I spent a lot of time wondering what I should write for this paper. I kept bouncing back on different ideas not knowing which to go with. I took a moment to browse our old notes, then at the Attraction Theory packet. As I was rereading, I remembered one certain paragraph that stuck to me like a sore thumb: Attraction Online. For five years I talked to a girl I met over the internet and was completely enamored by her. She made me so incredibly happy. However, towards the end I discovered that everything I thought knew about this girl was a lie. She was what they call a Catfish. A Catfish, by definition, is someone who creates a fake identity to deceive others. Here is what happened to me.
It all began when I was 11 or 12 years old. Back then I was glued to the computer all the time; playing games, watching videos, ect. There was one site particularly that was my favorite. It was one
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of those virtual worlds where you got to customize your own character, dress them up, play games, etc. One day this person sent me a friend request. It was the type of website that required actual money to buy certain things so I remember feeling honored that someone with a paid membership wanted to be my friend (I was too cheap to spend money on that sort of stuff). After I accepted it, we began talking to each other and she soon became my best friend on the website. I never really had an internet friend before since adults always acted like everyone on the internet is actually a 50 year old man that’s out to get you, but I could tell she wasn’t an old man, or creepy stalker, or anything like that. I use to stop back at the computer all day just see if she was on, and if she was I would be online for hours. We would do pretty much anything. We made videos, new friends, played games together, and anything else we could think of. I could not describe the level of excitement I had whenever I was ‘with’ this girl. I was in middle school at the time and it was certainly not my favorite place to be, I was pretty awkward and by no means was I popular. That is probably why I loved being online. It was this escape from reality where I could be whoever and however I wanted. Anyways, spring forward a couple of years and we are both starting to outgrow the website and decided to move to more social media based places. We still had not seen each other's faces so we planned to send one another photos. (Keep in note this was before I had any sort of device for ‘selfies’ so there I was attempting and taking awful photos with my digital camera). I was so nervous to show her what I looked like and when she told me how pretty she thought I was I felt like I was on top of the world. Then I finally saw her. In my eyes, she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She had this stunning, long golden hair complimented by big brown eyes with long lashes. Her smile was so genuine and contagious I could not look away. Never in my life had I been so enchanted by someone and felt this way before. We told eachother everything. I knew all about her family, her friends, her life. Whenever one of us had a bad day we could always confide in eachother. We basically acted like we were dating. In real life was severely in the closet and terrified to come out to anyone. It was so comforting to be able to be myself without having to worry someone in real life would find out. Fast forwarding again; it’s now around sophomore year of highschool. I decided it was time we finally start calling/video chatting with each other because that step was long overdue. She however, was completely against the idea. She’d always make excuses, or we’d set up a time and she would never answer, any chance never happened. It got so annoying so like anyone else, I questioned it. That made things completely changed. She became so defensive, and after that she acted extremely manipulative and mean. I was terrified to lose her so I put up with it for months. After that, she started making up all these lavish stories too absurd to believe. Tired of it all I finally called her out on everything and just like that, she was gone. She deleted all her social media and any means of contact. I tried to get in touch but she just vanished. I regretted it SO much. Despite how she treated me I missed her and all I wanted was to talk to her again. A couple of months later I got a message from a someone we were mutual friends with. She told me they gotten a message from the girl, and that she had been using fake pictures and a fake name the entire time. I got the link to the real person’s FaceBook and to my surprise, she was right. This person was nothing like the girl in the photo. It took a couple months to finally find the real girl. It ended up being someone the same school district as the Catfish. I was tempted to send her a message but I decided there would be no use to it. She has a boyfriend, she looked happy, and she has no idea I exist. It’s an awful feeling thinking you know everything about someone and you’re nothing more than a stranger to them. Not only that, but the embarrassment I felt was tremendous. People warn you about this sort of thing but I was so blinded I could not see through her lies. After the whole mess of it I came across a series called ‘Catfish’.
