Catfishing: How You’re Probably Misrepresenting Yourself Online
I am currently using Twitter to cyber bully a 16-year-old named Addison that aspires to be a Disney princess.
Not something I ever expected to write, and probably not something you expected to read, either. Let me explain: this is part of the NetProv again. ‘Addison’ is one of my classmates, and is most decidedly not a 16-year-old aspiring to become a Disney princess. He is not the type of person you would look at and think, ‘this guy is roleplaying a depressed, whiny child.’
My point is, Twitter (and all other social media) allows for people to create a profile that can be wildly misleading. While most of these are harmless accounts, some can be quite destructive.
Take, for example, the many fake accounts created by Russian hackers on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr to influence the 2016 US presidential election. At least 84 Tumblr accounts and 3,814 Twitter accounts were identified. These accounts spread propaganda against Hillary Clinton and promoted Donald Trump through the use of false claims, memes, and inflammatory language. It has become so easy to twist and falsify information on the internet that it is dangerous.
On a more personal level, inaccurate representation can have many negative consequences. The most commonly seen form of this is known as catfishing, when people create fake profiles and trick others into thinking they are someone they are not, usually done on dating apps.
Sometimes, catfishing is done with benign intentions — people simply want to project the persona they wish they had. Other times, however, people use pictures of someone else to solicit explicit pictures or private information from others. As more and more people use online dating sites or apps, catfishing represents a very real danger in relationships — when a relationship is based on a lie, what will happen as the relationship progresses?
In the interest of complete transparency, I will admit that I have used Tinder. It started off as a joke with my friends (how many cute guys did you match with?), but my current boyfriend and I met through the app. Which begs the question: while we (my boyfriend and I) traded other social media profiles and confirmed the other’s existence before meeting, how many meetups will go awry, or how many people end up meeting others who are vastly different from the persona they have projected online?
As Krystal D’Costa writes in an article about catfishing, “We tend to forget that we see what others want us to see when it comes to crafting an identity.” Because it is a purely online interaction at first, people have the ability to put almost any information online for others to see. When I create social media profiles, I choose more flattering photos of myself. I keep my audience in mind when posting, and (as I’ve mentioned before) I control my social media accounts heavily.
In an age where your social media profiles can cost you a job, we are constantly trying to project a façade of the person we are — highlighting our successes, and hiding our shortcomings. As we put forth our best selves, then, it is crucial to remember others are doing the same. We must learn to look past the digital self and question the information we receive from others.
