Catfish

Catfish is a documentary that reveals the shocking reality of web 2.0 and social networking.  Yaniv Schulman has to learn this harsh reality the hard way as he builds a romantic relationship with a girl named Megan that he believes to be his age.  Yaniv does not question any of the stories or details about Megan because he does not suspect to be deceived or perhaps he was just naive about the reality of web 2.0.  Facebook is a medium that can easily be exploited and allows people to hide behind pictures that can grant anonymity.  In this case Yaniv falls for a girl that turns out to be a 40-year-old woman that has created a false identity to hide from her own reality.  Yaniv finds the truth out the hard way when he shows up at Megan’s house for a surprise visit and she turns out to be the 40-year-old Angela that made up multiple identities in her effort to escape her own disappointing life. 

Instead of returning the cruelty, Yaniv realizes that he wasn’t a part of a scam as much as he was part of a getaway for Angela.  Yaniv sees a woman struggling to find happiness in a family with handicapped children and a dead end art career.  However, in the end, he finds out that Angela was lying about several other factors such as having cancer and that in my eyes is the most unacceptable lie.  Social mediums such as Facebook leave themselves vulnerable to secret lives and identities but to make up a real life lie about a sickness that kills millions of people is more disturbing than the rest.  Several critics suggest that this movie is fabricated and that it was filmed solely with the intention of educating the public on the dangers of social media and using them to build relationships. 

We have learned in class both through lecture, readings and video that social media and web 2.0 are the present and future of communication.  The advances that we have made have opened up the possibilities of establishing and rekindling friendships but have also opened up the potential for deception.  Democratized media means that the public is in control of content.  This concept takes center stage in Catfish, as there is no fact checking that exists that forces Angela to prove her identity.  A system like this leaves people susceptible to lying, deceit and on a grander scale, harm and theft.   As we saw in Digital Nation and Exit Through the Gift Shop, web 2.0 is the cause of much controversy that can have both positive and negative effects.  In Catfish we are witness to the negative repercussions and how the system can be exploited.  However, in the other documentaries that we watched we see how web 2.0 can bring people together all over the world and help people achieve their goals.  These documentaries help us understand the nature of web 2.0 and educate us on the potential of both sides of the spectrum.   

The progression of the internet has seen rapid development over the past decade with the introduction of web 2.0.  Prior to web 2.0, the internet was characterized by webpages and hyperlinks.  The internet was geared more towards static websites, html and information retrieval.  This phase of the internet featured free hosting services such as geocities that acted as the few ways to interact online.  Email was also a source of interaction that allowed people to connect and conduct business and personal information.  Web 2.0 is based on democratized media, social networking and the participatory web.  The shift of the web occurred due to technological advances and the behavior of internet users.  Web 2.0 includes features such as MySpace, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and many more.  Blogs, Wikis and folksonomies have taken center stage as information sharing has become the way of the present.  User generated content and virtual communities add plenty to the online world but also provide a few dangers, such as we saw in Catfish and with Andre Keen.  These features allow people to connect all over the world for various necessities such as business.  However, it could potentially lead to identity fraud and deception among users.  In Catfish we saw that with this style of communication, innocent people can end up being mislead and misinformed by other people with personal or mental problems and insecurities.  Andrew Keen also pointed out the drawbacks of democratized media with its lack of fact checking and elimination of the middle man.