Truth is Stranger than Fiction

I spent last Sunday afternoon watching a TV show on MTV called “Catfish”. I had heard of this show through my sons and since MTV was having a Catfish marathon I decided to watch it. After watching the last episode of the first season I figured why not watch the movie that started this whole “Catfish” phenomenon? Where better to find this movie than at the Warsaw Community Public Library? So I grabbed the movie, settled in and was hooked from the first frame to the last.

In this day and age it seems that social networking has dominated our lives. People think nothing of interacting online with someone they've never met in person. The big question is how much can you really trust a person you meet online? The movie Catfish is a documentary that addresses this. Yaniv Schulman(Nev) is a young 20 something photographer who thinks he has found the perfect woman, problem is they've never met in person. When Nev discovers that Megan(his dream girl) is being deceptive, he, his brother, and a friend embark on a road trip to meet her face to face. What they find is partly what viewers will expect, but partly not. What emerges from this story is a tense, more-than-a-little-disturbing study on human deception and the lengths some people will go through to live a lie.

It's not to say that every online friendship/romance turns out this way(mine had a happy ending), and while this story is not the worst case situation it was one that was definitely full of lies. While it is entertaining to watch, it is also really sad that someone's life can become so pathetic that they create this whole world online in an attempt to reach out to what they've missed out on and how that can hurt the person at the other end. A little lie always has to be covered up by dozens of other little lies and sometimes, as in the case of “Megan”, your whole life becomes a lie. Even when she is caught, she continues to lie.

I think Catfish should be required viewing for all teens so there is an awareness that what you see or hear isn't always truth. There is a difference between perception and reality. Some people like to say perception is reality....Catfish proves otherwise.