“Meet amazing local singles!” “Hookup site for casual dating—find hot sex and passionate lovers!” “Meet singles near you in 5 clicks for free!”
According to a profile on an adult chat website, “Gingerhoney” is an attractive, young, American woman.
She describes herself as the best thing since honey and encourages men to call her Ginger, “the same color as my hair.” Her profile picture shows her lying enticingly on her bed and, if her clients didn’t know any better, they would assume she enjoyed chatting with them.
But her profile is completely fake. In fact, “his’‘ profile is completely fake.
Why? Because Gingerhoney is no young female model—she’s actually a Nigerian male university student named “Abiodun” (not his real name) who is one of many people paid to operate fake profiles on dating and chat websites owned by Dutch firm Meteor Interactive BV.
The sex chat website, and many like it, are generating tens of thousands of dollars from unsuspecting men across the world who believe they are paying to message–and maybe one day meet–attractive young women, when in fact, these men are getting catfished.
This is just one of the many ways the commercial sex industry profits off of misrepresentations and flat-out falsehoods.
The story of fake sex chat websites
The BBC recently produced an investigative article about the world of fake online sex chats. They reported that Gingerhoney is actually one of dozens of fake accounts that Abiodun switches between on the dating websites he works on.
However, one thing remains consistent as he changes between the accounts—on each one, he pretends to be an attractive, young woman.
Abiodun is not the only one who has access to Gingerhoney’s profile. Numerous other people manage her around the clock on a shift basis and they all possess folders of various explicit pictures of her to share in case someone they’re chatting with requests a picture.
Abiodun and his colleagues also employ a digital map tool which fakes Gingerhoney’s location to be within a 30-mile radius of the client, helping to facilitate a “connection.”
The business behind fake sex chat profiles like Gingerhoney
While most sex chat websites are free to join, clients have to subscribe to packages ranging from $6 to $300 in order to receive or send messages to the “women.”
Abiodun tells the BBC that the job is “like a customer-service job.” The aim is to keep your subscribers on the websites for as long as possible with the intention of using up their credits. Abiodun and his colleagues do this by sending longer (150+ character) messages that are “open-ended.”
They also must understand their clientele well—something they seem to be doing a very good job of. Abiodun says younger clients want to physically meet with the women they think are in their vicinity, while the older clients tend to be satisfied with sex chats, erotic photos, and videos alone.
The BBC found a mountain of evidence that Logical Moderation Solutions (LMS), an outsourcing company used by Meteor Interactive BV, has recruited, trained, and staffed hundreds of people, primarily from the Nigerian states of Lagos and Abuja, to pose as fake personas on dating websites.
The jobs are advertised all over social media websites like Twitter, Instagram, and Telegram with the goal of getting Nigeria’s unemployed, educated young people into an “online,” “digital marketing,” or “chat moderator” role while also forgetting to mention the adult content and deception they’ll have to partake in.
What do fake profiles like Gingerhoney have to do with porn?
Besides the sharing of explicit images and videos that Abiodun said he and his coworkers do with their clients, the porn industry and dating services run by companies like Meteor Interactive BV offer promises of real and intimate connection—while giving consumers the complete opposite.
They sell unattainable fantasies in order to profit off of consumers’ loneliness and need for connection. For the dating services, it’s a connection with a person who has no needs of their own and just wants to serve the person they are chatting with socially and sexually. For porn, it’s videos that portray women with unending sexual appetites, unrealistic bodies, and men that defy normal biology with their endurance.
In the end, it only hurts the consumers.
The BBC has seen comments from men online, who said they spent from $300 to $700 on these websites hoping to meet the “women” they were chatting with.
“I must have texted 20 women and was always put off when it was suggested to meet personally,” said one man, who claimed he had spent $64.99 on a site owned by Meteor Interactive.
Another man said he had “bought over $400 of credits with the understanding that the women were real… my bad at not reading the fine print,” he said.
Meanwhile, porn distorts consumers’ understanding of healthy sex by showing wildly unrealistic and toxic sexual behavior.
The cost of fake love
With sex chats, consumers can never truly know whether or not the person they’re talking to or viewing is real. With porn, consumers don’t know if the person is truly enjoying what they’re doing or being taken advantage of. You don’t know if the person is the age they say they are.
The brain, heart, world, and wallet all pay when consumers seek lies instead of what’s real.
Real love is tough, but worth it. It requires selflessness and sacrifice, but it’s genuine. Choose not to give yourself to something that can’t and won’t love you back.
To learn more about how the commercial sex industry sells lies to consumers, read this article.
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