Have Uber drivers and investors been Catfished?

Did drivers get Catfished by Uber?

“Catfishing” is truly one of the most astonishing phenomena of the Internet Age.

 It’s defined as “the process of luring someone into a relationship by means of a fictional online persona.” While The concepts of lying and misrepresenting motives to gain a financial advantage may be as old as humanity, the internet and digital communications are raising this kind of deception to levels previously unimaginable.

Catfishing often involves romance scams: aging but egotistical men and women are gullible enough to believe it when a hot young porn star/supermodel  pops up on their computer full of compliments and invitations to chat.  The gorgeous bait quickly moves on to tell the target they’ve fallen in love with them, and also that they need to send money in order to stay in contact.

Astonishing as it seems, extended recorded video interview detail the stories of naïve victims who willingly and eagerly drain their bank accounts to send money to online romantic partners they have never met. In many cases, they have never even had a real-time phone conversation with the person to whom they send their entire life savings.

Who on Earth would do something so stupid? THOUSANDS of people. Maybe millions of people; only a select few actually make it onto programs like MTV’s “Catfished,” or more recently, “Social Catfish.com.”

Romance scams generate the most dramatic headlines, but there are loads of purely financial scams too. For example, when someone who claims to have secret inside information on crypto currencies to share, or wants you to sign up to their multi-level marketing pyramid scheme.

Adult human beings who desperately want to believe impossible things are true can be easily fooled. Billions of  dollars sent to Catfish proves this.

Some of these sad people are truly deluded, or possibly in beginning stages of dementia. Others cling to  magical thinking because it feeds their ego and allows them to avoid the hard work of more critical thinking.

I notice that the more episodes of Catfishing programs I watch, the less sympathy I have for the victims. Some of the people who get Catfished are incredibly arrogant: the fat, bald, ugly aging men who actually believe multiple gorgeous women in their 20s have the hots for them are hard to watch.

One woman who earns her living in finance announced she can’t be fooled because she knows how to read people, after she sent a handsome stranger a quarter of a million dollars.

It’s hard to listen as victims detail how they began by simply messaging a stranger, and were then thrilled to receive beautiful compliments and share a rosy vision of the future. Later,  they tell of the heartbreak and shattering disappointment they felt when they realized the whole thing had been a scam to get their money all along. It makes me feel sad and sorry and appalled that adult human beings can be so easily fooled.

Which brings me to the exploding number of YouTube videos featuring Uber-expert content creators complaining about how Uber scams its drivers.

In fact, it seems to me that the whole concept of Uber is a kind of Catfishing. The level of delusion and magical thinking required for a Catfisher to make a romance scam work is comparable to the level of delusion and magical thinking politicians, officials, customers and drivers must reach in order to make Uber work.

Uber has been phenomenally successful in Catfishing these groups; I tip my hat to Uber.

I recently tried to explain to a friend how simple it was to see through Uber’s sales pitch from Day One:

“Look, everyone who drives for a living knows it cost a minimum amount of money to put a vehicle on the road. A car costs $50,000. Fuel costs $xx hundreds of dollars per week. Insurance costs money; maintenance costs money; the driver has to earn enough to eat and live indoors. There is no way on Earth anyone can suddenly do all of these things for a quarter of the expense money Taxi has been spending for a century, and every politician knew it.

“We told them so at every public meeting for a decade, and they ignored it. Now, drivers are subsidizing Uber, trashing their cars and living in poverty, and everyone is somehow surprised.”

It’s bad enough that politicians and officials fell for the story, and that riders who want desperately to believe you can cross the city for $8 got sucked right in, too.

But, as in any successful Catfishing scam, there are plot twists. I am shocked by the number of DRIVERS who get Catfished by Uber. Supposedly mature and intelligent adults believed it when Uber told tells they could make $90,000 per year working part time.

Others took out loans and drove their own personal vehicles into the ground chasing surge prices and elusive lucrative runs.

And like the confused and disappointed seniors detailing their heartbreak and financial loss on “Social Catfish.com,” they show up on YouTube complaining that they are being ripped off and lied to by Uber.

I have always admired and respected people who have the patience and endurance to drive for a living, and this includes Uber drivers, too. However, trying to understand how they bought they idea they could secure a living driving for a corporation whose stated goal was to replace them with robocars at the first opportunity has been a head-scratcher.

Algorithmic pricing which allows it to hide how much of drivers’ earnings Uber is actually taking is just the most recent egregious insult, and probably won’t be the last one.

Catfishing “the process of luring someone into a relationship by means of a fictional online persona.”

It’s sad to watch Uber drivers realize they’ve been lured with lies, if and when they ever do. But after years of listening to how awful Uber is, how it disrespects drivers, passengers and investors alike, it does beg the question:

Why do you choose to continue doing business with Uber?