It was about couples in an online relationship who had never met in real life. It was based off the documentary, ‘Catfish’ that told the story of a man, Nev Schulman, who had fell in love with a woman online and his journey to meet her. Upon arrival, instead of greeting the young woman in the photos he was met with a 40 year old married woman. This trend of creating fake identities was coined ‘Catfish’ after this quote from the husband:
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. People are looking for love, and now more than ever before using online resources in means of getting it. Just think how many commercials you see for dating websites. It has expanded past the computer screen, with mobile apps like Tinder and OkCupid. It is not surprising either that a portion of these users create a fake identity in the process. I mentioned earlier you could be whoever and however you wanted on the internet, and many take advantage of that. The intention of a Catfish differs from person to person. For some, it stems from bouts insecurity and others do it with the motivation of revenge. Then there are numerous accounts of Catfish who felt nothing towards the other person, and did it simply out of boredom. Hayley Peterson of DailyMail stated, “It is a joy that typically springs from their inability to achieve the depth of human connection in reality that they can achieve online, according to their personal accounts.“ In a study conducted in 2014, 59% of Internet users felt online dating is a good way to meet people yet 54% of these users believed that someone else had false information in their profile. Whatever the cause may be, neither side truly benefits. I still think about my Catfish from time to time. I wish I could have had one last word for closure. It affected me terms of finding new relationships. I found myself comparing everyone to her and as much as I just wanted to shake her off my mind I couldn’t do it. Despite everything, I am glad it happened. I have become much wiser and more knowledgeable about the online dating world and the people who inhabit it. I would never fall for something like that again.
Diving into the book I found that Paul Greenberg takes his readers on a journey starting from when he was just a boy and enjoyed the simple act of casting a baited-line into the water and waiting for a fish to latch onto the hook. “By the summer of 1981, I had a boat...and several thousand square miles of sea for my own use.” (3) After being hooked by Greenberg’s opening story, I learned that the four fish from the title of the book are salmon, sea bass, cod, and tuna. These four fish are on almost every seafood restaurant's menu. The book only has about six traditional chapters but four of them are dedicated to a single fish from the list mentioned before. Regardless, the book is still over two hundred pages long because Greenberg goes so in-depth with the story of each fish.
And the heart, even in this commercial age, finds a way”(222)—implying that, although not perfect, online romance can work. He evidences his statement by illustrating how online dating “slows things down” (221), “puts structure back into courtship” (221), and “is at once ruthlessly transactional and strangely tender” (221). For example, he describes how couples might “exchange email for weeks or months” (221) when using a dating site, effectively slowing the dating process and adding more structure to courtship. He displays the transactional and sensitive side of Internet dating when he points to Internet exchanges between couples that “encourage both extreme honesty (the strangers-on-a-train phenomenon) and extreme dishonesty, as people lie about their ages, their jobs, whether they have kids and, most often, whether they are married” (222).
The subsequent description of the cod’s historical significance served to relay the economical and cultural importance of this fish, or rather the instrumental value of the fish. The...
“Just show me the tackle and give me some bait. Then watch me go fishing, the rest can wait.” Fishing is one of my favorite things to do. It is catching a fish for either food or simply for fun. You can do it by yourself to enjoy the peace and quiet or fish with others to pass the time. Many people think fishing is an old man's sport but I think of it differently. It has helped to form my values, most importantly patience.
The definition of story is “an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment,” and both of these novels take this term to heart. Using their stories to hide their pain and emotions, it is easier to come up with a majestic tale then to tell the cold hard truth. In Life of Pi the author says, “That’s what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence,” (vi) and that is something both Edward Bloom and Pi Patel doesn’t. Despite Life of Pi and Big Fish’s obvious differences, they have one thing in common they both revolve around the topic of story telling. The novels are about struggling to come to terms with reality and being stuck
Ethics is the study of morality. Morality is composed of the standards that an individual or group has about what is right or wrong and good or bad. Through ethics, you are able to reflect on one’s moral standards or moral stands of a group or society and asking whether they are reasonable. One must keep in mind ethical relativism when analyzing whether a situation is right or wrong. Ethical relativism says that moral right and wrong depend on the culture a person belongs to. Since societies differ in the moral standards there is no single correct set of moral standards everyone should follow. The three main schools of thought learned for ethics are utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and ethics of care. Using these three schools of thoughts I will analyze an episode of Catfish.
