Catfish

After seeing the movie Catfish, I realized some of the strange parts of technology in our world today. All my life I have always been uncomfortable by the idea of starting a relationship completely online. It was the lack of human interaction that truly scared me about these individuals. The woman who fooled everyone went to great lengths to try and deceive others she created over sixteen Facebook accounts in order to fool one person. One thing I think the movie did not touch enough on which is that this woman was motivated in large part by money to deceive Nev. One of the largest reason, Nev uses and sells these painting were because he believed they were coming from Abby a young brilliant and talented mind. Angela continues to lie to Nev in order to maintain the opportunity in front of her and use Nev. She uses Nev kindness and trust for profit which sickens me. I think Nev is incredibly patient and sympathetic towards Angela, a girl who lied to and manipulated him. He reacted in a way I do not believe I would have the strength to do. He keeps a level head about himself when she had been lying to him and leading him on for over eight months. I would not have such patients with her. I would probably have words with her in a respectful manner, leave and send all her paintings I have in inventory back to her. I would also probably blast her on social media. I am just not someone who likes people who fake who they really are. I am just so glad I live in a world where Skype exists.

Shadow Puppeteers

I have been acquainted with principles of internet safety for pretty much as long as I can remember, largely due to the fact that, since my dad works with computers, he pays more attention to those sorts of precautions than perhaps is usual. Certain things seem like "no-brainers"--the basics, the "why would anyone do otherwise?" bits of advice: in some random chatroom or forum or other function on a random website, don't just give out your personal information (your real-life, or real, information, if you will) to anyone--your real name, your home address, your credit card number, all that sort of thing. --And yet, this advice is evidently not so obvious as one might think, judging by the amount of resources you will find warning folks not to do these exact things! There may not be a sucker born every minute, but there are, at any given time, enough persons sufficiently uninformed to fall for obvious-in-hindsight cons.

And yet, with social media, perhaps our barriers are lowered from the beginning. After all, this isn't some out-of-the-way website with a no-account, unmoderated forum: this is the safe zone! This is where people present their real selves to the outside world! ...Right?

I have never thought of social media as another means by which to perpetrate these sorts of false-identity scams; then again, I have only ever "friended" (isn't it funny how that has become a verb?) people that I have already known for a substantial amount of real-life time.

The question of identity, of self, however, remains, and I find it an intriguing one. Being in control brings a feeling of power; whenever you know something that someone else doesn't, you have the advantage over them. The internet has simply made it possible for us to take our daily game of "act this way around this group of people, act another way around another group of people," to an entirely new level.

We each have the potential to be puppetmasters... Yet, how much are we being puppeteered? Not necessarily on a malicious level, mind you--but if the inclination arises not to divulge certain of your interests to given groups for any reason, then can that facet of ourselves truly be seen as our true self, or just a shadow of ourselves?

I would think that only Nietzsche's nobles, caring absolutely nothing about the opinions of others, would be willing to show the same face to everyone no matter the situation.

Hiding behind a screen

Behind a screen, we can be whoever we want to be. It is extremely easy to take a picture of someone else, set up an online account, and pretend to be someone you're not. After watching the documentary, and several episodes of the MTV show Catfish, it's disturbing to see how many people lie about who they actually are. In this day and age, almost everyone has some sort of social media account. We have hundreds of friends of Facebook, Instagram, and twitter, but how many of those people do we actually know? I have over 500 friends on Facebook and I can honestly say that I don't really know anything about them besides what they post online. Is any of the stuff they post true? Are they actually who they say they are? I guess I'll never know..

In the documentary, Angela went through great lengths to stay in contact with Nev. Not only did I feel bad for Nev, I also felt a little bad for Angela. I thought it was admirable how Nev handled the situation, because spending nine months talking to a "family" that doesn't even exist is crazy! I felt bad for Angela because it was obvious that she was desperate to escape from the reality that is her life. Living with her husband, young daughter, and two mentally-handicapped step sons obviously put a lot of pressure on her. One thing that stood out to me was when Angela said that she found "parts of herself" that she forgot existed in the people she pretended to be. There is no doubt that she has a problem, but instead of just labeling her as "crazy," I thought about it for a while. This woman obviously lost part of her identity, so coming up with these elaborate stories about these different people probably made her feel like "herself" again. She found small parts of herself in each and every character. I am in no way saying that it was okay, because at the end of the day, not only did she disappoint her family, but she led a stranger on for almost an entire year! Catfish, the documentary and TV show does an amazing job of letting the public know that you should always be cautious because lying on the internet is a piece of cake. 

