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Original poster

Sweet Bobby - My Catfish Nightmare on Netflix. SPOILERS

157 replies

WTF0 · 17/10/2024 22:53

Posting on here for traffic!

So I understand this documentary was based on a podcast so I’m sure some people may know the story already but what the actual FUCK?!

I wish I could say that I felt sorry for her but I just couldn’t. How do you manage to have a friendship and then romantic relationship with someone online for so long? The fact that her cousin was behind it all was so fucked up but I find it even more fucked up that her family just accepted her being engaged to someone online.

My thoughts are all over the place because I just don’t understand how you can be so desperate to be in a relationship with someone that common sense goes out of the window. As for the cousin, pure evil.

Has anyone else watched it yet?

OP posts:
TheShellBeach · 22/10/2024 18:54

Simran must have had exceptional organisational skills, and a very detailed spreadsheet.
Grin

LettuceSpray · 22/10/2024 19:00

There is quite a lot of speculation online about Simran’s identity including the fact that Simran is her real name. It would be possible to work out who she is. I am surprised someone in the press hasn’t done this yet. I am also really surprised that Netflix didn’t cover up her identity more carefully. If she is publically identified she could threaten libel or defamation. It’s very similar to the Baby Reindeer situation.

Original poster
WTF0 · 22/10/2024 21:41

Mainoo72 · 21/10/2024 18:33

She was incredibly stupid & naive. That she believed the witness protection stuff was ridiculous. Some women need to be saved from themselves. I really hate the emphasis from some cultures on women needing to be married & having children by a certain age. It’s just so regressive,

!!!

OP posts:
Original poster
WTF0 · 22/10/2024 21:44

KnottedTwine · 22/10/2024 08:37

Watched the Netflix thing last night and have listened to the podcast previously. It's a wild ride and you do wonder how she got so suckered in for so long but the catfisher created a whole network of social media contacts, many of whom were personally known to Kirat or who were a once-removed contact, so a friend of a cousin, or a colleague of someone. She had no reason to disbelieve all these people who were all chatting amongst each other and backing each other up. Although obviously it came out that it was all fake, it would seem unbelievable when you're in it that it was ALL fake, everyone was fake and you couldn't take any of it at face value.

Simran is a piece of work and the unsatisfying thing is that we are never told why or her motive. It might have started as a schoolgirl prank as she claims but she continued for years and years when she was well aware of the effect it was all having on her cousin. She must have spent hours a day being all these different people to manipulate Kirat. What was she getting out of it? Just twisted.

Do feel sorry for Kirat that she has probably lost her chance of being a mother, which is all she had ever wanted.

It might have started as a schoolgirl prank as she claims but she continued for years and years when she was well aware of the effect it was all having on her cousin. She must have spent hours a day being all these different people to manipulate Kirat. What was she getting out of it? Just twisted.

Exactly. That little paragraph at the end of the show that said Simran has issues stemming back to when she was in school, so what?! You decided to be unhinged for years and do this to a family member and for what? It’s the fact that she’s had little consequence which is insane

OP posts:
TheShellBeach · 22/10/2024 21:48

I'd be interested to know more about the issues Simran had at school.

fashionqueen0123 · 22/10/2024 21:50

Wasn’t this all happening when catfish was a huge thing on mtv?
I haven’t watched the show yet but read an article she wrote about it. What I couldn’t understand was that she had a relationship for so long- with presumably never having seen them on video let alone met them. And not the phone either - unless that’s on the programme ? That’s just ridiculous.

fashionqueen0123 · 22/10/2024 21:55

TartfulRidesAgain2 · 19/10/2024 13:47

My friend has a boyfriend who won't have sex with her and does everything possible to avoid intimacy with her. First said he couldn't sleep with her because he had liver cancer. Then when he couldn't keep that going any longer he told her it was a mistake and he couldn't sleep with her because he had hepatitis. When it transpired he didn't have that he then told her he can't sleep with her because he might have prostate cancer. Now he's been dragging it out for months pretending he still hasn't got the test results yet. Because of course if you're being tested because the hospital thinks you might have cancer they are really going to drag out giving you the test results indefinitely like that. Lie after lie after lie. Once he can't keep that one going anymore he will dream up another reason he can't sleep with her. But guess what? She's still with him because she believes everything he tells her. Trust me, there really are people out there who don't apply common sense even when the lies are this obvious. I don't understand why she still clings on to him myself but nothing I say makes any difference. I've come to the conclusion she's either so desperate for a boyfriend she'll put up with anything or she's just a bit of a mug.

Edited
Show quote history

Why would he even need to wait for a fake result! Like it wouldn’t even mean he couldn’t have sex. How has she not questioned that. 🤦🏼‍♀️ have you asked her why that means he can’t?

Kind of odd too as usually men would con someone to have def not the other way round.

I wonder if he’s married.

Original poster
WTF0 · 22/10/2024 21:57

TheShellBeach · 22/10/2024 21:48

I'd be interested to know more about the issues Simran had at school.

Same! What are these issues and how the hell have they led to this extreme level of toxicity. I wish we knew more about her tbh

OP posts:
TheShellBeach · 22/10/2024 22:02

WTF0 · 22/10/2024 21:57

Same! What are these issues and how the hell have they led to this extreme level of toxicity. I wish we knew more about her tbh

Show quote history

She's wiped practically all traces of herself from the internet.

She's clearly very adept technologically.

