Photo: Colin Anderson (Getty)
Have you been one of the countless souls perusing the realms of online dating recently? Apps like Tinder certainly have their downsides, but at least you know you’re talking to a real person, right?
Thousands of people men in China haven’t been so lucky. Not only is it being reported that singles there were talking to robots, but they were also allegedly conned out of millions of dollars in the process.
Police closed down apps associated with 21 companies, arresting more than 600 people across 13 Chinese provinces including Shanghai and Beijing.
The reason? It was discovered the apps had robots posing as hot women, women meant to lure men into spending their cold hard cash.
Police in southern Guangdong province began investigating in August 2017, after suspecting one app of fraudulently charging visitors to view pornographic videos which did not exist.
Further investigation found that technical personnel from at least one company had created fake “sexy girl” accounts. They wrote computer programs which generated greeting messages and compliments from fake accounts, and targeted these at newly registered users.
“They solicited gifts and posted other messages to lure the user into spending money, and thus illegally generating profit,” the police report reads.
Tens of thousands of people are believed to have been victimized by the smart software, costing a total around $154 million.
So basically these companies created some fairly nifty apps that had men sign up by the truck load and very few women. In order to keep interest high (for the dudes), the companies created robot women to interact with the men. After all, you can’t lose clientele. Then they took it up to eleven by luring the men into spending their money simply to talk to these robots. Clever. Shameless. And stupid.
Fellas, Rule No. 1 in the dating world: make sure she’s real before you spend money on her.
Rule No. 2: Don’t let her know you have money.
God speed.
Now give this a read: Woman Discovers Someone Is Using Her Photos To Catfish A Dude, Takes Advantage Of It
Josh Helmuth is a contributor for Crave and Mandatory, a sports guy and a long-time wannabe punk rocker. Follow him here.
