The Tinder Swindler: Every f*ed up Thing Netflix's Documentary Reveals About Online Dating

Swipe left, swipe right, replicate until Prince Charming poses on a Yacht. You swipe right for the last time and live happily ever after. Or so dating app user Cecilia Fjelloy thought back in 2018. Netflix's latest true crime documentary reveals how our addiction to romance, and materialism leave us vulnerable to emotional scammers, who prey on our deepest desires...love, power, and exclusivity. Unlike a Disney fairytale, a frog sometimes is simply a frog.

List any 3 of your favorite Disney princess movies and I predict the plot is as follows: damsel in distress runs into a prince and they finally find true love. The idea of finding The One has been ingrained in us at an early age. The ultimate Prince is not just a sweet, sensitive, singing fool; he also parades in a Porsche and owns a private jet, the ultimate provider. Between the Boss Babe memes, material girls ,and the high-value man debates on social media, it seems like we’ve forgo real long term connections over aesthetics, likes and comments from strangers.   

Cecilie Fjellhøy, London based Senior UX and Service Designer, matches with  a diamond heir such as Simon Leviev, born Shimon Hayut, who immediately takes her out on a date to a fancy hotel to which he is a guest of. Their date goes so well that rather than your average nightcap, he invites her to his private jet for the next adventure. I mean who could possibly resist that opportunity. After  weeks of love bombing, Leviev excecuted the perfect crime, leaving Cecilie $250,000 in credit card debt and tears. Don’t laugh just yet because she is not alone. 

Despite the many Dateline episodes and true crime documentaries out there, according to research conducted by JPD, nearly 72% of people spend approximately only 15 minutes researching their dates prior to going on the date. This research also reveals that 88% of people conduct their research using social media. The reality which we all know too well, is that social media is solely a curated fantasy and not the entire picture. Have you ever seen what certain lace fronts (wigs) look like in person? If we can’t trust those, then what can we trust?  

When the internet was first released we still believed and practiced the basic principle of stranger danger. Decades after its arrival, we’ve slowly let our guards down by allowing more and more strangers to have access to us in ways we have never done before. Think back to when Facebook first launched (if you are old enough), the idea of sharing your personal photos with strangers, your ideas, your mood was foreign. With the rise of digital monetization and social media influencers, we’ve become programmed to share nearly all aspects of our lives with everyone, especially strangers. The more followers you’ve acquired the more verified and monetizable you become to others. We now share over 50% of our daily lives without even being paid to do so. This very notion of oversharing gives potential scammers access to more than just our expensive avocado toasts but now they can see what we like, where we are and how to assert themselves in our lives as they see fit.

With nearly 250 million  singles online, sex is more accessible than ever. Tinder, Bumble, Black, Hinge, Eharmony- if you want to lie to yourself a little, all apps designed to match you with a potential romantic partner or sexual intercourse.  Which means most of us have a better chance at forming meaningful connections on Too Hot Too Handle than on dating apps. Since most men want sex and women need love, according to Allan and Barbara Pease, the power dynamic of online dating shifts to the men rather than the women. Cecilie has been on Tinder for almost a decade looking for The One. Finding someone who not only is successful but is also looking for a long term partner is rare in real life and gets trickier online. 

“The worry about online dating comes from theories about how too much choice might be bad for you. The idea is that if you’re faced with too many options you will find it harder to pick one, that too much choice is demotivating. We see this in consumer goods — if there are too many flavors of jam at the store, for instance, you might feel that it’s just too complicated to consider the jam aisle, you might end up skipping it all together, you might decide it's not worth settling down with one jam.” explains Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Stanford. 

Although women hold metaphorical door to sex, men hold the other door to relationships and marriage. The high value man conversation online would agree that with access to resources, men do not feel as obligated as they once did to get married or be monogamous. There are plenty of fishes in the sea and plenty more on POF and Tinder. A woman who is looking for love might have a less pleasant experience on dating apps than a woman who’s just looking for something casual. As such, signing up for any dating app is merely a compromise on love, monogamy and eventually family. Don’t get me wrong even if I might not make it out to the actual date, I too have downloaded Bumble once or twice. The problem isn’t with the apps but rather the expectations we have going into them. So when Lev Leviev love bombs Cecilie, it’s no wonder she falls blindly in love. She believed she’d found her diamond in the rough, pun intended.

Love bombing typically occurs earlier in the relationship and is a major red flag. It refers to the rapid emotional stages a suitor expresses to their partner to show their admiration. It could look like back to back dates, overly expressing interests, expressing marital goals with said person, gifting expensive gifts and flowers for no reason in just month one or week one. Love bombing is what Prince Charming did to Cinderella after one conversation and a dance. And for a woman looking for a fairytale, it’s the perfect scenario. Until it isn’t. Love bombing intensifies the honeymoon stage of a relationship making it so easy to feel as though you are in love and miss the most obvious of red flags.

So what does this say about my favorite Disney movies and our current views on love? Does love even exist anymore or were we gaslit by romcom in the 90s and 2000s? Not all is lost in the matters of the hearts. 20% of couples met through dating apps and might have a less divorce rate than those who meet through work, friends and family.  In any case, date responsibly while you keep an open mind and heart. Know what you are looking for on and offline before jumping into anything with anyone. If it sounds too good to be true, investigate further because it might be. Never fly out of state on the first, second or third date, even if he has a private jet. And never loan any more money than you make, even if his enemies are after him.