Catfish: A Skill and a Deception

Looking back on the Catfish documentary, one can argue that it's pretty messed up. Why would someone play with someone else's emotions? Why would someone fake who they are? What is to be gained from that? Well, believe or not, catfishing is a skill. It takes a lot of work and talent to do, honestly. You have to be good at keeping up with what is happening, separating the person you are pretending to be from the person you are, and make sure that you can get inside of someone's head and make them feel sorry for you so that their "guard" is down and the brain doesn't suspect deception. I think that's the biggest thing that a catfisher has to possess: a way in which to disguise yourself so that the brain doesn't detect anything false. The human brain is a great tool at measuring judgment and reality. It can detect if someone is lying, someone is trying to trick you, etc. In fact, the brain itself can trick you. When most people talk to someone else on the internet, I think that usually they are skeptical - most of the time very skeptical, but when the catfisher makes them feel sorry for them or presents themselves in a way that the victim can relate and be comfortable with, then the brain lets its guard down. This is what happened with Nev. He let his guard down by first getting attached (or so he thought) to a girl named Abby who would paint things for him. By building this so called "bond" with Abby, a girl so far away whom he barely even spoke to, the catfisher, Angela, was able to hook him in even more - especially when she was able to present to him a new persona - her daughter Megan. By allowing Nev to communicate with "Megan" and grow more attached to her, she was able to learn more about him and talk to him herself. However, even though Angela's intentions were just to get to know Nev better because she was attracted to him because he paid her attention, a lot of catfishers have different motives. Some are to just have someone to talk to and be able to hide behind another persona, to blackmail, to be able to find out something about someone through another "person" that they normally wouldn't tell you, etc. All of these are very typical in catfishing and I have actually had experience in being catfished before. It's pretty common for someone to be hiding behind a mask of a screen and not be who they say they are. But don't we all do that? We all display ourselves in this way on the internet (including social media) that makes us look more heroic, noble, brave, and sometimes rebellious. We try not to let people see the bad things, the hard times, or anything that stands in our way. It's a matter of wanting people to accept us - and I think that's what a lot of people use it for nowadays - to find approval in the things we do and have people accept us, even though that's not who we truly are. So I think we should really ask ourselves, is the person that we are seen as on social media, on the internet, at school, at work, on break, etc., is that person truly us? Do we try to hide ourselves in multiple personas? I know that I for sure will try to be better about this.