Dating apps are an excellent way to meet someone. A buffet of potential suitors curated to your exclusive dietary preferences by the algorithm. A hassle-free injection of dopamine and desire into everyday life. Hundreds of possibilities are at your fingertips, meaning that a singular, meaningless swipe could be a step towards happily-ever-after. It sounds sweet, right?
Except, how well would you really know this someone who inspires you to swipe right? How much trust do you put in someone who manifests themselves in your phone on a Tuesday afternoon? Every iota of information that you read about them is what they want you to read. Every photograph is one that they want you to see.
Prime Video’s original documentary ROMCON: Who the F**k is Jason Porter? is centered around the terror of e-meeting such a someone who isn’t quite the man his dating profile claims him to be. Primarily told through the account of Heather Rovet, a Toronto-based real estate broker, the documentary follows her relationship with Jace Parratti, the matchmaker alias of convicted felon and swindler Jason Porter who conned several women across the GTA in a ‘career’ spanning well over a decade.
Heather’s narration is supplemented by interviews with other victims of Jace’s cons, all of whom (barring Heather) met Jace through a dating app. As the women populate the screen with their stories, they describe Jace as a charming, romantic, and overall striking man. It becomes abundantly clear that this Tinder trickster has a type. He seeks strong-willed and career-driven white women who are either working independently or entirely relieved from the shackles of a corporate 9 to 5. He scouts for women with enough expendable income, energy, and space to host a parasite like himself.
The two-part documentary intersperses interview footage with social media videos, mobile phone recordings, and recreations of real events to unravel how Porter used the internet to fabricate multiple fraudulent identities. His con was a simple one – he would pretend to be a successful software engineer who was taking a break to follow his passions. He would smooth-talk his way into these women’s lives, reusing the same pickup lines, date ideas, and love-bombing techniques to sweep them off their feet. These women were also all in their late 30s, early 40s, and in some cases even older. They would welcome the attention and companionship in an age where life begins to feel increasingly solitary.
Porter would manipulate the details of his previous marriage to portray himself as a doting husband and father who is embroiled in a custody battle for a son he loves immensely. (The custody battle had in fact ended years ago with him on the losing end.) Jace’s freeloading identity is reinforced throughout the documentary in two distinct ways: his tendency to pass off familial and personal information of partners as his own to subsequent conquests, and his visible (and welcome) absence amidst the coterie of women speaking out against him. Jason’s denial to appear in the documentary allows these women to exist in a space of narrative and confrontational freedom without a man interjecting to offer ‘his side of the story’. This victim-centred approach allows room for catharsis for these women who were all dating a man who, in turn, played up his romantic interests to further ulterior motives.
The audience has limited access to Jace who occasionally shows up in videos recorded by Heather during their relationship. The videos offer an interesting perspective on construction and reformation of identity. While the women verbally construct an image of Jace using a hatful of flattering adjectives, the audience’s impression of him is altered by the knowledge of his actions. The charm and effervescence that enamoured these women evaporates as we learn more about Jace and his reptilian demeanour. However, the fabricated restaging of real events with hired actors frequently detracts from this emotion as it portrays the early days of Jace and Heather’s “relationship” as a breezy, summery romcom as Heather imagined it. The dichotomy of the past and the present, seeing Heather’s authentic self with Jace and then alone in front of a camera filming this documentary creates an atmosphere of contemplation. This feeling is corrupted when visitations of the past are interrupted by moments that happened, but not like the ones we’re seeing on screen.
The first part of ROMCON explores the way in which Jace manipulated these women but the second part transitions from a tale of woe to wow. Simmering suspicions lead Heather to uncover Jace’s truth as Jason Porter, the man behind the mask. Heather is traumatized by the knowledge of her three-year boyfriend having multiple active dating accounts with hundreds of matches and a criminal history involving charges for fraud and breaking and entering dating back to 2012. However, instead of submitting to her misfortune, Heather turns Jace’s malfeasance against him in the form of a lawsuit. Evolving from victim to defender, Heather’s decisions emphasize her reluctance to be defined by her past, in solidarity with the women who stood with her against Jace. The lawsuit offers a reflection of the defiance of women across the world who are actively fighting battles against the patriarchy every day. The timeline of the court case, which itself spans three years, emphasizes the overburdened legal system in the country and the lengths that women have to go in search of justice while actively handling their physical and emotional trauma.
While he doesn’t appear in the contemporary interviews, Jace’s presence in the archive provides a fascinating insight into the psychology of a predator. His indifference to being recorded while dating Heather is also indicative of the idea that he never viewed these videos as potential ‘evidence.’ He’s never seen Heather as someone who could act against him. As the world transitions to an ‘always online’ form of existence where everything and everyone is documented and documenting, the documentary shows how conmen adapt to this changing tide as well. Jace’s constant hopping from woman to woman emphasizes his knowledge of the “mortality” of his identity. He is bound to get caught, but he doesn’t care—perhaps because his victims are only women and he only views women as victims, not as aggressors. Until Heather, at least.
Structurally, ROMCON is reminiscent of Netflix’s 2022 documentary The Tinder Swindler. The film includes interviews with victims of a similar conman (Lev Leviev aka Shimon Hayut) who pretended to be the son of a diamond mogul to find and attract women on the dating app Tinder, ultimately stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from them. The Netflix documentary is extravagantly occupied with high-octane chase sequences, expensive recreations with hired actors, and stories of parties on private yachts, jets, and villas, comparatively supreme to the homegrown exploits of Jason Porter. In more ways than one, the two documentaries and their respective conmen are reflections of the streaming platforms on which the docs are offered. The pulpiness of The Tinder Swindler and its fabricated emotions attempt to create a cultural moment in typical Netflix fashion, but that is not the form of true crime co-opted by Prime Video in ROMCON. Although the stories are similar with women being at the forefront of investigation and justice, ROMCON favours the emotional weight in the story and refrains from excessive recreation, ultimately respecting the women who share their stories as a cautionary tale for others, while providing insight into the leech himself.
Towards the end of ROMCON, there is a scene where Judy, one of the women who shares Heather’s experience, mentions dropping Jace off to a rooming house after she finds out his truth. It’s an emotionally rich sequence where Judy remembers Jace saying, “You don’t love me. You love the man in the condo,” referring to the fact that no one knows him and therefore no one loves him. They love the idea of the man he presents himself to be. As Judy drives Jace to his accommodation in what she calls, “not a great area,” the doc highlights the class differences between Jace and the women he pursued. This scene ascribes a Tom Ripley-esque quality to Jace whose conquests were driven by a need to climb the social ladder. A desire to be seen as the man in the condo.
So, who the f**k is Jason Porter? It depends on who you ask, but it’s a question to keep in mind the next time you consider swiping on a potential match.
