The documentary Catfish explores the previously unknown phenomenon of posing as a different person online in order to interact with someone else. Before this documentary many people would not have thought to verify the actual existence of a newly met online contact or friend. The story begins with a New York City man, Nev Schulman, lured into an internet relationship with a 19-year old woman from the Midwest, or at least that is what he thought. Inconsistencies in her story begin to arise and Nev became suspicious. He and a friend who was filmmaker set up a meeting with this young woman and discovered she was a 40-year-old housewife who had fabricated the story.
Why do the perpetrators of catfishing do it? Maybe it is the need for human connection, everyone’s need to be liked or loved. They may believe they are not worthy or desirable. With the increase of social media it has become easier to invent a persona they feel others would find worthy. Just download a picture of a beautiful person and make up an interesting profile. You can have the instant dream life, at least for awhile.
There are people that will go through much work for their deceptive activities. I believe most people that continue catfishing are in it for some sort of reward--attention, love or money. Setting up multiple Facebook accounts with precautions against discovery allow for potential scam artist to trick people into revealing information or sending money to “help”. Social engineering is a big part of what catfishing has evolved into. Fake accounts on a wide variety of social networks can have an influence.
However as more and more stories come to light from victims and predators as well, the public now is becoming more aware, and people are becoming cautious about stories they see on the internet. The recent news stories about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have made the general population increasingly concerned to protect their personal information.
Of course most people, me included, still do not immediately assume that every new contact met online is a hoax, an attempt to catfish, or other scam. However, the tactics employed by Angela, the predator is this documentary, would be much less effective today. For instance a simple reverse image search would produce what are to be original photographs used to create Facebook pages. Suspicion must be aroused in the intended target before they would check out the information. Nev in the story seems to be a very kind and trusting person. I would wager that he digs into every new friend he makes after this incident. So should we all.
1 comment:
Like you mentioned within your post, not every interaction online that we have is assumed to be a hoax or an impersonator; do you believe that humans will come to this point to think that no online interaction is real until verified with an IRL meeting? Also you talk about how the tactics of Angela today would be something that would have been more obvious, which is a statement that I agree with. What I wanted to point out that just as the potential victims of catfishing are becoming more aware as are the predators, and I also believe that for almost every tactic that the public becomes aware of there are three more that are starting to gain headway in trying to con us out of our information, money, and other valuables.
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