Catfish

A catfish is someone who creates a false online identity to mislead others, often by posing as another person. This fabricated persona is used to gain attention, trust, or interaction under deceptive circumstances.

Misleading and deceptive profiles are generally against FetLife's Content Guidelines.

Origin of the Term

The term catfish comes from the actual animal. In nature, catfish adapt their appearance to fit their environment, changing color or even shape to better hunt for food, attract a mate, or ward off threats. The human version of catfishing mirrors this behavior - altering one’s identity online for personal gain.

Why Do People Become a Catfish?

People catfish for many reasons, including attention, insecurity, financial gain, entertainment, or even cyberbullying. The persona they create may be an idealized version of themselves or someone entirely different. While some catfish act with harmful intent, especially for money, others are primarily seeking attention or validation without malicious motives.

Note that this does not take away from the fact that many people have been hurt by catfish, regardless of motivation.

How to Recognize a Catfish?

You can spot a catfish in a few ways. Here are some clues:

• They are often reluctant to video chat, and even less likely meet in person.
• They seem to good to be true, with high-quality pictures, but no following.
• Their stories may be inconsistent or contain obvious lies.
• They often approach with very attractive offers, even without any or limited previous interaction.
• They might request money, often with an elaborate story.
• They might have a very limited online presence, including very sparse interactions.

How Can You Verify a Catfish?

If you think someone is a catfish, it pays to verify it before going further. Here are some tips:

• Ask for a live selfie including something specific, like a hand gesture, or piece of paper with some writing.
• Do a reverse image search on their face pictures (if available) and you may find the same pictures, or similar pictures in places that don't make sense.
• When they do agree to a video chat, ask them to move their hand before their face (face swapping technology will fail often in such cases).

Controversy

Catfishing can sometimes be a coping mechanism for insecurity, loneliness or exploring different personas. Some catfish are looking for confirmation, connection and acceptance. But they resort to lying as they feel they have no other way to receive that.

Catfish who use this for entertainment or online bullying are also likely to have other things happening in real life that has them resort to these kinds of extremes.

However, catfishing is deceptive and harmful as well as a violation of trust.