Fools For Love? review: Aoife Moore's show lifts the lid on the dark side of online dating
Aoife Moore presented Fools For Love? on RTÉ One.
There’s a moment in Fools for Love? when Detective Superintendent Michael Cryan is explaining to journalist Aoife Moore how an online romance scam typically evolves.
“The fake persona is created. The victim goes on, she clicks right, clicks left…” Moore interjects: “It’s swipe, not click.”
Cryan mightn’t be at home on a dating app but he knows who’s to blame in romance fraud. “They’re at fault… the one who set up the fake persona, they’re the one who told lie after lie… they’re the criminal.”
It’s good this is stated clearly, adamantly, because in the cold light of day the victims themselves wonder how they fell for it. Paula, who opens up about her experience in the new RTÉ documentary, always felt if she told anybody they’d laugh. “The stupid Walter Mitty stories that were coming out of his mouth. It was all just codswallop.”
But Paula had believed in all the good things: hope, romance, love, and she’d thought this connection was the “answer to my prayers”. She’d get an email from him and “it’d kind of keep me going for the day”.
The documentary, which aired on Wednesday, examines how online dating has become a staple of modern romance, holding out a promise of connection and companionship but often hiding more sinister elements. Moore uncovers the dark underbelly of this digital realm, where – aside from romance fraud – women find themselves subjected to distressing experiences, ranging from abusive messages and unsolicited explicit imagery to identify theft and revenge porn.
Among the women telling their stories is Karen, who – after ending a year-long relationship – can never fully relax because of his online threat to display intimate images of her. And Rachel, who spent €10,000 over 12 months on gifts and loans to a man who’d only meet her during the day, in his car, for coffee – she later discovered he was seeing several other women at the same time.
Through interviews with cyber psychology researcher Dr Nicola Fox Hamilton, the documentary explores why people can feel free to act badly online. Fox Hamilton explains the disinhibiting effect of the online realm, where “we’re more likely to act out in ways we wouldn’t offline”.
She observes that men on dating apps “swipe right a lot, but get little back” and – feeling frustrated, anxious and disheartened – they lash out.
Moore draws a succinct and very stark comparison: online, “Men are afraid women will laugh at them, and women are afraid men will kill them”. It underlines the urgency of another core question this documentary asks: how to make the online dating space safer for everyone.
- Fools for Love? can be viewed on the RTÉ Player
