In the documentary Catfish, we saw the budding relationship between the protagonist Nev and the Facebook account of Megan. This was all orchestrated by Angela, because she had made multiple fake accounts on Facebook in order to make her life more fulfilling. The reason she got away with it for so long was because she only interacted with him through messages and phone calls. I believe that part of the blame needs to go to Nev for not being skeptical at all. Somebody should not automatically think that the "perfect" person met online is actually as perfect as they seem. Everybody likes putting online the greatest aspects of themselves, and do not like to show themselves in a bad light. This is especially the case if an account is actually fake. This is besides the fact that it is hard to not sympathize with Angela for attempting to make her life fulfilling online, albeit in an unhealthy way.
I can understand why Angela did what she did, even though I do not condone it. From the documentary, it is evident that she has many hardships including raising two mentally handicapped children and a daughter. She also was not having as much success being an artist as she would have liked. This all culminated into her using Facebook as a way to escape from her harsh reality. She obviously had somewhat creepy hobby of creating accounts based off of people that she does not know and interacting with other random people such as Nev. This is not the best way to deal with her problems in reality, but she can not be blamed for trying to escape from them. The only problem is the avenue she is using.
Her situation makes me sympathize with her because it is fair to want to get away from your problems when it is not possible to easily fix the problems. The aspects of her Catfishing that made me not want to have sympathy for her was the lies she weaved, even after she was already caught. The fact that she lied about having uterine cancer bothered me the most, because cancer is something real and serious that should not be used to fish for sympathy. It is just a very despicable move. She also lied about who's pictures she used to make her catfish accounts. These were just very unnecessary and made me not want to sympathize with her.
I believe that most of the Catfishes out there do what they do because they want to make their life fulfilling. They want to be something they are not in real life. In their mind, the best way to do that is by using the pictures and information of someone else to interact with people. I sympathize with these people, because they are letting their hardships ruin their lives and are just avoiding their own problems.
2 comments:
I think Angela does deserve some sympathy, and I agree that it is still wrong. People have sad lives, but that doesn't give them the right to impede on other's lives.
I agree that Angela is deserving of some sympathy, but I feel like some of said sympathy would disappear if Nev had seemed more emotionally distraught about finding out that his long distance quasi-girlfriend did not exist. If Nev had seemed deeply affected by this, I feel like it would make it far easier to see him as a victim and far harder to sympathize with Angela.
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