Coy Catfish Causes Complications

                In Catfish, Nev is a photographer and an appreciator of fine arts. He gets a message from this fan which starts a long string of emails and messages. Nev is then introduced to family members and even develops a romantic interest in one of the members. Eventually, he finds out that their family band is fraudulent and that leads him to discovering the truth that Abby and her family weren’t who they portrayed themselves to be. This, in my opinion is a problem because of the extremes to which the lady went to. Allow me to explain in detail.

                The “Catfish”, as she would come to be called, went as far as having verbal phone calls with a fake voice, making 15 fake Facebook accounts, using other people’s copyrighted art as her own, using a rank stranger’s photos, and lying on her own daughter just to keep up a false façade for a man she never met (until the end of the documentary anyway). This caused a humongous misunderstanding, a big waste of time, and plenty of hurt feelings. Sure she had good intentions. She just wanted to show him her paintings of his photographs and get to know him as a person, but that could’ve easily been done without the lies.

                Some may take into consideration that she lives in a less than desirable household. This may be, but I do not see this as an excuse to string together such an intricate web of lies. She lusted for something more than the restrictive lifestyle she was confined to, but it should not have had to come at the expense of another man’s feelings, money, and time unnecessarily. Misery loves company, but we should not actively perpetuate its grasp on others. She even continued the lie when he showed up at her door and saw that her face did not match the pictures.

                All in all, the Catfish in this pilot episode did have an unfortunate home life with her extremely dependent kids- two of which were disabled mentally. She had every right to search for an outlet. However, she caused more harm than good. Had she left it at sending paintings and postcards, my opinion would be different even if it was in her daughter’s name. The moment she got romantically involved and had phone conversations and participated in intimate text messages, it went too far because tha tis when feelings get involved and things get complicated.