Catfish and Taking Advantage of Social Media

Skye Stewart

Advanced Mass Communication Theory

Blog Post #3

May 9, 2016

Catfish and Taking Advantage of Social Media

According to Merriam-Webster, a catfish is, “a person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes” (Merriam-Webster). A television documentary series has put this term in the dictionary and for the past few years that it has existed, MTV’s show, Catfish (which began as a film in 2010), has defined the use of social media on a whole new level. The series follows Nev Schulman and Max Joseph, who travel around the country to help social media users find their supposed star-crossed lovers that they have only talked with online or maybe on the phone. Typically, the lovers have never even seen each other in real life and usually haven’t video chatted, either. Social media users send an email to casting asking for help and Nev and Max meet up with the user to learn all of the information they can about the suspected catfish, eventually in hopes of leading them to the suspect. Because of shows like Catfish, social media has caused distrust among social media users and negative views of others, as it has taught its audience that social media users can filter the information they put online and that social media creates a relationship that is less personal and intimate.

To further my discussion of how Catfish has caused social media users to distrust and doubt others, I will relate back to one particular episode of the TV series, Tyreme & Tomorrow (season 5, episode 9). In this episode, Tyreme, who lives in Virginia, fell in love with a girl whom he had been talking with online for over nine months. The girl, named Tomorrow, lives in Alabama. She always told Tyreme she couldn’t video chat because her camera was broken and they live too far away to pay for travel. Nev and Max searched Tomorrow’s images and found matches online. The girl in the photos that Tyreme had were not photos of Tomorrow. After searching her phone number, the duo found it belonged to a person named Christ Rothwell of A.L. The three went to A.L. and found that Tomorrow was indeed another female named Letrease, different than the one in Tomorrow’s pictures (Schulman, Schulman, & Joseph, 2016).

Catfish has proved that anyone using social media or anyone that has any type of online presence can use the World Wide Web to alter information about themselves. This gives social media users the ability to filter information they provide for others, which results in lying to others. It also gives users the opportunity to hide from others and pretend that they are someone different. While many people use social media, especially Facebook, as an information-gathering tool, audiences have learned from Catfish that some people might not be telling the truth on social media.

A study from Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies runs with the idea that ultimately, social networks like Facebook (in part) exist to create and develop relationships, interactions, and connections with others (van Dikck, 2013). Social media is a place where users attempt to make themselves look good. Author Jose van Dijck wrote,

“On the other hand, though, users and technology mutually affect each other in the technological shaping of sociality and connectivity: social network sites engineer predetermined sets of categories through which users supposedly build identities and communitieies. If human sociality turns out to be different from the machine-inscribed sociality, users may adapt their technical environment to support their social situation” (van Dijck, 2013).

            This goes to show that anyone can change the information they present online at anytime. Social media pages are extremely public, whether they are set in private settings or not. Finding out information about someone is just as easy as sending a friend request on Facebook. While places like Facebook are successful for certain types of relationships (such as family and friends), romantic relationships can be deemed as weak or sometimes strong through the use of social media (van Dijck, 2013).

            In relating to Tyreme and Tomorrow’s/Letrease’s case, Letrease was able to lie about her appearance, her name, and more. Tomorrow was portrayed as a very skinny, attractive, and young girl. Letrease is overweight, embarrassed of her appearance, and looks nothing like the girl in Tomorrow’s photos. Letrease had also lied to Tyreme by telling him she was pregnant at one time. She also had other people she knew talk to Tyreme instead of using her voice over the phone. This episode shows that it is easy to lie, causing negative views toward others on social media (Schulman, Schulman, & Joseph, 2016).

Catfish has also proved that romantic relationships on social media are less personal and intimate than those in real life. While the TV series has made it obvious that several people can fall in love through the use of social media, it’s still different than communicating and connecting with one another face-to-face. It’s not always easy to socialize with someone online or by text message.

            A study called “Relational quality and media use in interpersonal relationships” published in New Media & Society stated, “...both scholarly research and popular perception have held that computers are a non-verbally impoverished ‘lean’ medium, which makes it challenging to create a sense of social presence and convey the interpersonal cues so important to creating and maintaining emotional closeness” (Baym, Zhang, Kunkel, Ledbetter, & Lin, 2007).

            This relates to the idea that the use of emoticons only goes so far. It’s not always easy to understand what message another person is trying to get across and different messages might have different meanings to other people. By developing a relationship and connecting with someone through social media or by texting, it’s hard to really figure out what exactly they might be thinking or feeling. This causes a strain on a relationship because the social media users are still, in a way, hiding their true selves from the one they’re talking with. Although they might be talking with each other and are there for each other through Facebook messaging, does not mean they will be there in real life. Messaging technologies are much more convenient through the use of smart phones and laptop computers.

            Tyreme’s Catfish episode showed audiences that he fell in love with Tomorrow partly because she helped him get through a couple of losses of loved ones in his life. She was able to talk with him when he was sad through text messaging, but she wasn’t really there and wasn’t able to physically be there for him. She couldn’t give him a hug or talk to him and show him her feelings. Instead, she could only try and make him feel better with messages that could have been sent to anyone, therefore making them less personal and less intimate (Schulman, Schulman, & Joseph, 2016).

In a world where everyone has online social networks right at their fingertips, it’s important to know that social media can give others the opportunity to hide from themselves and can cause social media users to think negatively toward others. By watching Nev and Max on Catfish, audiences have slowly learned that social media can be taken for granted and that it can cause distrust and negative views of others, as it has taught its audience that social media users can filter the information they put online and act as a less personal or intimate relationship form.

References

Ariel, S., Nev S., & Max J. (2016). Tyreme & Tomorrow (Television series episode). Catfish.

            Viacom Media Networks.

Baym, N. K., Yan Bing, Z., Kunkel, A., Ledbetter, A., & Mei-Chen, L. (2007). Relational

quality and media use in interpersonal relationships. New Media & Society, 9(5), 735-752. doi:10.1177/14614444807080339

Catfish [Def. 2]. (n.d.) Merriam-Webster Online. In Merriam-Webster. Retrieved May 8, 2016,

            from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/catfish

van Dijck, J. (2013). Facebook and the engineering of connectivity: A multi-layered approach to

social media platforms. Convergence: The Journal Of Research Into New Media Technologies, 19(2), 141-155. doi:10.1177/1354856512457548