Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Reeling in a Catfish

Right now a lot of people are talking about the Notre Dame football player, Manti Te'o, who was apparently the victim of a hoax. According to the story, he had a "girlfriend" that he was involved with for more than two or three years. But then he found out that she died, and he shared his story with the press; everyone felt sorry for him, and he got a lot of publicity.

But then it came out that the girlfriend never existed. What's more, he never met her. Apparently some guy tricked Te'o into thinking that he was e-mailing and talking on the telephone to a beautiful woman that he'd never seen in person.

At first I was skeptical. I wondered whether the football player just made up this whole story to get attention for himself (if he really wanted publicity, he should have just auditioned to be the next Bachelor or dated one of the Kardashians. Then everyone would be talking about him, though not in a good way.). Not to mention that Te'o now admits that he made up stories about how he did meet her in person, though he never did. But now I can't help wondering if he really was the victim of a hoax.

I also couldn't help wondering how anyone could communicate with someone for that long without meeting her in person. There's actually a show on MTV called Catfish, that originated from a film about a guy who was also fooled into thinking that the online friend he'd communicated with didn't exist. According to Wikipedia (which as everyone knows is a totally reliable source), a "catfish" is a person who creates fake profiles in order to get attention (and in some cases, "love") from other people. I think that people who deceive others like that must be very lonely...and also very manipulative and selfish.

I've been writing to several of you fellow bloggers ever since I started blogging, even though I've never met any of you. And I do feel like bloggers can make good connections with each other in that way. But it's one thing to develop an online friendship; I think it's something else altogether to develop an online romantic relationship. My question is this: is it possible to have a romantic relationship with someone you've never met?

I'd have to say no. Like I said in my last post, I believe that the best way to find out if you truly have chemistry with someone is to meet him in person. When I did the online dating thing, most of the guys that I met arranged to meet in person after the third or fourth e-mail.

There was one guy who I did spend several months communicating with. He always had an excuse for why we couldn't meet in person. Finally we set up a date, but he didn't show up (he had another lame excuse for that). Was I mad? Let's just say I reacted in the same way that I would if Starbucks suddenly shut down, or if I found out that the Kardashians had moved into my building. (Oh, dear God! The horror!) Maybe I shouldn't have given him another chance, but I did. When we did meet in person, he turned out to be about ten years older and thirty pounds heavier than he looked in his profile pictures. I hoped that his personality would make up for it. It didn't. The date was so bad that when we took a walk by the lake, I contemplated jumping into it and swimming away from him. (I thought if I just ran away he might catch up with me.)

There was another guy that I've mentioned before. He sent me ten or twelve e-mails over the course of a month. Every time I brought up the idea of meeting in person, he came up with another excuse for why he couldn't. After a while, he stopped e-mailing me, and he didn't respond to my e-mail. It made me wonder why he pulled a disappearing act. Was he not who he said he was? Was he in a relationship with someone else? Was he one of those self-centered guys who enjoy getting attention from women on online dating sites and leading them on, but chicken out (or change their minds, when really in all likelihood they may have just been "browsing") when it's time to meet them in person? Was there any way that I could find out where he lived, so that I could order fifty boxes of tampons and have them sent to him, or perhaps send a messenger over there to throw his laptop out the window?

I don't think that you can fall in love with someone you've never met. It's like obsessive fans who claim to be in love with Ryan Gosling or Robert Pattinson (though I do think Ryan is cute). They have this idea in their heads of what that person is like (and an idea that the movie star will fall in love with them at first sight), an idea which may not match up at all with reality. Not to mention you can present yourself as being a completely different person online. (Side note: Don't worry, I haven't done that. I really am a neurotic workaholic, and I really do obsess over everything. I also believe that going on vacation would freak me out even more than I would freak out if Starbucks shut down.)

I think it's important to meet the person you're interested in. When you communicate with other people online, you can figure out what you want to say beforehand. You can go back and revise what you've written. But offline, there is no delete button. You could still pretend to be someone you're not when you meet in person, but even body language can be very revealing.

So if Te'o really is the victim of a hoax, then I feel a little sorry for him. But I also think that he should have insisted on meeting the girl in person sooner, rather than carry on a "relationship" for years. He claims he tried to meet her, but the "girl" made up excuses or kept canceling the dates. Those excuses and cancellations should have been red flags to him, and it shouldn't have taken him so long to find out the truth. (I admit that it took me a while to figure out that those two guys weren't necessarily who they said they were, but it didn't take me years to figure it out. I also didn't consider myself as being in a relationship with them just because we'd been communicating online.)

What do you think? Do you think that it's possible to fall in love with someone you've never met? What do you think of people who spend months and months communicating with someone online and over the phone without ever meeting them in person? I've heard them say that it's still a relationship, and that they are in love and have a deep connection with each other. Do you think it's possible to have a relationship that way? (Side note: It's not the same thing as couples who have long-distance relationships, because at least they have already met and spent time together in person.)

19 comments:

  1. Catfish was a great film. You should see it. I mean, it was more awesome for me because I didn't know what a catfish was when I saw it so the end was fantastic. But it's still enjoyable, I think.

    I don't think online love is possible because I think an important part of love is physical. Not just in terms of sex, but also sharing food together or helping each other to carry things or knowing another person is present to save you if a fire should start. But when I was younger and more naive and socially reluctant and spent hours of every single day on the computer with the same online friends, back then perhaps it was possible... And there is something to be said for the fact that I would talk to the same people for literally hours every single day. I shared my dreams with them and we had ridiculous inside jokes and it was such a comfort to come online and see them there for me.

