On Sat, 19 Jan 2013 07:45:54 -0800, Carol Devolder wrote:
Since you brought this up, I'm going to ask a question that has
been bothering me. Why do we care about this? That's a serious
question--other than experiencing painful humiliation, did this
young man do anything that merits the intensity of scrutiny by
the media? Did he cheat, break any laws, do anything to gain
from this? I'm (obviously) not a sports fan, so I'm pretty dumb
about all of this. Isn't Mati Te'o's "crime" simply that he was a fool?
Why make so much out of his humiliation?
I have to admit that I'm with Carol on this, that is, I don't really
know why there is such a big media fuss about Te'o's deception.
My own interest in "Catfishing" pre-date the news on Te'o
because it is a pretty common phenomena (it is so common
that even a TV commercial for car insurance uses a bit where
a pretty young girl is going to meet her "French Model" boyfriend
for a date -- the boyfriend's appearance and mangling of "Bonjour"
indicate that he's a fraud). Catfishing pre-dates the internet but
making believe you're someone you're not is whole lot easier
on the internet, especially on social media.
But getting back to Te'o, I think that there are two issues that may
be relevant -- anyone who really follows college football please feel
free to correct me:
(1) Why would he have a relationship with a woman online, especially
one that he has never met, when it is quite likely that he can get almost
any female (college student or not) for almost any purpose?
(2) Did Te'o knowingly engage in a deception of the media and Notre
Dame with the story of his grandmother and girlfriend dying on the
same day? Was Te'o trying to establish a storyline of him and the
Notre Dame team coming back from this emotional setback and
triumph over adversity by going all the way (i.e., winning in the bowl
championship)?
Since Te'o has turned pro and is technically no longer involved with
Notre Dame football, Notre Dame is apparently under no obligation
to investigate whether Te'o engage in unethical behavior by lying to
the school and the media about his girlfriend's death. So, did Te'o
commit a crime? I don't know, I'm not a lawyer. Might he have engaged
in unethical or unsportsman-like behavior? I don't know, and perhaps
no one will because a lot of people just want this to go away.
So, what are we left with? Te'o is actually a minor player, just a case
study of how catfishing can occurring and, perhaps, how some people
might enable it if they may benefit from it (after all, the guys who
make the movie "Catfish" got that, a TV series, and probably more
opportunities to make movies and TV series in the future).
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
On Jan 19, 2013, at 9:11 AM, "Mike Palij" <[email protected]> wrote:
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."
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