In The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister tells how a beautiful, extraordinary, yet, self-centered blue fish learns that being beautiful isn’t the key to happiness. The blue fish came to find this lesson when he lost his friends. Pfister takes a simple ocean setting and explores the consequences of an individual’s arrogance toward their peers, the process of humbling of oneself, and the tremendous reward one feels when they learn to share. The story achieves these morals by the author’s use of detailed imager and also, the influence of minor characters on the antihero in order to reveal to the audience the true thematic message; selfish actions bring true happiness.
This article presents the deceptions of online dating through the users profiles through self-presentation, emotions and trustworthiness.
You're planning a vacation to Hawaii and want to do some fishing while here. If you're planning to hop on a charter sport fishing boat or some other commercial offshore excursion, you don't have anything to worry about except for showing up at the dock on time.
Black Fish is a documentary released by Gabriela Cowperthwaite on July 19, 2013. The main purpose of this documentary was to expose the cruelty animals experience by being locked up in Sea World. Mainly, this film focuses on Orcas; this is because most people attend sea world to watch these wild animal perform shows. Specifically, the footage lights up Tilikum, a wild orca who was related to the death of three trainers, which by the way were blamed for their own murder. Tilikum was cruelty trained in order to obey and perform the huge shows Sea World makes by using these animals. In the film the use of footage and videos recorder by people who have attended these shows are used, which makes the film reliable and explicit.
The line "what the hell is water" essentially is the fishes version of a person saying "what the hell is air". This line portrays the surprisingly common ignorance to the world around us despite it being right in front of us the entire time. We spend so long swimming in water that we go on auto pilot and forget what it is we are swimming in. Later in his speech Wallace states how we need to rid ourselves of our "default setting" that is on every waking moment of our lives. He proceeds to explain that we must imagine ourselves as that person and put ourselves into their shoes, feel what they feel, see what they see. Simply by letting ourselves understand a stranger on a deeper allows us to be compassionate and shed some of the weight of the ignorance we carry around. We have to be willing to sacrifice ourselves in some moments and allow others to be lifted up or else we will always remain in a bubble blocking out the rest of the
I used to love fish. Ever since I was a toddler I loved everything fish themed! ‘Rainbow Fish’, by Marcus Pfister, was one of my favorite children’s books and I even had a lot of Rainbow fish themed stuffed animals and toys. “Mom, can you read me Rainbow Fish again?” I said while I layed on my stomach with my face down on the pillow. “Ok Sweetie.”, My mom said with a smile on her face, probably for the 5th time that night. One of my favorite movies as a child was Finding Nemo. I had to have sat down on the couch at least once a week to watch Finding Nemo, and take in the beauty of the ocean and all the cute little animated fishies. I had an ocean themed bathroom. I was too careless as a child to really care about the decor, as I picked my tooth
Whether you fish for trout and other fish, bait is one area that you must not leave. When undertaking the interview process trout fishing trip, bear in mind the bait matters a great deal if you want to hook a nice-sized trout. Part on the art of trout fishing is applying the right bait at the correct time.
Toma, C. L., Hancock, J. T., & Ellison, B. N. (2008). Separating fact from fiction: An examination of deceptive self-presentation in online dating profiles. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1023-1036.
Whitty. M. T (2005), The Realness of Cybercheating: Men’s and Women’s Representations of Unfaithful Internet Relationships. Social Science Computer Review [Online] 23 (1) p. 57-67.