Deconstructing ‘The Tinder Swindler’ — A Hypothesis Why A Simon Leviev and Bikram Choudhury Do What They Do
No, he will not feel guilty nor ashamed for his doing. Here’s bubbGUARD’s take why.
By Celine Jusuf, Researcher, the bubbGUARD™ project
Bubby would like to remind everyone that being a victim is no one’s fault. Bubby and the bubbGUARD team is very not pleased with any victim of violence, crime and harassment has to face public, family or friends shaming. Remember that not a single human being wanted to be a victim of these sorts.
If you would assume a Shimon Hayut a.k.a. Simon Leviev will feel guilty after a global public callout, he will not. In the Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler, Simon is exposed as a deceitful man within the context of love & honest romantic relationships. Uniquely, despite not ‘catfishing’ or pretending to be anybody but himself, what masks does he have in store to meet the world face value, within dating relationships a persona created to facilitate a means to an end, and by real examples of deceiving his lovers and gaining financial capital?
In this case, his persona would be a mask which he takes on or off, something his victims may wonder: did he actually have any real affection for me?
However, it may be that his persona and appearance genuinely reflect who he is. And, the fact that he is also capable of using deceit for a particular goal. That is, in this case, is someone who empathizes with him might say that his wounded shadow self competes for control over his actions — does he choose to love somebody genuinely or will his desire to exploit them financially eventually rule his actions?
It may be impossible to fully separate one’s motivations and desires for how they present themselves and choose to act around other people — all of our behavior is multiply determined, with a million motivations and factors influencing each one.
The positive feedback Simon receives from having undergone plastic surgery may be because it feels liberating to look a certain way — from the positive attention it gets him or not! He may enjoy it because of the positive attention alone, or because of the intrigue, or because it makes some parts of his life easier (like looking in the mirror, or getting tinder matches). We do not know, and we will never know. As psychoanalysts in training, we can only give a clinical overview and offer suggestions how to counter those maneuvers.
The same may be said of his reasons for taking retaliation or retribution against his victims and stealing their money. First of all, bubbGUARD’s founder, Rice, forms her hypothesis to label his actions as retribution cause to imply that Simon does not see himself guilty. Indeed, there may be a deep sense of shame or guilt deep down from his actions — self-inflicted or felt from the world around him, and likely deeper sense of shame for other parts of his life or his experience.
For this matter, I would say this is most likely probable, considering that he ran away when he was 18. Not to buy into the theories of familial ties, or that remaking yourself outside of the narratives you were told is inherently unhealthy — a lot of that behavior can actually be quite healing and healthy, but this seems to follow a narrative of running away from something, hinting at a deeper sense of shame below the surface. The way he conjures is like Sleeping Beauty’s spinning wheel — he continues to spin golden threads that flow like a fairytale. This method may be an interesting access to the unconscious to imprint the story you were told to believe, and to believe you can walk in those very stories. His victims have projected their fairytale dreams when they were a child. He masterfully fulfilled the simple, basic needs of his victim’s thoughts to take control of their emotions and actions.
Below, we return to the question of Simon’s personality being intrinsic or motivated by the desire to achieve something, or both — let’s turn to Bikram.
Bikram Choudbury is also a fine example of Hollywood’s rags to riches dream. Like Simon, seemingly grew up in a low socioeconomic status, and has similarly remade himself into a flashy archetype which earns him security and respect — two things both characters likely lacked as children, and seemingly are striving to earn through financial capital. Let’s take a minute to pause and reflect on what automatically becomes a scarcity and what inherent traumas lie when growing up in poverty.
His documentary titled ‘Bikram: Yogi — Guru — Predator’, also available in Netflix, and why Rice found out about the movie because the Netflix algorithm gives similar titles to ‘The Tinder Swindler’, acknowledges that within the capitalist contexts both characters grow up and exist in, poverty is absolutely an artificially created scarcity.
Respect becomes a scarcity, as well as having control over how people perceive or judge you. Having power and the means to influence your outcomes — including accessing different services, materials, or purchasing different necessities or things that feel authentic to your self-expression also become scarcities in poverty.
We see Bikram go through abusive power plays and spiritual bypassing, engaging in sexual misconduct enacted by a sort of god complex — and how can we tie this god complex into a deep insecurity and fear of not being good enough? If we consider the supposed inner peace of someone who considers himself a spiritual leader or practitioner, what is the motivation for abusing such power and influence? And how does he see it as justified?
Unconsciously, Bikram’s power plays may be a means of feeling control and security, of proving to himself that he has the means to control his outcomes, including how people perceive him and how much respect and power he has. These are things he was deprived of as a child, and he was likely made to feel disrespected on the basis of his poverty, amongst other things. Often times with unhealed trauma or wounds we may go searching for what we think we deserved or wanted in the past, even if it means crossing lines and having unnecessary amounts of control. Get this: Bikram’s trauma brain has been activated to perceive an artificial scarcity in the amount of love, security, and respect he can receive — there is always an anxiousness and edge that it will be taken away, or never enough, just like in his past. And thus one can compensate by over-exerting their power and influence.
Let’s not forget that our globalization is imbued with colonialism and international exports. Rice peppers a little on Americanization of cultural products: Movies, TVs, Films, Shows. I will add food exports, beverages, and so forth. The whole world practically watches English content and consume import goods, thus, may grow a deep influence to aspire to be, look, and eat like them. The perpetual image of success always comes from The West and never from ‘the Orient’, an archaic term used by White voyagers to describe the East. Here is Bikram, arriving in the West, and then to build his empire, in the West. He certainly has exceeded a surplus of satisfaction and feelings of success, especially comparing his status among his homeland acquaintances.
If we think about Bikram’s and Simon’s capacity to be genuinely loving and compassionate towards themselves, we may see what they have in common — an unhealed and lacking capacity to feel belonging or secure. As Rice pointed out Simon’s lack of own identity within ‘The Lover’ shadow (understand this Jungian-based Archetype here via Art of Manliness), it may be that both men are simply coping with their trauma wounds — their initial experiences with being made to feel ‘less-than’, the best way they know how, through a hierarchical means of abusing power and influence.
Ultimately, I would argue that neither man want to be this way — including Simon’s so-called desire to manipulate his lovers, and Bikram’s desire to abuse — but these coping mechanisms are the best they’ve ever learned. Perhaps if they had healed particular childhood wounds, or had the capacity to feel what love and respect without scarcity felt like, they would not have acted out in these ways.
The film documentary ‘The Tinder Swindler’ and ‘Bikram: Yogi — Guru — Predator’ is available on Netflix.
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Editor and Project Founder: , Rice writes
