Recently I watched an episode of Catfish broadcasted by MTV (every Sunday 18.15). The producers of the acclaimed documentary film, Catfish, are now presenting a MTV program with the same name ‘Catfish’. This program has been created to bring couples together who have only been communicating through their LCD screens ranging from months to years. In each episode, with the guidance and help of the star of the real Catfish movie, Nev Schulman (he also had an online relationship but then soon discovered that the person he had been talking to was not completely honest) and his filmmaking friend Max Joseph, together with a MTV-team, they try to help a hopeful romantic partner on an emotional journey to discover truth about their significant other.
Nowadays, social media sites often replace the face-to-face interactions. However, there is a big problem with this method since the guy or girl you have fallen for could be lying about who they really are. Thus, the meaning of this program comes from the verb Catfish [kat-fish] = To pretend to be someone you are not online by posting false information, such as someone else’s pictures, on social media sites usually with the intention of getting someone to fall in love with you. So basically, this MTV-program tries to find the truth about the other person of whom the partner has only talked through Facebook.
MTV also did a research about the European youngsters which led to the following results; 1/5 of the European youngsters have created a false online-account before and 1/8 of the European youngsters have been lying about their appearances or talents frequently.
I found this program very interesting and entertaining as it shows real life events. I cannot imagine that there are people in the world that are having ‘real’ online-relationships for example more than 8 years and have only been interacting through Facebook but never met in real-life. With this MTV-program you can really see how Facebook is being misused by others since it is relatively easy to create a fake Facebook-account to frame others. Hence, we are spending a lot of our times behind LCD screens; we are more often online and meeting less people in real life than it used to be, consequently we need to be more careful with talking to others online. What do you think of ‘Catfish’? Have you ever watched this program? And do you spend a lot of your time on a social media/network platform?
For more information about how to recognize a Catfish, please refer to: http://www.drphil.com/articles/article/720
Sources: http://www.mtv.com/shows/catfish/series.jhtml
http://pers.mtv.nl/mtv-legt-online-liefdesrelaties-bloot-in-nieuw-seizoen-catfish/
