003: Sweet Bobby: Podcast Reccs from Sara A.

old onto your butts, this one’s a doozey. 

Imagine meeting someone online, starting a relationship with them, and falling in love only to discover that not only has the person never really existed, but that you’ve been catfished in what would turn out to be one of the most diabolical schemes to ever hit the UK (and I’m not even giving away the craziest bits). Welcome to Sweet Bobby. 

We can all joke about how we’d never get catfished, but I bet the first part of lockdown had way more online communication than before. How many people went on Zoom dates? Anyone spent time talking to someone on Tinder/Hinge/Bumble only to have them ghost? Who’s spent time away from their partner and only communicated by text and voice message? We’re living in a pretty digital world and it’s possible to have meaningful relationships (I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise) online. Also, it wouldn’t be a healthy or normal thing to assume that this is something people do; this situation is pure insanity and the person who perpetrated it is a sociopath. 

What’s even more messed up is that the perpetrator faced no real repercussions for their actions. The thing about catfishing and digital crimes is that they’re new, so there aren’t really any laws for them and the laws we do have don’t really translate to these types of situations. The podcast does a good job of going into that and asks some good questions from people in positions of power. In the end its pretty frustrating because this woman had her whole life upended by someone who did it simply because they could. 

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