. Someone is going to spend their lifetime making that back. Also, think of the precious time that they lost. I mean time equates to a lot more than money and these are people, he was entangled with these people some of them for years, so it runs the whole spectrum from death to simply being upset.

But there’s also a cost to society. And the reason why there’s a big cost to society is because most people who now watch that story will say 'Oh I'm not going to do online dating' or 'Now every time someone approaches me online I'm going to say no'. That’s terrible because online is the number one source for people to meet their spouse and because of them watching what’s happened to 10 people, they then project that onto themselves as it could happen.

So there’s a cost that the victims play, there’s a cost that the platforms such as Tinder play. It’s bad PR for Tinder and the match group, but then there’s a cost that society has to pay aswell.

"Catfish as a definition has changed over time. To me it's just someone who deceives, that's it."

With Simon Leviev, it wasn’t his appearance that made him a catfish, because Google and Instagram searches made him seem legitimate. How would you define a 'catfish'?

Catfish as a definition has changed over time. To me it’s just someone who deceives, that’s it. So for most it’s a deceit around appearance, but if you’re deceiving about how much money you make, if you’re deceiving about where you live, all of those things, that’s a catfish. So in my opinion he’s definitely swimming with the best of them.

Can people like this ever be stopped?

The biggest tragedy is he (Simon Leviev) didn’t even go to jail for the swindling, for the money, it was all for the passport issue so he’s never been penalised, other than now being booted off all of those platforms.

"When you have a high level of self-worth, you don't allow anyone toxic in your life."

The best defence that we have against people who want to perpetrate harm onto us is our self-worth. It truly is. It sounds very cheesy to say it but there’s a big reason for that, and that is that when you have a high level of self-worth, you don’t allow anyone toxic in your life. And this is something that we have to understand; people who are successful in life, they don’t hang on to anyone who is toxic for long, and they don’t tolerate anything that’s toxic and that is only driven from self-worth. That is your best defence; it’s not relying on the dating apps to come up with algorithms to push these folks out, it’s not thinking about quick hacks and tips to try to do background tips on people, no. It’s about having that high level of self-worth.

The next I’d say is having strong emotional intelligence, because emotional intelligence will tell you, ‘maybe it’s not right to get on this guy’s private jet the first night that I meet him, maybe something’s a little weird here, a little dodgy. So emotional intelligence is next. These are our best defence mechanisms.

Why are some people so successful from online dating and others aren’t?

There are a couple reasons why I think people are really successful in online dating. One is that they’re on many different apps. Secondly is that they’re on the apps for a long period of time. Third is that when they’re on these apps, they’re using the right images etc. this is very important.

Next is, it’s very important setting the date. This is a super hack that a friend of mine taught me whose an expert in online dating - setting the date in the chat opposed to waiting for the phone number to then set the date. The reason why is that 60% of people disconnect once you say 'Hey send me your number I’ll call you'. 60% of those then go flat.

Next is making sure the date is something simple like coffee, not extravagant like let’s meet in The Ritz-Carlton Hotel to have dinner and drinks, because you can quickly ascertain what’s happening.

The other thing is that if you say you want to meet someone for a quick coffee and they rebuff that, you know that most likely they’re not interested in anything long-term. So I mean there’s lots of these research backed techniques that most people don’t do. And if most people just do everything I just said, you’ll be much more successful, much more successful.