Friday, April 15, 2016
The Modern Attention Seeker
Well after watching Catfish I have once again been
reminded of how manipulative people can be.
Technology has advanced and given social media many forms to branch
out. However, even with all these different
formats people have been able to be able to fake an identity from the beginning
on digital social media. In this film a
woman named Angela makes a connection with a man who is miles away, and then
decided to trick him into thinking she is someone very different than who she
actually is in her life outside of the digital world. Nev, the main character, is tricked by this
woman into believing many things. Angela
tells him that the one creating all the lovely paintings is her young daughter,
Abby, and he has no reason to not believe her on this, no bond of trust has
been broken before. For a long time he believes
this little girl is almost a painter prodigy, and gets some of her paintings,
while Angela claims to be showing galleries and selling the artwork for prices
that amount to be quite large at times. I
began to feel bad for Nev when the relationships grew and one in particular
became much more intimate. The older of
Abby, whom did not exist, began to develop relationship with Nev that
eventually turned from friendship to romance. I can slightly understand how a
person would want to reinvent himself or herself to portray a more appealing and
likable person, but to do it in a manner where nothing is changed and it is
simply a massive web of lies baffles me.
She created many profiles to bolster the one she needed to appear the
most real, by giving people false friends and cousins and other family members. Another large portion of the web of lies is
that her profile was showed no true depiction of herself, only Abby had a true
representation of herself online but she had no control over that. My thoughts tended to contain dislike of Abby
and sympathy for Nev since Nev had been so betrayed. For months Nev believed he had a genuine
relationship for months until he began to pick up on the lies. The emotions he experienced were shattered
and that will hurt anyone who believed he or she was sharing those emotions with
another person. So while he was sharing
these emotions with another person, that person was a fake and none of the
characteristics they claimed to be. With
all of the lies that must be told in order to enact such deceit I cannot
understand how a person would not crumble from guilt. How could Angela, or anyone doing anything like
this, feel happy or safe for a moment knowing that all she did was a lie and
the end could only end in pain for both sides? Have people today lost their sense of conscience
and guilt entirely?
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5 comments:
I think today with the ability to put so much about yourself online it is easier to pretend to be someone else, and really hide behind the mask, even in the real world. No one truly knows who is behind the computer and if what they are saying is true.
On that note, people lie in front of people, behind people, even to themselves. Lying is nothing new. On a different perspective, we can be happy that Everything played out nicely, and that Nev may have a long term BFF now.
On that note, people lie in front of people, behind people, even to themselves. Lying is nothing new. On a different perspective, we can be happy that Everything played out nicely, and that Nev may have a long term BFF now.
I agree with you. Since the introduction of the internet, it is a lot easier to deceive people than it was in the past. One does not have to hide behind a painted mask now that they have a computer screen and distance up to thousands of miles between their victims. I understand your confusion of why Angela seemingly can perform such a feat without a blink of an eye, but I also understand the position of Angela. When one first starts to deceive, it may be as easy as a slip of a tongue and the don't want someone to catch their mistakes so they bury them in seemingly perfect veils of lace full of flawless lies that, over time, become coarse woolly blankets filled with holey deceit that no longer covers their mistakes.
I do not think they became BFFs, it seemed that Nev simply friended her on Facebook because the situation played out well. He did not appear excited to receive that painting of himself from her, or even happy, he wanted nothing to do with it, so their relationship after the whole debacle seems to be simply acquaintances.
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