False Identities

We just finished watching the film "Catfish." It was so weird…and slightly creepy. We watched as the protagonist of the story, Nev, a photographer from New York, as he gradually become friends with a hypothetical family over Facebook. I personally do not engage in the world of social media, so it is a little easier for me to be cynical about his naivety to trust people online. Nev was under the assumption he was befriending a young, talented, eight-year-old artist, Abby, and her family, including her older, seemingly attractive nineteen year old sister. By the end of the film, we learned that most of the different "characters" and profiles on Facebook that Nev had friended and/or interacted with were actually false identities, created by the Abby's mother, the real artist, Angela. This was both a weird, sad, and slightly creepy discover. One of the saddest things about the film was realizing how difficult Angela's life really was--she had to take care of two mentally handicapped young men, he husband's sons from a previous marriage--and all that she had, and was willing, to give up to take care of them. She expressed her frustration in having to give up her career and childhood dreams to take care of her family, and how each of the different profiles she kept up with on Facebook were really pieces of herself. There were so many different elements that really made up this elaborate scheme, ultimately resulting in somewhat of a weird fantasy that Angela was trying to live out through Nev…which was super gross because he was like in his twenties or so… This film definitely succeeded at revealing the dangers of the anonymity on the Internet. Hopefully it will help other world wide web users a little more wary of the realities and dangers of believing everything people say, especially those online.

It could have been worse

The woman who has been creating all these false personalities based on other actual people is certainly messed up a little in the head.  She probably has a personality disorder because nobody in their right mind would create multiple different identities on the internet as she did.  This documentary is old but at the time of its release the digital world, the world of social media was just starting to take off.  With the perverse, nasty stories that make news headlines in current times, I was really expecting this story to take a much darker and dreadful turn than what it did.  It is not so much that I myself have a diluted mind but rather I have become accustomed to terrible acts people have done to others through social media.  

 My first reaction was to verbally rip this woman apart for leading Nev on and creating multiple false personalities.  How he handled it was exceptional and I applaud him for it, because I am unsure if I would have been able to do the same.  I do see some goodness in that woman.  I know very few people who would go out of their way to marry someone with two mentally disabled children such as those twins.  Taking care of them is a full time job and an immense sacrifice; I know what it is like to have someone mentally disabled in one's family.  She is most certainly in the wrong in this story and for the sake of her mental health and the health of her family, she  needs to stick with one profile that is hers and hers alone.  She cannot live in a fantasy world acting as somebody she is not for it will get benefit her at all in reality.

Catfish

This week in class we’ve been watching the documentary, Catfish. I never knew there was a story behind the actual MTV TV shows, Catfish, until now. The documentary is about a man named, Nev Schulman. He begins to form this online relationship with this family who supposedly their younger daughter, Abby, sends him beautiful watercolor paintings. After getting involved with the family and Nev meets everyone through Facebook, he begins to get romantically involved with the older daughter, Megan. However, Nev and his two friends discover that the people he is communicating with are not real. The only person who is real is the mom, Angela. She is the mastermind behind all of the characters that were introduced to Nev. She tricked him into believing he was talking to all of these people and that he had feelings for “Megan”. After this is revealed at first I was mad and thought this woman was crazy, but when I listened to her story and her personality my mind was changed. I feel bad for both Angela and Nev. I feel bad for her because it seems to me that she isn’t in her right mind and isn’t living the life she wanted. She mentioned in the documentary that she was a dancer and she gave that up to “have a good time”. Also, during the movie when she was admitting to Nev her confession she said she did have a daughter who was actually at a rehab center. However, at the end of the movie it said that there was no daughter at the rehab center. I feel bad for Nev because I feel like he fell under her spell. He believed all of these people were real and he believed he was in love. I couldn’t imagine what he must of felt. It is scary to think that this kind of idea happens everyday through the Internet.