The Lies We Tell........

Take a moment and imagine that you have just met the man or woman of your dreams.  The individual may have just started out as a mere friend or associate, but your relationship with this person begins to grow.  You notice that this person has the same interests as you, connects with you on a deeper level than your friends do, and gives off an totally positive vibe every time you hang around him or her.  In short, this person is all that and a bag of chips, and the both of you start to develop feelings for one another.  Now, I want you to imagine that the person you've been connecting with was not who they said they are.  In fact, everything about that person's identity was false, and the relationship was built on lies.  In the film "Catfish," a young man named Yaniv "Nev" Schulman receives paintings of his photographs supposedly done by a little girl named Abby Pierce.  Over time, Nev stays in contact with Abby and her family via Facebook and becomes interested in Abby's older half-sister Megan Faccio.  The two of them develop an online relationship, but Nev starts to question Megan's real identity when he hears the exact songs that she supposedly wrote being performed by other artists.  After investigating in Abby's hometown of Ishpeming, Michigan, Nev, Ariel, and Henry all discover that Megan is not a real person and that Abby is not a painter.  In actuality, Angela, Abby's mother, was the one who painted the pictures and who set up multiple fake profiles on Facebook, including that of Megan.


You may be thinking that Angela is a horrible person for lying to Nev and that she was cheating on her husband due to the affectionate comments she made to Nev as Megan.  It is true that lying is wrong and those who practice it are not to be trusted whatsoever.  However, in this situation, I believe Angela's motive for lying to Nev was not motivated by greed or ill-will, but by affection.  The film showed that Angela had some feelings toward Nev, regardless of the fact that she was married.  She wanted to gain his affection and used the Internet to connect with him on a deeper scale.  Nev, in turn, did fall in love with someone, but it was not Angela.  He fell in love with Megan, the girl he thought was real and the girl that Angela probably wanted to be in real life. 


Sometimes, we may want something or someone to the point where we would do anything within our power to obtain them.  However, that someone may not share the same feelings or accept you for your true self, causing you to pose as someone more interesting.  For the person being a catfish, he or she will receive feelings from the person he or she likes, but, in actuality, that person really loves the mask, instead of the person who wears it.