Catfish: The TV Show (2012)

Good morning!

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Boy oh boy-- confession time. I am a HUGE fan of tv shows that have an extensive full episode web presence. I don't have a cable subscription, and am always on the hunt for something I can marathon up online and hearken back to olden days with my college roommate, eating a pizza, breaking down the events of the night before ("I did WHAT? He said WHAT? Do you have my phone?"), and wishing away a hangover with consecutive episodes of Law and Order: SVU or Project Runway (Caroline, I miss you!). Last night, to celebrate the first meeting of the last class I'm taking for my master's degree, Matthew and I did get a pizza (a Whole Foods, vegan pizza, so it was less guilty than the Papa Johns of yore) and queue'd up a several episode spree of Catfish: The TV Show for our viewing pleasure. Now, I haven't watched an MTV property since sometime just before The Hills became "a thing", so I wasn't expecting much-- but I have to admit, I am ABSOLUTELY into this semi-reality-documentary type serial television event. Have you heard of it? Seen it?

WE. LOVE. THIS.

Host Nev Schulman was the subject of an independent documentary a few years back, also called Catfish, which dissected his own failed online romance as it happened. The girl he'd been chatting with in a call-you-everyday, check your email every five minutes, as-real-as-an-internet-only-romance-can-get turned out to be less of the city dwelling, freespirited, twenty-ish Leslie Mann lookalike she presented herself as online, and more of a suburban, middle aged, mother of two who bore no resemblance whatsoever to the photos of the woman Nev thought he'd been dating. Riveting, right? "If you're not who you say you are, then who are you?" is a question that makes for GOOD. DRAMA. on the big reveal of who the person really is and WHY they pretended to be someone else.

The show takes that idea and follows a person in an online relationship (sometimes for years!) with someone who they've never met in real life, and attempts to get them together with the person...in real life.

OH. NO. SHE. DID. NOT. (This one did not go so well) (Spoiler alert, almost none of them go well)

Wondering what the title means? According to Urban Dictionary: "A catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they're not using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances." Now, not all the people on Catfish: The TV Show are actually 100% not-who-they-say-they-are-- but I will tell you, every single one of them has SOME kind of deception going on or information that should have been disclosed in the interest of continuing their relationship. My thing is, ok, everyone in my general age group with access to the internet has probably had at least one friend or acquaintance or something that they've never met with in real life, that they also would correspond with on a regular basis. Right? Do you remember someone daring you to IM this one guy's friend that they know from working at Blockbuster or three way call this other guy who went to summer school with so and so's boyfriend, and you'd end up talking to them, haha, and see where that went? You might send an email back and forth in those pre-text message days, but you'd never get around to actually hanging out in real life. I understand the lure of "meeting people" on the internet-- but my question for you guys: wouldn't you actually have to MEET them after a certain period to call it a real relationship? I've internet dated, and successfully, in the past, but I only ever used the internet as a means to set up a real life meeting, not the basis around which to construct the entire context of the relationship. Am I wrong? Isn't that how it should ideally work?

These  guys'  insistent taste in glasses' frames aside, I like them pretty well as the singular voices of reason in the show.

Between this show, "Nice Guys of OkCupid", and Dateline,  and that whole Manti Te'o's dead fictional girlfriend, you really wouldn't think there were any normal people out there on the internet or people just freakin' not misrepresenting themselves on the internet out there! But I can't stop watching it. No joke, we watched like five episodes back to back, shouting at the TV "YOU KNOW THAT IS NOT HIS REAL PICTURE. HE DOES NOT LOOK LIKE THAT IN REAL LIFE." as a pretty, perfectly nice, if vulnerable exotic dancer in one episode shyly showed the picture of the guy she'd been talking to for a year. The guy in the (obviously professional modeling shots) picture ended up being a real person-- just not the real person she was talking to. UGH! THE FRUSTRATION OF THIS SHOW! She could have got a guy like that in real life, is the thing-- just as handsome and caring as the one she thought she was in a relationship with. The girl was attractive enough, and nice enough-- but ignoring warning bells of "this is too good to be true", she wasted a year of her life in something that wasn't even real. And I put the blame more squarely on the deceiving one than the deceived ..but STILL.

It reminds me of nothing so much as the people who come up to the help desk (I'm talking more than five) for help on the public computers, claiming a laptop or a $500 Walmart certificate or some speciously suspicious thing they've "just won". "I just need you to help me claim it after I answer these surveys, it says something about a credit card," one told me. Shouldn't there be public service announcements about this kind of stuff? Maybe someone, sometime, in the history of the internet, has won a laptop for nothing-- but I guarantee you a lot more people have laptops that just saved up money and went to the store and bought it. Ditto to a relationship with some supermodel looking guy-- what is the ratio, in internet dating, of urbane, smart, but lonely professional models to obese, homely, socially awkward, lying single dudes out there? Hint: it is way more likely that you are talking to someone who bears more in common to Harry Knowles than Harry Connick, Jr. in this whole internet crapshoot thing.

Picture at left usually looks more like picture at right if picture at left is submitted as profile pic. That's just science.

Am I just too susceptible to these feelings? Too harsh? Do I love crazy reality shows too much? Is that a crime? Watch the craziest episode I've seen (below) or check out the website links below that for more info. It's addictive, right?

                 

Catfish: The TV Show - Full Episodes

Have you ever had a strictly online relationship (especially in the late nineties'/early 2000's)? Did you ever go on a date with someone you met online? Are there humans out there on the internet, or are our online romance options in 2013 limited to attractive seeming bots? Let's talk! I'm all fired about this one.

That's all for today-- see you guys tomorrow for Photo Friday!