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You can try and deny it, but we love laughing in the face of innocent scam victims. The more elaborate the scam, the louder the taunts. But at a time when anti-bullying agendas are everywhere, why are we so quick to mock the internet’s most vulnerable?
A very shoddy photoshop job went viral last week. The series of images featured Brad Pitt in various states of ill health; undergoing surgery, propped up in hospital scrubs, and holding a handwritten note to camera with the words ‘Anne I love you’.
The Anne in question was a French woman reportedly conned out of £700,000 after she believed the photos of Pitt were authentic and she was engaged in a romantic relationship with him.
Since then the 53 year old has been the target of widespread online mockery. The taunting reached such severe levels that a French broadcaster was forced to withdraw a programme about Anne a few days later, and Pitt’s team have since condemned the whole debacle.
It’s ‘awful’, a representative of Pitt’s said, ‘that scammers take advantage of fans’ strong connection with celebrities’, urging individuals to avoid online outreach, ‘especially from actors who have no social media presence.’
Hundreds of social media users, even major corporations, have jumped on the story. Netflix France put out a post on X advertising ‘four films with Brad Pitt (for real)’, while in a now-deleted post, Toulouse FC said: ‘Hi Anne, Brad told us he would be at the stadium on Wednesday… and you?’
You’d be forgiven for chuckling at the terrible photoshop involved in Anne’s downfall. And besides the comedic value of Brad Pitt smiling from the surgeon’s table, far-fetched catfish stories like these have been big business in the entertainment industry for decades now.
But, at a time when anti-bullying agendas are so pervasive and crack downs on internet trolls are dominating legislation, why are we so quick to laugh brazenly at scam victims?
Taunting individuals like Anne reflects a common but oddly selective pattern on the internet. The same people who ridicule someone duped by an online fraudster would rarely extend that derision to victims of burglary or identity theft. This disparity lies in the peculiar way digital spaces are understood.
A similar mockery storm brewed earlier this month over a very different kind of scam. Haliey Welch, known online for her viral ‘Hawk Tuah’ comment, was the center of a widespread controversy surrounding a cryptocoin launched in her name.
Despite its dubious origins, thousands of investors fell prey to the currency. It wasn’t until the creators suddenly vanished, taking millions with them, that the public realised it was a sham.
Much like Anne, victims of the Hawk Tuah coin scam were met with ridicule rather than empathy. Memes flooded social media, poking fun at their naivety.
Despite the vast anonymity of the internet and its endless rabbit holes, it’s often treated as a place of personal responsibility where vigilance is non-negotiable.
Those of us who are native in digital culture have little empathy or patience for those who don’t, despite gen-z being the only generation to have grown up with the world wide web.
Losing money to an internet scam, particularly one as far flung as an AI, hospitalised Brad Pitt, is framed as a failure – those of us who can see straight through it struggle to comprehend how another person couldn’t.
Rarely is the focus placed on the systems that enable this kind of fraud to take place – the platforms where scams proliferate, the regulatory gaps that allow fraudsters to operate, or the technological advancements that make impersonation increasingly possible (no matter how shoddy the images might be).
The rise of AI is making the proliferation of these scams all the more likely. Technological progress means that telling a fake image from a real one is becoming increasingly difficult, even for the most digital adept of us. That’s all the more reason to extend gracious to victims of online scams – especially those with such devastating consequences.
‘Most scam victims are already desperate or down on their luck’ says one Reddit user on a thread highlighting the rise of victim blaming. ‘[that’s] why many are willing (consciously or subconsciously) to overlook red flags.’
‘Next time you reply to someone looking for help after being scammed, take a moment to consider that they’re human too, and probably already feeling embarrassed, frustrated, and scared. It’s okay to be firm and realistic, but it’s not okay to be mean.’
To laugh at someone else’s misfortune is to affirm one’s own immunity to it. So our humour comes with a tacit reassurance – ’I would never fall for that’.
But this assumption is tenuous. Research consistently shows that scams are designed to bypass skepticism. They rely on psychological tactics and manipulate even the most rational minds, using urgency, authority, and emotional appeals to override logic.
Assuming we’re invulnerable to scams sidesteps the uncomfortable reality that digital fraud is not necessarily a result of personal failure but of systemic issues. Scammers constantly refine their methods with each success, using data breaches, AI tools, and social engineering to create an increasingly sophisticated con.
There’s also the added benefit of herd immunity online. If one person points and laugh, we all feel safe to do so – especially from the comfort of our keyboards.
Mocking scam victims has become an accepted norm, but it is a practice worth interrogating. It reflects a broader discomfort with vulnerability. But in a world where technology is evolving faster than the safeguards to regulate it, the distance between victim and observer is narrower than many would like to believe.
