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.
After watching the documentary Catfish, I felt sympathy for both Nev and Angela. First, I do concur that what Angela did was wrong, but I mostly felt bad for her. Everyone wants to just point a finger and say that she is evil and crazy for doing what she did, but I can also understand why she did it. Angela’s life was consumed 24/7 with taking care of two handicapped twins, a young daughter, and a husband. Simply put, she had no life outside the day-to-day interaction with her family. Social media makes living an alternate, and in this case, multiple lives through a screen possible. Because her life centered primarily on her daughter and her husband’s twins, Angela probably didn’t have time to hang out with friends or do the things she would have liked to do. This must have taken a psychological toll on her and probably drove her to use social media as her escape. The easiest escape from reality probably was having a social life on social media. Unfortunately, Nev became one of those online “friends.”
ReplyDeleteMy empathy for Nev increased by the end when he realized the Megan he really had feelings for did not exist. It was obvious that he was hurt. He had been communicating with this Megan for months, and in the end, could not have her because the person he thought was real was actually someone else—Angela.
I think some people were unsympathetic to Angela because they could not fathom why she would deliberately fabricate these various tails of these people and pretend to be someone she is not. However, the unfortunate truth as you mentioned is that this happens probably daily. Bullied kids, lonely children, and neglected individuals seek solace online because there is someone who seems to care about them, listen to them, and want to get to know them, and if they happen to take that step from strictly digital conversation to choosing to meet in person, then we hope and pray that the consequences of that decision are not detrimental or fatal for the gullible, innocent party. Predators sometimes seek these opportunities, and I think that is the scariest part about it all.
I do think Angela has something wrong with her, I agree with you there but it is hard for me to feel bad or sympathy for her. She lied for over 8 months and pretended to live a life she wasn't and even had her little daughter involved. While Abby didn't know anything was going on, she still used her a prop in all of her lies. Even when she did come clean, she lied about Megan, she didn't have a drinking problem or even exist. What makes me the most mad is that she lied about having cancer, why would you even do that? What was the point?
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