Jamila Baluch

(Cat)Fishing for Love

Catfish: The TV Show (MTV, 2012-) is a reality programme based on the
documentary film Catfish (2010) which followed a young man building a
romantic relationship with a woman he had met on Facebook, but never
seen in real life. When he travels across the country to finally meet
his cyber love interest, it turns out that the real person behind the
attractive young woman's profile is a middle-aged mother impersonating
various different people online.

Yaniv 'Nev' Schulman, the protagonist of Catfish, the movie, now hosts
the homonymous television show together with his friend, the filmmaker
Max Joseph. The reality format focuses on so-called 'online
relationships' between young Americans whose romances unfold exclusively
through Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, text messages and phone calls.
Invariably, photos are exchanged. Invariably, attempts to meet in person
or just to video-chat are regularly turned down by one of the virtual
lovers, accompanied by a series of increasingly bizarre excuses. To
break the cycle of hope and rejection, Nev and Max are called for help.
Together they arrange for the desperate romantic to finally meet their
mysterious online crush, usually to discover that he or she is a
'catfish'. A catfish, according to MTV, 'is someone who pretends to be
someone they're not using Facebook or other social media to create false
identities' (MTV 2013).\[1\]

![resizeimage.php](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/resizeimage.php_-41-300x169.jpeg){.size-medium
.wp-image-2259 .aligncenter loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300"
height="169"
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Nev (left) and Max skyping with a catfish (episode 3:8)

Often, the reality behind the catfish's fake social media profile, which
typically features pictures of a very attractive young male or female,
is a profoundly insecure person who fails to meet mainstream standards
of beauty, often in terms of weight (this has led one commentator to
suggest, 'Catfish could be called So, I Am Secretly Fat' (Lyons 2013)).
Other times, the deception has more to do with class anxieties: many
catfish lie about their job -- or the lack thereof -- and their
financial situation. There are also a number of cases in which the
catfish impersonates someone of the opposite sex, either to take some
form of revenge on the person he or she is deceiving, or as a means of
negotiating their own sexuality: various Catfish episodes show
homosexual, bisexual or transgender catfish feeling unable to
communicate their sexual identity to their friends and family and
choosing to escape into online relationships instead, as a way of
emotionally connecting with a person they desire without having to admit
to themselves, or others, the reality of their sexual orientation.

The backstories of both the catfish and the catfished frequently reveal
complex social dramas: histories of dysfunctional families, drug abuse,
illness and social rejection. A lot of times, both parties confess that
they feel closer to their online lover than to anyone in their real-life
social circle. For many participants, their virtual 'partner'\[2\] is
the only person they dare to open up to.

This constellation makes for real television drama. In creating and
documenting a narrative of broken hearts and broken dreams, Catfish
portrays almost the entire range of human emotion: desire, hope,
anticipation, shock, disappointment, sometimes followed by anger and
resentment, other times by understanding and forgiveness. The show thus
draws on and combines a variety of genres, including the romantic drama,
the detective story and the psychological thriller, often mixed with
elements of absurd comedy.

However, what I find most fascinating about Catfish is not the
underlying story of social anxieties of young Americans and what it
tells us about modern society (although this message is deeply
concerning). But the show does more than just expose the psychological
effects of poverty, social isolation, or internet addiction. Each
episode of Catfish also tells a story of true love. The intimate
portrayal of deep, authentic emotions towards a person the catfished
protagonist communicates with only through words and photos proves that
romance is not dead.

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Craig is devastated when he meets his catfish (episode 3:1)

![resizeimage.php](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/resizeimage.php_-42-300x169.jpeg){.size-medium
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Courtney is in shock about her catfish's revelations (episode 4:2)

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Mirada learns that her online boyfriend is really a girl (episode 3:8)

Even though some have called today's youth 'generation porn' -- a
concept often implying concerns about a generation supposedly educated
by pornography to engage sexually without connecting emotionally (see,
e.g., Mills 2013) -- the hopeful lovers on Catfish are neither numb nor
cynical, nor are their relationships based on physical contact. Instead,
what they find in their internet love is a person they can relate to on
an emotional level, someone they believe they can trust and with whom
they share not only their hopes and dreams, but also their pain and
fears. It doesn't matter that the object of their affection is often not
quite real. Because love is real when it feels real. To me, Catfish's
portrayal of the reality of love is more shocking and more compelling
than its overriding narratives of desperation and social exclusion.
Ultimately, it is the authenticity of its participants' romantic
optimism that makes Catfish really good television.

 

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Keyonnah is nervous to finally meet her internet crush (episode 2:15)

![resizeimage-1.php](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/resizeimage-1.php_-35-300x170.jpeg){.size-medium
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Solana is happy that her catfish is really who he said he was (episode
3:7)

![resizeimage-2.php](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/resizeimage-2.php_-29-300x170.jpeg){.size-medium
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Kya's (left) feelings don't change when she finds out that her online
boyfriend is a transgender man (episode 1:6)

Jamila Baluch is currently working as a lecturer in media studies at the
CIEE Global Institute Berlin. Her main research interests are
representations of race and gender in American television'.

\[1\] The term catfish has become so widely used that Merriam-Webster
has added a second definition for 'catfish' to its dictionary: apart
from the fish, a catfish is also defined as 'a person who sets up a
false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or
deceptive purposes'. See: Merriam-Webster, 'catfish', available at:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/catfish \[accessed
30/09/2015\]

\[2\] In most Catfish episodes, the participants refer to the catfish as
their 'boyfriend'/'girlfriend'; some even claim to be engaged to the
person they have been talking to for months, often years, without ever
meeting face to face.


(Cat)Fishing for Love  Catfish: The TV Show (MTV, 2012-) is a reality programme based on the documentary film Catfish (2010) which followed a young man building a romantic relationship with a woman he had met on Facebook, but never seen in real life.

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CATFISHING FOR LOVE