How to talk to people online you don't know and creep. AKA CATFISH

Catfish is a MTV show based off a documentary that follows a young photographer that has been talking to this girl named Megan on Facebook for a few months and begins to have a relationship with her even though he's never Skyped her or met her. As he keeps talking to her, his brother and a friend think it's sketchy because she always has some excuse for things and things just don't make sense from the things that she says which leads to a shocking surprise when they go to visit "Megan".

 

 

 

So since the documentary was such a big hit, MTV contacted them about how they wanted to make CATFISH: The TV show. When basically Nev (the guy who met Megan and dealt with what all happened there) would pick people that emailed him about their experience or story about how they're dating someone online but haven't met or Skyped them for whatever reason. And after watching every episode, which is on at 10pm on MTV, I've come to realize a few things, so here’s a few tips of how to find out if the person you might be talking to is fake.

1.      First of all, if you're talking to someone online that you don't know in real life, you shouldn't honestly believe everything about that person and go ahead and assume they're being sketchy. Personally if you have less than 50 mutual friends, and they don't have that many friends and only 1 profile picture, go ahead and assume it's a fake.

2.      Every single episode, it's never the person they say they are or act out to be. They usually know the person that they stole the information and pictures from and have just made up this fake person. There's been situations when a girl thought she was talking to a guy to have it be some gross girl, or thought she was talking to some male stripper to have it be a 40 year old guy with 4 kids, or even better, the time this guy thought he was talking to this hot girl to have it be a gay guy who got kicked out of college for using the fake profile to get at one of his teachers.

3.      If you think that the person is too good to be true, that individual probably isn't real. If the person has a fake account, there's a few signs. Such as A) They have had something tragic happen multiple times or something is always going on. B) They look like an absolute model and are 'famous' or have famous friends C) They don't have a webcam, which you can buy for around $15, never talk on the phone or never send a picture of themself to you.

4.      Trust your gut instinct. Every time I watch the show with my Mom, we always guess if it's going to be the real person or a fake, which it has always been a fake. But when you do watch it you know that some things don't add up or just something weird isn't right.

5.      If you were really concerned if whoever you were talking to online was a fake, you should creep. And when I say creep, I don’t mean find the persons IP address and stalk them in their real, not online life, I mean that you should be able to use their information to your advantage. If they have a phone number, look it up online, it’ll tell you what state it’s from or even city. If you think that they are using someone else’s pictures, save them on your computer and Google Image search it. If the same picture is somewhere else on the internet, it’ll show up. (764)

6.      Talk to the mutual friends that you might have with them. Since it’s probably a low number, message that person and say, “Hey! I was wondering how you know so-and-so.” Or something like that. More than likely they’ll say they never met this person in real life but they’ve talked online. Fake.

7.      And finally, as they said on the show, “If she’s asking for a picture of your (insert word here), she probably has one herself.” Meaning if they constantly want inappropriate pictures of you, it’s probably a creepy person or other bad people who come into your mind.

Stay safe online and don’t talk to fakes. And again, don’t stalk them down because you don’t know if the guy you’re talking to is a 18 year old football player, or a 60 year old man with candy.