To Catfish or not to Catfish?

Catfish is a documentary which tells the story of Nev Shulman and how he got to “meet” a whole group of people who were never real. It is a very interesting situation, Angela never attempted to scam or directly harm Nev. Any damage incurred was purely emotional, and Nev did not necessarily express much emotional distress in the movie. That being said, it does not justify her actions, Nev and his brother still had to travel all the way to rural Michigan to unravel the mystery. But just as Immanuel Kant’s philosophies explains, her actions are not made any better from their consequences.

 I do not see Angela’s actions as inherently malicious, because of how unique her situation is. Her life consists mostly of caring for the family she married in to, which does not seem to be a simple task at all. Vince’s children have crippling mental disabilities, and caring for them is the brunt of her day, leaving a small section of it for the 15 profiles she ran to convince Nev of her catfish. Surely no simple task, and the film doesn’t focus much on Angela’s true intentions and thoughts in regard to all the profiles. These are mostly inner thoughts which one would never discuss publicly; much less with the focal person in the scheme.

 Living such an arduous life, it is comprehensible why Angela would seek to escape from it via these fake people. Everyone deals with stress in different ways, but inventing fake people along with involving your daughter in the matter, seems to be the most outlandish of them. It seems wrong to involve children in this, Abby had no clue that her mother was using her as a part of her intricate story. This is wrong of Angela, Abby did not consent to that, and even if she was asked, her grasp on the matter would be very loose because of her age. Personally, I feel bad that Angela has to use these fake lives to escape her own, I do not know if she was aware of how hard it would be to care for Vince’s children when she married him. Nor that she fully considered the morality of using Abby as a front for her stories. This does not make me consider her actions as clear-cut wrong, or unforgivable, they’re just sad. It’s sad that she had to do this just to feel better, I don’t know what can be done about the sitiation, but I hope that Angela is doing better 7 years later.

 P.S. That sexting was honestly the most spine-chillingly cringeworthy experience I’ve had in a long time.