A catfish reels in a lover with a false online persona. A TV show catches them in the act. It's more touching than it sounds
At the start of the new series of Catfish: The TV Show, we meet Cassie and her sexy Atlanta-based music producer fiance, Steve. Well, we don't meet Steve. In fact, Cassie has never met Steve either. He got in contact with her on Facebook, they started chatting by text and phone every day, and now, two and a half years later, they're engaged. Cassie proposed to Steve, but has only ever seen six pictures of him. That's fine, he's just always too busy "in the studio" to Skype. Hang on, what?
While most people would never add a stranger on Facebook, let alone get engaged to them by text, Catfish: The TV Show meets a lot of people who would. Having fallen into online relationships, these people have employed the Catfish team to help track down their elusive virtual lovers. Inevitably, they find out they've been "catfished" and are not going out with an abs-flashing hot producer after all, but a portly bus driver from Minnesota.
Presented by Nev Schulman and Max Joseph, the show is a spin-off from the controversial 2010 documentary of the same name, in which New York photographer Nev falls into an online relationship with a girl called Megan. After failing to meet up with him on several occasions, Nev tries to track Megan down to her home in Michigan, only to find out that she's the made-up online identity of a bored, stay-at-home mum. Every step of Nev's relationship is obsessively documented on camera by his brother Ariel and friend Henry Joost. It's recorded in such detail, in fact, that some – including Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock – questioned the film's authenticity (a debate which intensified when Joost and Schulman went on to direct Paranormal Activity 3 and 4). Yet these claims have not stopped Catfish: The TV Show from becoming massively successful in the US. Nev appears to have turned public humiliation into a career.
"It's a hugely important fact that I myself was the victim of an online relationship, in which I was greatly deceived," he says. "As much as it's still somewhat embarrassing and a little humiliating, at the same time that experience taught me a great deal and I learned a lot. Having been there myself and having met and pursued someone on the internet despite my lack of physical evidence, I took [catfished couples] at their word."
That "catfish" has now became a verb tells you something about how the idea has resonated. Use of the term mushroomed after a famous real-world example. After the first series had aired in the US last year on MTV, American football player Manti Te'o told reporters about the death of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua. Unfortunately for Te'o, the pair's relationship had existed only online, and "Lennay" turned out to be a male family friend who'd invested a lot of time in conning him. The sports press in the US loved his humiliation, and the word "catfished" spilled from the lips of pundits from ESPN to Fox.
Nev – now working with another film-maker, Max Joseph – sees the show as a kind of personal crusade to help people fall in love. "We all want to find someone and be loved. It is beautiful and touching that these people fall so in love with each other," says Max, even though one half is usually doing so under false pretences. "I cross my fingers every time that these two people will meet and I'll have brought them together."
Max goes on: "People will come up with their own excuses for why they're not meeting, they're not on Skype. We joke that mystery is the greatest aphrodisiac. The less you know about the person, the more you fill in the rosiest details. When you want to fall in love, you ignore red flags in the optimistic hope that it does work out."
Spoiler alert! Not every relationship works out and there are some pretty obvious endings. There's the awkward teen who thought he was dating Miss Teen USA – it was really his next-door neighbour. Then there's the girl who thought she was with a male model, but was actually exchanging dirty messages with a sexually confused teenage girl. Each time, without fail, the reveal is tense and embarrassing. Will Cassie, for example, ever get over admitting to phone sex with a stranger on telly? "If we had made a show to expose liars and make a show exploiting them, I don't think people would enjoy it," Nev says, admitting that the cameras can be intrusive. "To some extent I always feel very awkward inserting myself into these people's lives. I constantly have to remind myself that the people on the show asked us to help them, they knew what we were going to do, and they wanted us there."
