Catfish: About Online Behavior

              Catfish, 2005- this documentary certainly caused a great deal of controversy on whether it is real, people involved, film-making integrity… but I don’t care much whether it is a true documentary or not; I know there are some factors that indicate stages made by Nev and his friends, but there are more important, profound themes in this film that make me ignore minor matters. Personally, as an active Facebook user, I want to focus on just one thing: online behavior. I first saw the movie Catfish virtually knowing nothing about the film in my English Composition class. I was playing around on Facebook just before class and then there came this movie related to Facebook… I got very intrigued. Time was not enough to watch all of it, though, so I had to wait a few days to watch the rest half of the film, which I couldn’t bear. Although I could guess the ending quite thoroughly, I couldn’t wait to test my hypothesis. I simply looked it up on the internet right after class to see how the movie ended.

           The main character of the movie Catfish is Yaniv ‘Nev’ Schulman, a young and good-looking New York photographer. At the beginning, he receives an e-mail from Angela Faccio, which contains a drawing of his photograph by her 8-year-old daughter, Abby. He is soon fascinated by this little genius and get to know Abby’s family- Angela, her husband, her two sons, and lastly, Abby’s 19-year-old stepsister, Megan Faccio. He and the family befriend on Facebook, exchange presents, letters, notes, and even contact by phone. Nev’s brother, Ariel Schulman, and his colleague, Henry Joost, become interested in this unique relationship and decide to film it; they are running a small film company.

           So, about online behavior. Angela had like, 13 Facebook accounts online- I’m not sure though; it just seems like a reasonable number for a handful of family and friends. She creates a fake ‘society’ in a small town of Michigan. She uses other people’s pictures online and enrolls as 13 people. I don’t know, really…. it seems to me an awful lot of work to do. She must be quite a writer to make up all those things to talk about on Facebook by herself alone. Why would Angela do such a bothering work? I would never do that, I have only one Facebook account and still find myself devoting too much time and effort into it. But Angela… I think she was lonely, with two disabled boys and a stoic husband. She has no one to reside in, and there she is in a quiet countryside, doing nothing but painting and internet surfing. She must have wanted to interact with people as someone she isn’t, someone still beautiful and talented. She fabricated all that, getting ready to invite someone into her fake society. And as Nev comes near her, she is simply thrilled… to have a handsome, successful young man whispering that he loves her, even though she knows all of it might disappear like a mirage in an instant.

           Does this have a certain meaning? This whole situation indicates how powerful Facebook and other social network sites are. All there is on Facebook are some simple biography, several pictures, likes and dislikes and a few links they put on their walls. But these trivial factors are enough to approximate the actual personality of the uploader. A complete stranger can judge the person by Facebook, like Nev’s case. The problem is, it can be a fake. Facebook requires nothing to prove their users’ identity. Even I can make up an account right now as a 40-year-old man, and no one will know whether it is true or not. Consequently, when accepting friends, Facebook tells me to be careful and only befriend someone who I really know. People use Facebook to seek their clients, too; it is full of all kinds of advertisements. One day I was shocked by a stranger who sent me a nude picture of herself- I didn’t even know she was a friend! After that, I never befriend someone I don’t know in real life.

What Angela did was morally wrong, of course. She stole someone else’s pictures. And she played with Nev’s feelings. But other than that, I can’t really find anything… and as for Nev’s feelings, I think she meant her comments, in a way. Only that she is not a pretty 19-year-old girl. Disguising on Facebook is acceptable because nobody really trusts what they see on the internet. Most people are well aware that it can easily be a fake. And what is internet for, anyway? Don’t people want to be someone else for a while? To escape the reality? I mean, if it goes too far and gets to a state which hurts the person and close others, it had to be stopped, for certain. But going a bit off the line seems okay to me.