Cantbelievethatimafoolagain · 22/10/2024 22:17

She thought Bobby was drunk and didn't want to embarrass him at the night club.

The podcast is very detailed. Was the real life Bobby's facebook private or public? Bobby said he only knew of a simran who briefly dated his brother but it doesn't seem like they'd be Facebook friends, especially the wife Sanj. They must've had public accounts. I don't think simran would have gotten away with it so much without their photos if their profiles were private.

Cantbelievethatimafoolagain · 22/10/2024 22:19

Also simran's a psychopath! How she had the time is beyond me. Also don't get how Kirat was in an on and off relationship for 18yrs before speaking to Bobby. She should've just had an arranged marriage and saved all this heart ache.

SouthernFashionista · 22/10/2024 22:20

MonsteraMama · 18/10/2024 00:11

I think on some level she probably knew something wasn't right but continued to delude herself because the alternative was impossible to bear - disappointing her entire family.

Listen to how much she talks about the shame of being unmarried and childless in her thirties, about disappointing her family, keeping it from her father, how she's a failure, a child, incomplete, nothing without a husband. That kind of cultural pressure and generational trauma runs fucking deep and can overrule the common sense of the most commonly sensible person on earth. Plus the absolute shame of the realisation that she'd been strung along for a decade, possibly lost the chance for children... Admitting that would be hard for anyone.

(Also the cousin was fucking Machiavellian even by catfish standards, 60+ fake accounts in this web of lies, that's wild)

Exactly that. I became so fond of Kirat watching her on the programme. She was so dynamic and charismatic but that damn cousin took so much of that away. I hope she is living a good and happy life low. Her cousin will never be happy that’s for sure.

TheShellBeach · 22/10/2024 22:20

I'm more than a little surprised that Kirat didn't discover that Bobby wasn't actually a cardiologist.
Wouldn't she have googled him?

BetterInColour · 22/10/2024 22:23

The complexity of this web of lies is immense- at some points, Simran was in touch with numerous of Kirat's family members including her mum, 'herself' and other relations.

She also faked Bobby's death, got Kirat to contribute to the eulogy and set up fake funeral notices. The FB profiles had 30-40 friends on which doesn't sound like a lot these days but back then I can see it must have seemed authentic. That's some commitment to the task in hand.

She's obviously a sociopath, perhaps fixated on Kirat. It's also true she did date Bobby's brother, so there was a real-life connection there, no?

Nc4dis · 22/10/2024 23:18

What I don’t get is surely the real Bobby’s Facebook profile would have popped up at some point? As a suggested friend for Kirat. Or he would have seen a fake one using his photo.

Just so many holes - it’s mad! Like the mum not telling the dad about the engagement, or no relative of theirs bumping into the real Bobby or his family at any point.

CountTo10 · 22/10/2024 23:24

BetterInColour · 22/10/2024 22:23

The complexity of this web of lies is immense- at some points, Simran was in touch with numerous of Kirat's family members including her mum, 'herself' and other relations.

She also faked Bobby's death, got Kirat to contribute to the eulogy and set up fake funeral notices. The FB profiles had 30-40 friends on which doesn't sound like a lot these days but back then I can see it must have seemed authentic. That's some commitment to the task in hand.

She's obviously a sociopath, perhaps fixated on Kirat. It's also true she did date Bobby's brother, so there was a real-life connection there, no?

If you listen to the podcast the connection between Simran and Bobby's brother, JJ , was much more tenuous and in effect she ended up stalking him although from memory I think they dated briefly. She then started stalking him sending attention seeking messages saying she was dying etc and asking him to come to see her. However he didn't really take her seriously and it fizzled out. She then claimed JJ died which is untrue. He's alive and well but then turned her attentions to Kirat using the claim that JJ had died and give a reason for fake Bobby contacting Kirat. Although that still seems a bit odd as there still didn't seem to be a real reason for Bobby to randomly contact the cousin of his dead brother's girlfriend but Kirat didn't seem to think it odd.

TheShellBeach · 22/10/2024 23:27

Simran faked Bobby's death?

TartfulRidesAgain2 · 23/10/2024 06:40

What if the whole thing was a hoax? It’s odd there’s so little evidence of the perpetrator in this case and such little mention of them afterwards.

KnottedTwine · 23/10/2024 08:08

She was a member of the victim's extended family though.

Allfur · 23/10/2024 08:09

TheShellBeach · 22/10/2024 18:54

Simran must have had exceptional organisational skills, and a very detailed spreadsheet.
Grin

Surely she's very employable in some kind of secret service role?

BadSkiingMum · 23/10/2024 08:15

I’m part-way through the podcast and oh it’s a strange case indeed! I have finished the episode where the deception has been revealed.

I was disappointed that they didn’t go more into Sikh culture (of which I have some experience) as that would give a lot more context as to why Kirat was so attracted to Bobby.

I did rather raise my eyebrows that she was talking to him for so long when he was supposedly married early on in their friendship, as that would be a big no-no in the Sikh community - most communities really!

In fact, I wonder if the whole thing began as some kind of bizarre morality ‘test’ by Simran. She didn’t like her cousin, disapproved of her single life and wanted to see if she would take the bait of a married man.

CountTo10 · 23/10/2024 09:36

TheShellBeach · 22/10/2024 23:27

Simran faked Bobby's death?

Sim ran claimed fake Bobby had died initially when he was shot in Kenya. However he appeared in a New York hospital a few weeks later stating they told everyone he was dead was so he could be put in witness protection.

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