The show manages to comes off as heartwarming rather than cruel, however, and part of the reason for this is the dynamic between real-life best friends Nev and Max. While Nev is the romantic, Max is the cynic who'll tell off the parents who let their teenagers "catfish" strangers, or shout at naive casino workers who gift the girlfriend they've never met their entire month's paycheck. Sometimes the extent to which these doe-eyed individuals will go is jaw-dropping, especially as the show focuses not only on people who are being temporarily trolled or wound up by mates, but also on people who are in long-term relationships.
For idealistic Nev, it remains a disappointment that the participants don't always fall in love at first sight. "For sure, we're always trying to prepare our hopefuls for the fact that the physical appearance of the person they've been talking to does not match the person they thought it was. And so many times we've heard 'I'm not in love with the picture, I'm in love with the personality…' but then they're not attracted to them," he sighs. The truth is that, despite the odd bored boy playing a joke, or a teenage girl wanting to humiliate a love rival, most of the catfishes on the show are just painfully lonely, insecure and, often, a bit fat.
"I think the reason it's an uplifting show is that it's about self-love," argues Max, who's using 'self-love' in the American way. "More times than not, what needs to happen at the end of the show is that they – generally the catfish, if not the hopeful person as well – need to come to terms with the fact they're not happy with themselves. What I find life-affirming is [that these people are doing] the scariest thing – not just telling the person they love the truth, but doing it in front of the cameras, knowing it's going to be broadcast to millions of people. I think that's an amazing first step towards building up themselves in their real life, and that to me is a happy ending."
Of course, some of the shows end up with people threatening to punch the other person, tears, or (in one case) $3,000-worth of lost money and an un-returnable engagement ring.
You'd have thought that now we're all quite good at Google and teenagers can hunt down One Direction's home addresses in half an hour, we'd all be too savvy to be tricked in this way online. But Max says they want to do a British version of the show next year (he later backtracks and adds "nothing's decided yet") and the show is set for series three. Between series one and two, they got 10,000 emails asking for help. Nev is still optimistic he'll find two people who'll fall properly in love. Good luck, Nev.
Catfish: The TV Show Series 2 starts with a double bill on Monday, 9pm, MTV Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 hours ago.
At the start of the new series of Catfish: The TV Show, we meet Cassie and her sexy Atlanta-based music producer fiance, Steve. Well, we don't meet Steve. In fact, Cassie has never met Steve either. He got in contact with her on Facebook, they started chatting by text and phone every day, and now, two and a half years later, they're engaged. Cassie proposed to Steve, but has only ever seen six pictures of him. That's fine, he's just always too busy "in the studio" to Skype. Hang on, what?
While most people would never add a stranger on Facebook, let alone get engaged to them by text, Catfish: The TV Show meets a lot of people who would. Having fallen into online relationships, these people have employed the Catfish team to help track down their elusive virtual lovers. Inevitably, they find out they've been "catfished" and are not going out with an abs-flashing hot producer after all, but a portly bus driver from Minnesota.
Presented by Nev Schulman and Max Joseph, the show is a spin-off from the controversial 2010 documentary of the same name, in which New York photographer Nev falls into an online relationship with a girl called Megan. After failing to meet up with him on several occasions, Nev tries to track Megan down to her home in Michigan, only to find out that she's the made-up online identity of a bored, stay-at-home mum. Every step of Nev's relationship is obsessively documented on camera by his brother Ariel and friend Henry Joost. It's recorded in such detail, in fact, that some – including Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock – questioned the film's authenticity (a debate which intensified when Joost and Schulman went on to direct Paranormal Activity 3 and 4). Yet these claims have not stopped Catfish: The TV Show from becoming massively successful in the US. Nev appears to have turned public humiliation into a career.
"It's a hugely important fact that I myself was the victim of an online relationship, in which I was greatly deceived," he says. "As much as it's still somewhat embarrassing and a little humiliating, at the same time that experience taught me a great deal and I learned a lot. Having been there myself and having met and pursued someone on the internet despite my lack of physical evidence, I took [catfished couples] at their word."
