From simple Internet users to the Toulouse Football Club and the Charente-Maritime gendarmerie, mockery has been rife on social networks since Anne's story was made public. This 53-year-old woman recounted in the show “Sept à Huit”, on TF1, that she was the victim of a fake Brad Pitt who took more than 800,000 euros from her.
The wave of cyberharassment of which she is the victim pushed her to respond in a video posted online Tuesday evening. “I am a sensible woman, if you had been in my place, you would have fallen into the trap,” she says. So can we really all be victims of such a scam?
Moments of vulnerability
Yes and no. It is a question of personality that is “more or less malleable” and subject to a situation of control, explains psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Serge Hefez. “Personality is not something fixed,” he adds. It evolves over time and circumstances, particularly when we go through periods of depression, breakups, and therefore situations of vulnerability. »
So while some people will be more able to detect the signs of a potential scam, more cautious, “depending on our emotional wounds, we all have more or less the capacity to be manipulated because we all have points of weakness” , adds Robert Zuili, psychologist specializing in emotions and author of Power of links (Mango editions). There is also the question of self-esteem which comes into play. “The weaker it is, the more malleable the person will be”, underlines Robert Zuili. This data can also vary depending on the events we experience.
This is what happened with Anne. The scammer who operated on the Internet, also called a grazer, was able to take advantage of a particularly sensitive moment in the life of the fifty-year-old: a divorce.
A more malleable personality
The strings are big, but the manipulators know how to spot their prey, “they have an acute psychological understanding of the other and their weaknesses, they perceive the need to believe, to believe in a fairy tale, and the need to believe is universal », explains the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. This is what Anne still says when she says that “if someone speaks to you kindly, says words to you that you had never heard from your own husband, yes we fall for it. That’s how it happened.”
Social networks allow grazers to cast a wide net but also to better target their victim. Thus, a person who displays his predisposition to help his neighbor will become an obvious target. “I am a caring woman, I am not crazy or stupid,” assures Anne in her video. “I just wanted to help one person. […] I was scammed,” she adds. Especially since the scam does not happen in one go. The manipulators work in stages, “little by little, they see how far the other can go, they enrich the fairy tale,” argues Serge Hefez.
When images generated by artificial intelligence are added to all the manipulation mechanics, it's the icing on the cake. “It may finally convince you, these are elements which will break down the last barriers of caution,” adds the psychologist. When you are poorly informed about these new technologies, it is all the easier to fall into the trap. Anne was also fooled by AI-generated images. After checking to see if the photos already existed on the Internet, she came to the conclusion that the photos were taken by Brad Pitt “to [elle] ».
Victim of his own gullibility
Anne talks about “moments” when she “couldn’t [croyait] not”, perhaps “forty times”. “We say to ourselves, ‘it’s not possible that it’s not true’, I’ve doubted it so many times.” In the end, “we ourselves are victims of our own gullibility and it is very difficult to regain self-esteem afterwards,” warns Serge Hefez. The injury caused by the breach of trust can be so severe that it can push you to extremes.
After three suicide attempts, Anne was hospitalized at her request in a specialized establishment for serious depression. Especially since the cyberharassment she has suffered on social networks since the broadcast of the show on Sunday, which prompted TF1 to remove her report from its platform, can worsen her mental health.
However, these mockeries of which she is the target emanate from the people who are at the origin of it as a defense mechanism. “When we ourselves feel threatened, we attack the person who confronts us with this threat,” analyzes Robert Zuili. Through this story, “everyone perceives their own share of fragility, of gullibility,” confirms Serge Hefez.
