I really must ask this question of Paul:
Have you seen the movie "Catfish"?
If you did, then nothing you say below makes any sense.
Being "Carfished" is not about having a long-term relationship
on the internet and never meeting the person you've been in
contact with -- this has been happening since the origins of
the internet/arpanet 40 years ago. When the internet/arpanet
first began, with its origins in the Department of Defense
sponsored research projects at universities and business,
everyone with an internet account had to "known", that is,
the person's access to the internet/arpanet had to be
justified, real identities and affiliations had to be provided
(how else would one know who to complain to if a person
abused their internet *privileges*), and netiquette had
been developed as a social contract for people. Someone
with a *.edu address or a *.com address (e.g., Sun computer
company) or a *.gov address (e.g., NASA's facilities)
had to be identifiable, especially if that person abused their
account which was interpreted as misuse of federal or
commercial resources.
Being "Catfished" is comparable to trying to use the
dating services on the internet where the pictures and information
one provided about oneself can be wildly at odds with the actual
person. What makes the "Catfish" situation different from the
dating/relationship service is that one expects to eventually meet
the other person -- the dating service acts as a "go-between".
This, too, has a long tradition on the internet.
The point behind "Catfish" is having someone create a persona
for a person that does not exist, that is, promoting a fraud.
One is never going to meet the "person" that they have developed
the relationship because typically that person does not exist.
In the movie "Catfish", the persona was based on a family member
that had stopped having contact with the family years before
(however, the picture used for the female was not one of her but
of a model found on the web, similar to the Te'o situation).
In one story about a "Catfish" exploit, the female was being made
up by a male (I referred to this in a previous post, here's the story again:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/catfish-the-tv-show-wants-to-be-woman-video_n_2476640.html
)
On the old internet/arpanet system, being a "Catfish" was a very
difficult thing to do especially since there were very few private internet
service providers (ISPs) and they were policed by the rest of the internet
community (e.g., Netcom which Earthlink bought out). Long time internet
users will remember the "Green card" spamming of Canter and Siegel
as the "official" death of the old internet and the birth of the "new"
internet
where all sorts of crap could be gotten away with.
Fast forward to the 2000's, we have the development of social media
services which promote a "Too Much Information" tendency on the
part of way too many people and, because there are limited means to
verify the identities of people (unless one has the skills and/or time
and/or
money to verify whether the person they are communicating with is in
fact the person they say they are), it has become way too easy to create
fake personas that, like Joseph Weizenbaum's computer program "Eliza",
that make one believe they are dealing with real people (for more on "Eliza"
see the Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA )
Weizenbaum, back in the 1960s, showed how easy it was to fool someone
into thinking that they were dealing with a "real" person (which also showed
how wildly off the "Turing test" was) with a simple text based interface.
Today, we have pictures, blogs, twitter, and so on, all that can be used to
not
only create the illusion that actual person have characteristics that they
don't
have but to create fictitious people that can lure others into believing
that they
really, really exist.
In closing, I'm not sure what Paul wrote below has to do with "Catfishing"
but seems to think it does. I wonder if we can get a clarification.
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
------- Original Message ---------
On Sun, 20 Jan 2013 19:44:17 -0800, Paul C Bernhardt wrote:
I have online relationships with people whom I've never met in person, and
that's beyond the many people here on TIPS that I've never met.
I've been friends, online mainly, with a group of about 5 currently, but
about
15 at its peak. The group started in 1995 as a group of like-minded refugees
from AOL's Court TV OJ Simpson murder trial discussion boards. Of that
group,
I've met 4 (three in the Chicago area, one in the Reno area). None of them
made
it romantic, though one came close to turning that way in the early years.
She
was in Iowa. They range in professions from attorney (several), nurse,
advertising executive, New York City bicycle delivery clerk, professor of
physics. etc. I believe all of them that I've not personally met are 'real
but
I've no proof beyond my 18 years of virtual daily email communication via
our
list serve and the fact that at some point everyone has been personally met
by
at least one other person. We've had deaths, sent flowers to each other for
weddings, funerals, to help with emergencies (one Illinois friend's house
was
leveled by a tornado, another was out of work a very long time and needed
money
to keep her house payment up, another's son was being tried in some bizarre
drug case and needed money for lawyers. We all pitched in and never have
doubted the reality of these folks. We've received baby clothes from some, a
spray of flowers at my father's funeral (he became a member of the group in
the
early 2000s) from the group. we know about wins and losses in each other's
lives like any good friends should.
If I'm being Catfished, it's been a long con for sure! LOL!
------- Original Message ---------
On Jan 20, 2013, at 6:27 PM, Musselman, Robin wrote:
Last semester in my Social Psychology class we had a huge discussion about
catfishing and quite frankly I was initially dumbstruck - and I guess that
was
my reaction to how could some of these folks be struck so dumb! :-)
Anyway, the thing that I find distressing is that this seems to me to be one
more way that young people are putting it all out there. What I mean, is
they
each try to outdo each other sharing things that back in my day you would
try
to hide...and this is just one more way to put themselves in front of
cameras
and the world. It reminds me of the people on YouTube who post their return
from EVERY shopping trip, chronicling each purchase. WHO CARES? They do,
evidently and they have others who watch and must care as well.
If you have never watched Catfish on MTV - you will probably be stunned as
well.
BTW, in my class of 30, at least 10 have on line relationships (some
considered
to be "romantic") and they have never met the person. Some of the folks on
Catfish live less than 5 minutes away and never meet.
Go figure....
Robin (showing my age, I guess)
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