🐷 Redefining "Pig Butchering" Scam

There are far too many negative terms associated with romance scams and cryptocurrency fraud. These words only serve to dishearten victims, pushing them into silence and making it even harder for them to come forward.

But language isn’t just a tool for communication. It’s a framework that shapes thought and perception. As Michel Foucault argued, power hides in the way we speak. And as Gaston Bachelard pointed out, even a single word can carry symbolic violence. In other words, the language we use determines whose perspective gets legitimized. It governs the way we think and can force a skewed view of the world onto us.

I’m someone who deeply values reflection. I analyze everything thoroughly, questioning the motives behind the surface. After falling victim to crypto fraud, I began to wonder: why are so many victims so withdrawn, so afraid to speak up or be seen? Of course, part of the reason lies in failing to recognize the scam in time, but I believe the real culprit is the negative language society uses to define victims.

These toxic terms are perpetuated through the media, reinforcing false stereotypes about victims while sometimes even flipping the narrative, casting perpetrators as victims. One such term I want to dissect today is the “Pig Butchering” scam.

The term Pig Butchering originally came from within scam organizations themselves. It’s a brutal, dehumanizing metaphor: “fatten up the victim with deception, and slaughter them when there’s nothing left.” Later, the media and public discourse adopted the phrase. But here’s the problem. This term portrays victims as passive, ignorant pigs. It shames them into silence and guilt, locking them into a narrative centered around the scammer's perspective.

So now, I’m going to redefine this term.

Let’s ask ourselves: are the victims who work hard every day, go about their lives, and even find time to exercise because they have financial breathing room,  really the ones being fattened pigs in a pen?

Or is it more accurate to say that the scammers, who sit at their desks all day building fake social media profiles and frantically juggling chats with multiple victims, who never have time to exercise or even take care of their faces, are the real pigs here?

🐷 Scammers are the pigs

Let’s take my scammer “Ken,” for example. As far as I know, he scammed at least six Korean women (and if we dig deeper into his alternate personas, I’m sure the real number is higher). When I began bombarding him with evidence and cornering him psychologically, he finally confessed to scamming me, and even asked me how some of the other victims were doing. Totally insane behavior. (This is why I despise this guy.)

Two of the Korean victims had video calls with Ken and told me that he looked completely unkempt, older than his age, pudgy, short, and downright unattractive. His English was also terrible. When I later spoke to his superior back in March and brought up Ken, the guy smirked and asked me, “Good looking?” Are you kidding me? They’re both out of their minds. Let’s be honest. Their faces resemble pigs more than anything. I guess to a pig, another pig looks handsome.

Whenever I saw the Chinese food photos these scammers sent to their victims, all I could think was:

“These bastards are eating well.”

Honestly, if they keep stuffing their faces like that, they’ll become pigs.

They gorge on food bought with stolen money.

They are pigs.

And these pigs are insatiable.

These guys are always showing off their food photos, probably because they’re pigs.

Seriously, is that the best they’ve got? Just sending greasy food pics to victims like it’s something to be proud of. Pathetic.

Even after a victim realizes it was a scam, they still cling on, trying to scam even more.

🐷 I am butchering the pigs now

So let’s be clear: these pigs are getting fat off our money. And if we throw them in prison and recover our funds, isn’t that the real “pig butchering”? In this redefined version, the pigs are the scammers, and the ones wielding the butcher’s knife? That’s us, the victims.

So yes! What I’m doing right now is the real pig butchering.

Written by: Heesuk Paik