When you ‘trust’ technology more than your own self

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Like millions of people all over the world, I was also surprised after watching a new documentary, ‘The Tinder Swindler’. For those who do not know, this film raises the first hand account of three female victims, which was cheated by a man who described himself to become the son of a Diamond Kingpin billionaire. He apparently planted fake articles and photographs of doses in search engines and social media. Not only this, the Instagram account, which confirm its identity to the victims, is filled with many posts showing off the lifestyle of jet settings, including European holidays and luxurious designer clothes.

Some people on the internet are called gold diggers, and some others call them easily fooled and reflexively interested in ‘bad children’. However, after deconstructing the film, I realized that more than giving up on the idea of a perfect fairy tale, we were disappointed by technology and the extraordinary ‘trust’ we placed in it. Why someone, regardless of gender, will not believe someone who has an identity and attendance made carefully on Google?

In fact, women suppress one of the basic human emotions, i.e., fear, who works like instincts and helps us identify the potential danger and warn us to stay safe when we meet someone for the first time. Instead, they flew with him on a private jet after a meeting and that was because, they trusted more technology than they trust themselves and their instincts. ‘Trust’ in Google’s results that described the man to become a sonarian son, ‘trust’ in his Instagram profile that showed his luxury lifestyle, ‘trust’ in the geotag distributed by him at WhatsApp, ‘trust’ video-video showing him and his bodyguards, Bloody, and in trouble, and ‘trust’ in the bank transfer statement sent by it – let their downfall.

Rachel Botsman, a world-famous belief and lecturer expert at Oxford University, in his book, ‘Who can you trust?’ Discuss how technology has accelerated when people put their trust in strangers. For example, people use bits of information such as rankings and reviews about Airbnb and Uber to decide whether to submit their home keys or get into a stranger’s car. This has brought us to develop the habits of direct information and people based on a few clicks. No wonder the women did not try to find more about Lev Leviev’s family and if Diamond Mogul, in fact, had a son named Simon. They trust men’s identity based on several search results that appear on Google without studying deep into the history of Leviev’s family.

Botsman, in a variety of public talks, emphasizes the need for technology to strengthen our human intelligence rather than let it take over our decision making. He asked the technology company to allow people to take a break and reflect whether they have enough information to decide whether someone is really worthy of trustworthiness or not. The digital platform can facilitate this deliberately ‘upholding friction’ or ‘pause’ between the process of rather focusing on smooth transactions, for example.

In the end, technology that promises instant results and satisfaction places us into automatic mode and limits our thinking skills and decision-making. While technology companies reflect on this, we as humans, must begin to trust ourselves more than we trust the technology. Therefore, next time when you use a navigation application to produce a faster route, I hope you pause and reflect, if it is safer to continue your regular route instead. The detour can cause a dead end because it has happened to me on several occasions.