In the documentary Catfish photographer Nev Schulman has penned correspondence with a talented young girl through Facebook, phone calls, and mailed packages. The talented girl is named Abby and she paints very well for her age. However when corresponding to Abby's supposed step sister Megan, things get uncanny very fast. Just like Nev after reaching out to the family and especially Megan, me as the viewer started to question if Megan, Abby, or Abby's mother are even the people they said they were. Nev does research and travels to Michigan to see them in real-life. To unnerving realization he finds out that they do not look like their profile pics on Facebook and neither does Abby paint. Nev immediately is alarmed to discover this. We are alarmed as well since it is creepy that this family is impersonating others by using other peoples' pictures for their profiles. There are ethical and legal issues with forging identities or stealing the identities of others since it is fraudulent. Same case would be impersonating a police officer.
Leibniz's law on identity can be applied to this. Since both the exact and similar identities of the family members are completely different, the theorem states that the property of A is not the property of B. This can cause us to react negatively since it is uncanny that Abby's Mother used Facebook to impersonate alternative versions of each of her family members. Catfishing is the art of deceiving and this is what Abby's mother's goal is. She wanted to get closer to Nev and did so by lying, withholding the truth. There is existentialism in this documentary as well, since she holds herself in "bad faith" to carry on this scheme of having a deep relationship with Nev. This is one ethical issue with technology and it is that humans are able to create falsified identities to communicate to others. Not only should we be concerned about the ethical implications involving human-like robots and similar sentients but also be concerned about the ethical implications of technology on social media.
1 comment:
She is in bad faith, and as a viewer we feel creeped out to the extent she went to to keep her lie up.
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