I watch a lot of TV. I like having it in the background while I work. Not all of it is good, but not all of it is bad.
Have you guys ever seen Catfish the TV show on MTV? Did you see Catfish the movie?
If all of this sounds like a mumbojumbo, here’s a quick recap. Catfish the movie came out a few years ago, and was allegedly a documentary about a guy who fell in love with a girl online and decided to go meet her, and his brother went along and filmed the whole thing. But she turned out to not be who she claimed to be… They kind of promoted it as a thriller, which was weird, but maybe genius, I dunno. The team who shot/produced the movie is the same team who does the Paranormal Activity movies, so that sort of makes sense. Anyway, there is a guy who explains at the end of the movie what the whole “catfish” reference is about:
“They used to tank cod from Alaska all the way to China. They’d keep them in vats in the ship. By the time the codfish reached China, the flesh was mush and tasteless. So this guy came up with the idea that if you put these cods in these big vats, put some catfish in with them and the catfish will keep the cod agile. And there are those people who are catfish in life. And they keep you on your toes. They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking, they keep you fresh. And I thank god for the catfish because we would be droll, boring and dull if we didn’t have somebody nipping at our fin. ”
Catfish the TV show is about the guy from the movie, Nev Schulman, and his buddy Max, traveling around the country and helping other people meet their internet bf/gf’s in person for the first time. The big concern is that people are not who they claim to be, and on this show, they usually are not….
What I like about the show is that it doesn’t demonize the people who lied. Nev tries to find the silver lining, to explore why a specific person did what they did, and to even still foster a friendship between the two people.
As a super introvert, I have met a lot of people from the internet, starting from good old Teen Chat rooms on AOL. I can’t say that I’ve ever had an exciting catfish experience, but it makes me laugh inside to think about meeting my buddy Alek in 1994 and finding out he was a 40 year old woman named Cheryl.
Here is my favorite episode so far, Episode 6, Kya and Alyx.
