I watched this film called Catfish the other day and it was spectacular.
A catfish is someone who uses Facebook, or in fact any other social networking site, to pretend to be someone they're not. So the people who use pictures of people who aren't them and go under a fake name on a social networking site to trick people or whatever.
So this film is about a photographer living in New York, with his brother and friend (who film the documentary), who gets sent a painting of one of his pictures from an eight year old, child art prodigy called Abby living in Michigan. Nev, the photographer, friends Abby on Facebook and then, through this, become friends with her mother, father, brothers and half-sister. He starts to get to know the family really well, especially Abbys half-sister, Megan. Eventually he begins an online relationship with her. Megan is an amateur model, photographer, dancer and musician (playing the cello, guitar and singing). She and Nev text, I.M and call each other regularly with the continuing of Abby sending her paintings and Angela, Abby's mum, having conversations with Nev on the phone about Abby's work.
One night when Nev is looking at Megan's Facebook profile he sees some covers of songs so he asks her to send him some of her other covers. After she sends them Nev listens to them with his brother, Ariel, and friend, Henry, and they all agree that the songs are fantastic. However, Nev soon discovers that they are just performances taken from YouTube, when confronted Megan just tells him that they are covers and are supposed to sound similar to such performances. Nev, Henry and Ariel then start to look at other things the family have told them about, such as Abby's new art gallery in Michigan, finding the family has lied about this too. Nev is anxious to end his relationship with Megan, or at least confront her about the lies, but is persuaded to continue the relationship for the documentaries sake.
The friends all have to the Vail Dance Festival, which is somewhat near Michigan, so they decide to visit the family unannounced for their Sunday, family breakfast. So they do driving past Megan's house on the Saturday night to find none of the horses, that she had told Nev about, there. They also find postcards that Nev sent Megan still in the letterbox. The following day Nev, Ariel and Henry go to Abby's house, once there they knock on the front door with no reply. So they go to the side door where they can see people through the window. The people take a while to answer but do eventually, Angela, Abby's mum, answers. However, she does not look like the woman on her Facebook profile pictures, this is the same with Abby's dad, who also does not look like the person in his pictures. Abby is at a friends house but her brothers are home, and both are severely handicapped, which is not how they appeared to be on their Facebook profiles, especially as one of them was supposed to be in a band. Nev soon realises that things are not how they first seemed and that he has been lied, however the group play along whilst they are invited to go and see Abby and her friend down by the beach. When Angela isn't around Nev asks Abby's friend about Abby's paintings, to which she replies, Abby doesn't really paint but her mum does.
Later Nev confronts Angela about the paintings, Megan (who he still hasn't met in person) and all the other lies. Angela tells Nev that she did in fact paint all of Abby's paintings and she doesn't have a very good relationship with Megan, who lives down state and hasn't seen the family in a long time. It was Angela, putting on a voice, that Nev had been talking to on the phone, texting and instant messaging. Upon meeting the family in person Angela had still lied about many more things, having Uterine cancer, Megan being in rehab etc.
What I'm trying to say is that Catfish's are real things and that social networking is kind of dangerous, there are so many people that I know mainly on Facebook (although I have met all my Facebook friends in real life before adding them on Facebook, through school, parties, friends, family etc.), you never really know who people are unless they are 100% honest, which you don't know, or you live with them/ are around them most of the time.
