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Comment by MikePlacid | Hacker News Reader

> Time to retire Cinderella and similar stories.

The article mentions Tindler Swindler, and I can vouch - it's a great film. It is an absolute puzzle at first, cause the man spares no money to trigger a Cinderella in the victims: real charter jet, real high-class hotel, real flowers and gifts. And she has 0 at her bank account - what the man that can burn more money in a day that she makes in a year may potentially want from a poor girl, financially? Then the puzzle is solved (but I will not spoil here).

The film moves slowly and shows how the girls were hooked. And you can clearly see that they have no defense. Absolutely no defense, except to kill Cinderella inside herself, and before the fact at that.

But is it possible or correct to tell a girl "You should never date higher than your own status (whatever it is)"?

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Yes and yes. We've done it in the past for millennia now, and we recognize some will not heed advice regardless. It's a battle between recognizing women are individual agents who can make mistakes and bear responsibility doing so, or seeing them more akin to children.

Frankly, it's a necessity given the opposite is either stripping away rights (no humanitarian person is in favor of that) or somehow squashing every would-be predator (good luck doing that without a massive false positive population). We already see the latter happening today and many are unhappy about it.

The same is answered to people in similar situations the moment they become adults. Either we revisit all of that or keep the status quo.

I don't think it's correct. There would be much less incentive for men to seek status if it didn't widen his dating pool, and a huge amount of our society's value comes from men seeking to gain status legitimately.

I think the problem comes from attraction being hackable via a particular kind of hypernormal stimulus. It should be easier to distinguish a psychopath putting on a show from someone who is stably or meta-stably in a higher status bracket than it is. People caught in these kinds of webs mention all sorts of red flags they failed to pay proper attention to after the fact, so it's not like there's no difference. And yet, we're not evolved to pay attention to the warning signs. On the bright side, the evolutionary pressure to pay attention now is pretty great.

You can always tell them, however most are told from youth that they should always marry upwards. Your experience may vary.

The victim in Tindler Swindler was not trying to marry, upwards or otherwise. She was just... tindlering. And got this charming man with "Let's fly for a weekend in Paris on my private jet".

I do not see any possibility to resist. Yes, "It's too good to be true". But the jet was real...

The bridges being sold are real, too. The scam only works if they build some kind of relationship, whether it ends in marriage or just in a committed relationship (moving in together etc) is irrelevant.

If she was "just tindlering" (I really like the English language for the ability to verbify everything), it wouldn't have, because she's not taking out loans for each guy from tinder she spends an evening or a night with.

Yes, but the desire to form a relationship (and maybe even to form it “upwards”) - it’s a hard wired feature of a brain I believe. Woman’s brain especially. And I wouldn’t say that this wiring is unhealthy. But that guy just triggered it, “professionally”.

So, in her place - when to tell yourself to stop? Certainly not at flying by a private jet to Paris. Problem is she is hooked after that. Like yes, it is nice thing to have all these quarters dumped on your lap in a casino, but that’s exactly the proper time to leave. We had nice night in Paris, bye! Still, casinos exist and prosper. Dzin-dzin-dzin! - somebody won, why not you?

Hard stop I think should come after him asking her for money. “Our casino is experiencing some financial difficulties, could we please borrow some of your savings so that the entertainment could continue?” But we should show each girl Tinder Swindler for her to be able to do this, to stand up and leave at this time. Cause she has already placed herself into a relationship, yes. But probably wouldn’t help anyway, like teaching math has not bankrupt casinos.

I completely agree, and I'm sure it's hard to call it when emotions are running high. Reading about it, it often sounds insane what people fall for (someone in the thread mentioned a Japanese story where a woman allegedly believed she was talking to a Russian astronaut who was on the ISS at the time and needed the money to pay the landing fees!)

It's a crazy work, but you make a good point that casinos thrive while everyone preaches that the house always wins and the gambler always loses. Even with that knowledge, I suppose it would be easy enough to say "those other people got tinder-swindled, but I'd notice if that was happening to me".

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