The popular media has been playing up the unfortunate situation involving
Notre Dame football lineback Mati Te'o who had the bad luck to have
his grandmother and girl friend die on the same day. Te'o was an outstanding
athlete (he was a candidate for the prestigious Heisman Trophy; for more
details on his outstanding sports accomplishments, see his wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manti_Te%27o ),
Those who follow college football know that these "challenges" to Te'o
and his team would become a sort of Cinderella story as Notre Dame would
go to the BCS National Championship Game but, unlike Cinderalla, they
would get whooped by Alabama's Crimson Tide. Unfortunately, that was
just the start of Te'o's problems as it turns out that his girl friend did
not die.
In fact, his girl friend was a fiction. Te'o had never met his girl friend
in
person and had developed his relationship with her online and with phone
calls. But his girl friend turned out to be a fraud. Here is
one timeline of how Te'o got hoaxed and how it translated into his
football activities; see:
http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/local_news/water_cooler/manti-teo-timeline-of-quotes-in-girlfriend-hoax-story
The term "Catfish" has been used to describe this situation because of
the "documentary" "Catfish"; see the description on www.imdb.com:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1584016/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
I use the quotes on "documentary" because there is the question of
whether it is a real documentary, say, like one of Michael Moore's
films or a "documentary" like "Cloverfield" or the "The Blair Witch
Project".
In the "documentary", a person develops a "relationship" online on the
basis of a person's description on a website. They communicate via
phone and email/etc and develop a relationship. But inconsistencies
develop which lead to a road trip to find the "truth" which, of course,
is documented on videotape. The name of the movie comes from
a monologue given at the end of the movie by a "Forest Gump" type
character about how catfish were put into tanks transporting cod to keep
them active instead of passive (being passive apparently made their flesh
flabby and unappetizing). The point or morale being, people pretending
to be someone that they are not on the internet are like the catfish in the
tank with the cod, they keep them active and save them from becoming
flabby and tasteless (though Te'o may disagree on this point).
More info about the film can be obtain from its Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_%28film%29
The movie "Catfish" was put into limited release and has been put
on MTV along with the TV series it inspired "Catfish: The TV Series".
HuffPost has one perspective on the TV series; see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/catfish-the-tv-show-wants-to-be-woman-video_n_2476640.html
NOTE: So much for the "Turing Test".
It should be noted that Charles Marriott wrote in 1913 a novel
titled "The Catfish" which can be seen as one source of inspiration
for the movie though the internet has made hoaxing others with
a false persona into high art. A review of Marriott's book is
available in "The Bookman" on books.google.com; see:
http://books.google.com/books?id=_A04AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA541&lpg=PA541&dq=%22the+catfish%22+%22charles+marriott%22+review&source=bl&ots=3R1DPdyFIA&sig=MajgwK9yYPk21cbbaYEjxH4e3wU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=saH6UJTTGJO60QGFx4CgAQ&ved=0CHwQ6AEwDQ#v=onepage&q=%22the%20catfish%22%20%22charles%20marriott%22%20review&f=false
Books.google.com also has a free ebook of "The Catfish" and I
would like to direct the reader's attention to page 401 which provides
the explanation of how a catfish in a tank of cod keeps them active
and tasty. See:
http://books.google.com/books?id=gtYMAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=catfish+%22cahles+marriott%22+cod&hl=en&sa=X&ei=X7P6UIXzH8-00AHz-YGAAg&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=cod&f=false
So, what lessons might be learned from all this:
(1) Some scams have been with all along but unthinking use of technology
might facilitate some of them.
(2) Remember the old New Yorker cartoon:
"On the internet, no one knows you're a dog."
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
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