Catfished

When people use the term catfish, many people probably think about the fish, going fishing, eating, or something on the lines doing with the fish catfish. Most don’t think about the new way the term catfish is being used which according to an online dictionary is to mean a person who assumes a false identity or personality on the Internet, especially on social networking websites, as to deceive, manipulate, or swindle. With the amount of social networking websites and Internet access it becomes easier and easier for someone to be catfished.

Luckily for me I have never been hardcore catfished like what you tend to see on TV or hear about in online stories and hope that it never does happen to me however I have experienced some smaller versions of the idea of being catfished. Today Tinder is a big app in the college atmosphere; some use it for random hook ups, meeting others, or just for fun. Anyway, one time I matched with a very good looking girl and after talking to her on the app for a day or two got her number and checked her out on Facebook as well just to see some more pictures than the three she had on her Tinder profile. Her Facebook pictures made her look just as good if not better looking and after another day or two of talking we planned on meeting out at a bar. So I was talking to my friends and showed them the pictures I had of her and they were pretty pumped to all go out and meet this girl and her friends that night. Once we were out and had a few drinks and just hanging out she arrived. It was the same girl I had been talking to with the same personality and the same general look to her but there was one thing different. When talking to her prior meeting I learned her major, which was something with photography, but I never really would have thought about the idea of her editing her pictures. However as soon as I saw her in person it clicked that she took a lot of time to edit every single picture on Facebook and Tinder, which ended up making her look way less attractive. My friends got a real kick out of it because when we were looking at her pictures we thought she was like a 8-9 but in person for real she dropped to be a 5 tops. I didn’t want to be mean and that point I was pretty drunk so I just continued to drink and hang out with her and give her a chance but then I realized the personalities weren’t exactly the same either and about two hours into hanging out I found out that it was her one roommate who was doing most of the talking to me through her phone. So there it is, not the worst of catfishes but still a small situation where it happened and where I’m sure those kinds of things happen much more than people would think.

In an article I read Nev Schulman explains how to avoid being catfished. For those of you don’t know who that is, he is the guy who started the whole catfish epedimic with a documentary on his experience of being catfished and then later following his MTV TV show called Catfish. The article was pretty short but he made a few good recommendations such as keeping texting time short to avoid projecting onto the individual you’re corresponding with. He also had a few quotes in the article that he told the writers when talking about the ideas of online dating and dating in general to avoid being catfished. He said, "It's just making sure you set a really strict and realistic guideline or parameter for how long you'll communicate with someone before you meet them." "If you're serious about dating, the intention is to meet in person and feel the chemistry, hopefully, of being with someone, but if you go past ... two weeks or a month of talking and chit-chat, or even three days depending on how aggressive you want to be, then you can start to feel things for someone.”