    Then one of them revealed he wasn't from where he said he was and another one stopped coming online and our group broke apart and I got over it, haha. But in the midst of it, it all felt very real. And I can see how someone lacking in the real life equivalent could pin all their feelings on an online version.

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    1. Hi mmarinaa,
      You raise several good points. It made me see things from Manti Te'o's side. Maybe he was shy offline, so it was easier for him to communicate with that person online. Or maybe he was just lonely. It must be a tough blow to find out that what he thought he had wasn't real. But at least you did have something real with those online friends, and that's good. Social interactions are evolving, largely because of the Internet and all the technology that is available to us now.

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  2. I've seen the mtv show....its crazy what people have to go through for months not knowing who is who

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    1. Hi Tammy,
      I've only seen bits and pieces of the TV show, but I don't think I could have as much patience as those people do. I'd want to meet the person I'm communicating with. It can be (and it is) nerve-wracking to meet that person for the first time, but it's important to meet them.

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  3. Definitely some interesting bits about this in the media. Crazy stuff. I can see how someone would be interested in someone online, but I can't imagine it going on too long without meeting them in person. That would freak me out and make me think they are who they say they are.

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    1. Hi Leigh,
      That's one of the risks of online dating; sometimes it's difficult to figure out if the person is who he says he is. Another red flag is when guys send an e-mail pressuring me to meet right away; that makes me think that dating isn't what they're interested in. I'm also wary of guys who don't post pictures of themselves on their dating profiles (and there are a LOT of guys who don't post pictures); it makes me wonder what they're trying to hide.

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  4. I think you're an incredibly patient person. I'd have deleted that guy if he wasn't pushing to meet in person. No, I don't think people fall in love who have never met, not real love, that comes from really knowing a person and loving them anyway. Except for Robson Green and I, that's real.

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    1. Hi Charmaine,
      Tee hee! I looked at a picture of Robson Green and he's cute! I shouldn't have been so patient with that guy, and I wish that I had deleted him. Then I wouldn't have had to go out on that awful date.

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  5. One my husband's friends was duped by a girl he ended up marrying. Her sister actually wrote the letters. Being the shallow person that he is, he decided to marry the beautiful girl in the picture. BIG MISTAKE. She was Russian, which means by our Canadian laws, he was responsible for her for 10 years (I think that's how it goes if you marry a foreigner). She ended up being a thief and stole from the store she worked at. In a tiny town. Where everyone knows everyone.

    They are now divorced.

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    1. Hi Stina,
      That's awful what happened to your husband's friend, and that's unfair that he had to be responsible for her for so long. I hope she was arrested for stealing from the store; people should be held accountable for their actions.

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  6. Very well said! Although I've met SO many great blogger/writer friends online, I think it's a shame that our society is evolving to rely so much on social media that it's become a replacement for real relationships. There's no way you can get a feel for what a person is like until you meet them face to face... let alone fall in love with them! People who "fall in love" online are falling in love with an idea. If that idea doesn't match up to reality, they're in for a surprise.

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    1. Hi Julie,
      Exactly! It is fun to communicate with friends online, but it's a different kind of fun to interact with them in person. Social media should be a supplement, so to speak, not a replacement for relationships. But you're right in that in many ways it has become a replacement. I've heard of of some people who get frustrated (and it's not just them, because it bothers me too) when they sit down to talk to people who pay more attention to their cell phones or laptops then they do to the conversation they're having in person.

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  7. I think you could certainly become friendly with someone online, and make a connection, but I agree, you definitely have to meet up eventually! It's even weirder if the guy doesn't want to meet up - what the heck's he looking for, then?
    The one example I have is a friend of mine who was introduced by a mutual friend to a guy living overseas. They were online buddies for a few months before they finally met and now they're married!

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    1. Hi Deniz,
      I like the stories of people who end up getting married after meeting online; it shows that online connections really can lead to something more.
      When I did the online dating thing, I did go on several dates; however, I could have gone out on a lot more dates if there weren't so many "disappearing acts". Those were the jerks who would e-mail me a few times and then disappear with no explanation. It made me wonder why they would bother to e-mail me if they didn't want to meet in person. I think that for a lot of them it was about ego; they liked the attention, and they had no consideration for my feelings.

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  8. I have several friends who met their husbands online and across the country, carried on romantic relationships for a long period of time where they communicated on the computer and ended up married.

    The subject of how the internet can allow us to pretend to be something we're not or allow us to lead double lives is endlessly fascinating to me!

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    1. Hi Johanna,
      I think that it would be interesting to write a story (in fact, it could be the subject of several stories) about people who lead double lives and/or have different identities online, especially because it seems to happen a lot more now. I don't think I could lie about myself, though; the truth would come out eventually.
      The fact that your friends met your husbands online is proof that online dating really can work. I hope it'll work for me, too. :)

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  9. I didn't know what a catfish was.
    (And I don't think you can fall in love with someone you've never met (unless you're a crazy person of course. Then all sorts of weird things are possible).

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    1. Hi Irene,
      I didn't know what a catfish was at first either; I watched clips of that Catfish TV show, and I kind of felt sorry for the people who found out that the people they were communicating with weren't who they said they were. There were a few cases where there were even "catfish" who pretended to be men online when they were really women, and vice versa.

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    2. I don't enjoy it when people are played for fools,so that show sounds horrible!

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