Catfishing: A Beauty in Disguise

Are you the type of person to use an app to slim your waist, make your teeth whiter, or make your pimple disappear? Or do you like interacting with people but under an alias? Well if you are, you’re also a part of the millions of other men and women who are also in pursuit of making their photos look like the better version of themselves and trick people into doing what you want because of your good looks.

The different types of online catfishing that can be identified in the reading would be a plus-sized woman using her slimmer friends’ pictures because she felt that if people knew that she was plus-sized it would put her at a disadvantage. Another woman changed her name and used a picture of another woman because she felt it would bring her popularity. Lastly, a man used his profile and name but conspired with his mother who was better at articulating herself to help him gain popularity.

So, what is the harm in catfishing if it can grant you popularity? Catfishing can be seen taking someone’s identity, changing your identity, and also falsifying information all for your own personal gain. Catfishing is wrong because it could be used to deceive another person out of money, pedophiles could be catfishing young children, human trafficking and identity fraud are some of the things that people who have been catfished could experience and also conspire to do. Catfishing has multiple social complications such as “it creates a behavior that is deceptive, counter-productive, untrustworthy, fraudulent, and pony. It leads to sadness, emotional devastation, life disruption, and unnecessary animosity” (Obiakor & Algozzine 2013)

Being catfished is devastating to experience, which is why there is never a positive response to finding out that you have been catfished. I believe that the actions that someone brings onto the person who has been deceiving and untrustworthy are warranted and presumably the catfish would know that if they were to get caught in the lie then they would somehow be punished.

I think representing yourself as real or your authentic self means to be who you are, don’t pretend or take on other personas, and don’t use people that you know or don’t know to try and deceive someone. To continue, I would not put the same burden on job interviews because your future employer gets to meet you face to face, they can do background checks and also interviews are meant to showcase all of your skills in the best way possible.

The ethical implications for someone using the deception technique that Ed was using would be that although he and his mother were talking about what to say, Ed might not be able to deliver or stay true to his word because, in reality, it was his mother that was the brains behind their team. Even if Ed weren’t using the voice of his mother for the competition, this type of catfishing would still fall under the category of catfishing.

To conclude, catfishing is an act that provokes deceptiveness, lies, and emotional devastation. To follow, once the person who is doing the catfishing is exposed. The way that the victim reacts could be unpredictable but warranted.

Obiakor, F., & Algozzine, B. (2013). The new normal: Catfishing in urban teacher preparation programs. Multicultural Learning and Teaching, 8(1), 1–6.