Catfish: A fanfare for Facebook fakery Facebook is brimful of hot girls who are usually neither of those things: scammers, hustlers and freelance scumbags who don lovely online masks to get close to you and take you for all you're worth, or if you're lucky, just make you look really stupid. Not all of the masks hide your standard con-people, however – some of them …
"'They just told me things I didn't care to question.'
And therein lies all of human stupidity."
Since the alternative is solipsism, we don't have a hell of a lot of choice. But then that's always been obvious to pretty much anyone who's capable of sustained thought, and explored at length any number of times by philosophers (eg in Descartes' parable of the evil genius).
Before the internet how did we meet?
Then why are people so suckered in by internet dating, by any means? (dating site, facebook et all)
Really, you can only deserve to get what you ask for, and if you don't think about what your doing and there consequences, only you are to blame.
It's a good point- snogging someone in a club whilst tanked up on lager is certainly a more reliable foundation for a relationship than communicating in writing for an extensive period before you meet in person.
Seems to me internet dating is as good a way of meeting people as any. Although the internet doesn't actually serve us socially as well as we would like to believe, because actually we do prefer real-world face to face type contact, for that purpose in particular it's pretty useful.
I read the 1st bit and thought "bollocks" but I was bored and so read on. This means I quite enjoyed the article and what's behind it. I've posted this and put my moniker on it because I don't mind being associated with what I say. The internet has made many of us cynics but really we are just apes in a troop wanting to be liked, appreciated and accepted.
So I totaly disagree with AC and now I want some blonde to de-louse me :o)
I watched this and I thought it was going to be shit about some wankers I couldn't care less about. In the end I couldn't really give a shit about Nev but it does actually work as a kind of detective novel, although it's true what they say about it all being a bit suss that a film's conveniently being made beforehand. I preferred Capturing the Friedmans. I'm still not sure about how guilty they are, either.
A friend of mine was hooked by these scam artists, and like you say, it is so sad. He was pretty devastated when I began to chip away the edifice so carefully built by the scammers. The picture he showed me was of a very good looking model that was supposedly the woman interested in him. It was heartbreaking for me to have to break it as gently to him as I could that it was indeed, a scam. He only believed me eventually when I got him to send an email saying he was getting on a plane to go and visit her, having predicted correctly that this would result in a reply saying she was about to come here if only she could find the airfare.
Very sad, and as I say, nicely summed up.
of an idiot from bangalore who went to spend a weekend with a russian chick he met on facebook in sunny goa. the chick was a bunch of local goan guys, who met him at the airport claiming to be his pickup, they beat him up, stole his belongings and luckily for him, made him the laughing stock instead of an entry in the obituaries.
sad really, he went to goa with a stiff 'un and got stiffed instead.
Back when I moved into the internet about 18 years ago there weren't really many girls there, not real ones anyway, plenty of the virtuals, the pretenders and the few nerdy ones. As a result I have a kind of "dr. house" mentality that everyone on the internet is lying.
I met quite a few people who I knew online and they were on the whole ordinary people, but I can't say I found it anything other than surreal. Internet persona's don't tend to be exactly like a real persona.
The film sounds intreaguing, but I might end up getting irritated because I'd be thinking he was stupid for taking anything on the internet as gospel.
I don't think I can't be fooled, but I wouldn't emotionally invest myself in any online relationship.
I'll probably wait for the post cinema release, good review anyway.
Mindfuckery is done by manipulators. If the manipulator's life is desperately unhappy, the appropriate description is "cosmic justice," not "tragedy."
Part of being an adult is accepting responsibility for your own behavior, and not blaming it, overtly or covertly, on situations like "My wife doesn't understand me," or "I have difficult caretaking responsibilities at home."
Oh, and I absolve myself of all responsibility for everything I wrote here because I was drunk when I wrote it. Honest.
I guess I am going to watch it - I´m neither social network user, nor sucker for human tragedies (or tragedies of any other type, that is), but this sounds like a damn good piece of filmmakery, and to watch work of people who are good at what they do is always interesting.
let me also say, until I see the steel evidence, I am not going to consider it "documentary", no, thank you.
By the way, "snapped Occam razor into several pieces" - I guess I know what you meant by that, however, isn´t it what we usually call "mixed metaphor"? That being said, it fits perfectly to the overall tone and subject of the article - good touch!
"Facebook is brimful of hot girls who are usually neither of those things: scammers, hustlers and freelance scumbags who don lovely online masks to get close to you and take you for all you're worth"
Funny, I've had no "become my friend" spam on Facebook but I get about 4 or 5 per week on MySpace...
While you are certainly entitled to your opinion, not everyone on the net is a "scammer" or a manipulator.
I have been married for over 11 years to a woman I met over the internet. At the time we met, both of us had been living in different countries separated by the Atlantic.
And this was in the days of IRC.
So yes, while there are people out there who live in a fantasy world, or manipulate others, or who scam... keep in mind that not everyone is doing it.
Yep had a few of these types of approachs on facebook.... I enjoy the mental sparring- seeing past what they say to discern their true motives and calling them on it, knowing what response they are looking for and then not giving it to them, but very few seem to have enough stamina to keep at it for long (most only last a week tops).
There was one really persistent one last year that lasted about 4 months... everything looked really legitimate, good back story, but it was all just a little to neat (brand new facebook profile, and had obviously done some research before approaching me). When "she" eventually lost interest the profile was deleted pretty quickly (photo albums emptied and profile info removed, then the profile removed altogether).
this was about as realistic as Spinal Tap. Anyone naive enough to be suckered into believing that needs to go to the doctor and ask for a reverse-lobotomy, cos somehow are some point, you musta had one (it's the only rational explanation). seriously, so fake, so cheesy, does anyone *actually* believe this is real ? the use of handicapped children to add *poignancy*, god, so obvious and trite, the idea of making a documentary about meeting an 8 year old (seriously, who would do this ? it's banal first of all, and a bit paedophilic. but again ! instant poignancy ! the "sheer innocence of talking to an 8 year, it's so rrrreeeeel dude", not it's not real, it's about as contrived as it is possible to be). at least spinal tap was funny !!! ;)
He was one brave lad to friend an 8-year-old girl on facebook. Any adult male going anywhere near children is automatically assumed to be a paedo isn't he? It's why I won't allow children anywhere near me. Which is a shame. But that's just the way the world is, right?
Roll on Apophis 2039!
First the scammers were novel.
Then they got to be entertaining.
Analytically interesting became engaging and worthy of scrutinising.
After a while, they and their stupid bullshit got boring.
Then real life responsibilities became interesting.
And Facebook became an idiot trend for time wasting.
... I was following this spotty nerdy 60 year old woman, with buck teeth who weight 20 stone & lived in a trailer park.
Boy, was I ever pissed when it was revealed she was a 20 something, curvacious, brilliantly minded super model with a degree in biology and a serious desire to shag, who lived in a trailer park.
I'll never trust facebook again.
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