Catfish Out Of Water

            The 2010 documentary Catfish is responsible for giving an official title to the act of portraying a false online persona in order to deceive someone for personal gain. The verb “catfish”, now in most reputable dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster and Oxford, has been popularized in media by the likes of MTV, who created a similar TV series that still airs to this day. In the documentary, a young photographer from New York by the name of Yaniv “Nev” Schulman receives a painting of some of his photos from a young girl from Michigan named Abby. The two begin messaging each other on Facebook, resulting in Abby painting more and more of Nev’s paintings. Eventually, Nev gets messages from different members of Abby’s family, including her mother Angela, her father Vince, and her older sister Megan. This seemingly beneficial and altruistic exchange would only become more intense and problematic as time went on.

            Nev and Megan began to establish a relationship online, which was solely based on the images that they had seen of each other. Megan’s online profile seemed to have nothing but photogenic, professional pictures on them. Eventually, Megan began to send Nev songs that she wrote for him. Nev looks for the songs online to verify their authenticity, and finds each of the songs in the first or second result of his search. It was at this point that Nev truly began to question whether he wanted to continue with this relationship.

Nev and his brother decided to visit Michigan to verify for themselves if Megan or the family really exists. On the way, they drove by the place that Abby’s mother Angela claimed that they bought for Abby’s art studio, which was actually abandoned and up for sale. They reach Angela’s house, and she reluctantly greets them, saying that Abby was not home and that she didn’t look like her normal self, due to the effects of chemotherapy, because of a recent diagnosis of uterine cancer. Nev eventually met Abby, who reveals that she does not paint often at all, and has virtually no contact with her sister Megan. Nev calmly confronts Angela about this network of people she fabricated, and she’s forced to admit her wrongdoing.

The biggest question about this scenario is not if catfishing is wrong or not, because there is a general consensus that it should be rightfully condemned, but if the intention and circumstances of the person performing this action should take any gravity from what they’re doing. Angela had to basically give up her artistic passion to take care of her husband’s two disabled sons, and she clearly was not satisfied or happy being married to her husband. Angela did not mean to hurt Nev directly, she just thought that there was no other way to establish any kind of relationship with him. To Angela, following Machiavellian principles, the end justified the means. However, in this case, I think that she should be reprimanded for the deception and confusion that she caused Nev, but also, she should truly have time and space to focus on the consequences of her actions, because her remorse was not on full display after Nev confronted her. She still tried to lie her way out of any blame or responsibility. Honestly, Nev has far more patience than me or any other rational person would in this scenario, so hats off to him for handling this as professionally as possible. Despite any mental issues, good intentions, or familial circumstances Angela might have had, this entire situation was uncalled for, and she needed to be held accountable.