That "catfish" has now became a verb tells you something about how the idea has resonated. Use of the term mushroomed after a famous real-world example. After the first series had aired in the US last year on MTV, American football player Manti Te'o told reporters about the death of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua. Unfortunately for Te'o, the pair's relationship had existed only online, and "Lennay" turned out to be a male family friend who'd invested a lot of time in conning him. The sports press in the US loved his humiliation, and the word "catfished" spilled from the lips of pundits from ESPN to Fox.
Nev – now working with another film-maker, Max Joseph – sees the show as a kind of personal crusade to help people fall in love. "We all want to find someone and be loved. It is beautiful and touching that these people fall so in love with each other," says Max, even though one half is usually doing so under false pretences. "I cross my fingers every time that these two people will meet and I'll have brought them together."
Max goes on: "People will come up with their own excuses for why they're not meeting, they're not on Skype. We joke that mystery is the greatest aphrodisiac. The less you know about the person, the more you fill in the rosiest details. When you want to fall in love, you ignore red flags in the optimistic hope that it does work out."
Spoiler alert! Not every relationship works out and there are some pretty obvious endings. There's the awkward teen who thought he was dating Miss Teen USA – it was really his next-door neighbour. Then there's the girl who thought she was with a male model, but was actually exchanging dirty messages with a sexually confused teenage girl. Each time, without fail, the reveal is tense and embarrassing. Will Cassie, for example, ever get over admitting to phone sex with a stranger on telly? "If we had made a show to expose liars and make a show exploiting them, I don't think people would enjoy it," Nev says, admitting that the cameras can be intrusive. "To some extent I always feel very awkward inserting myself into these people's lives. I constantly have to remind myself that the people on the show asked us to help them, they knew what we were going to do, and they wanted us there."
The show manages to comes off as heartwarming rather than cruel, however, and part of the reason for this is the dynamic between real-life best friends Nev and Max. While Nev is the romantic, Max is the cynic who'll tell off the parents who let their teenagers "catfish" strangers, or shout at naive casino workers who gift the girlfriend they've never met their entire month's paycheck. Sometimes the extent to which these doe-eyed individuals will go is jaw-dropping, especially as the show focuses not only on people who are being temporarily trolled or wound up by mates, but also on people who are in long-term relationships.
For idealistic Nev, it remains a disappointment that the participants don't always fall in love at first sight. "For sure, we're always trying to prepare our hopefuls for the fact that the physical appearance of the person they've been talking to does not match the person they thought it was. And so many times we've heard 'I'm not in love with the picture, I'm in love with the personality…' but then they're not attracted to them," he sighs. The truth is that, despite the odd bored boy playing a joke, or a teenage girl wanting to humiliate a love rival, most of the catfishes on the show are just painfully lonely, insecure and, often, a bit fat.
"I think the reason it's an uplifting show is that it's about self-love," argues Max, who's using 'self-love' in the American way. "More times than not, what needs to happen at the end of the show is that they – generally the catfish, if not the hopeful person as well – need to come to terms with the fact they're not happy with themselves. What I find life-affirming is [that these people are doing] the scariest thing – not just telling the person they love the truth, but doing it in front of the cameras, knowing it's going to be broadcast to millions of people. I think that's an amazing first step towards building up themselves in their real life, and that to me is a happy ending."
Of course, some of the shows end up with people threatening to punch the other person, tears, or (in one case) $3,000-worth of lost money and an un-returnable engagement ring.
You'd have thought that now we're all quite good at Google and teenagers can hunt down One Direction's home addresses in half an hour, we'd all be too savvy to be tricked in this way online. But Max says they want to do a British version of the show next year (he later backtracks and adds "nothing's decided yet") and the show is set for series three. Between series one and two, they got 10,000 emails asking for help. Nev is still optimistic he'll find two people who'll fall properly in love. Good luck, Nev.
Catfish: The TV Show Series 2 starts with a double bill on Monday, 9pm, MTV Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 hours ago.