Catfish Season 4: Your weekly dose of fraudulent cyber seduction

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > Catfish Season 4: Your weekly dose of fraudulent cyber seduction

Rageaholic: May 31, 2005; Old Town Road to EGOT

Since the new season is premiering tonight, I checked my bookmarks to see if my thread from Season 3 was still active. It's still in the live forums but it's being locked for archival so no more posting in it, which means a new thread!

In 2010, a documentary film came out called Catfish. In it, a filmmaker named Nev Schulman had become romantically involved with a girl named Megan online...or so he thought. He had also become friends with Megan's family over Facebook, including her mother Angela and Angela's husband Vince. He tracks down the person he thought he'd been carrying on a relationship with only to find out that the person he'd been talking to was actually Megan's mother, Angela, a middle-aged married woman with two mentally challenged kids that she takes care of full-time, who claimed to have cancer just to make things interesting in her relatively uninteresting life. We later find out that she never actually had cancer and Megan was not a real person. Basically, just about everything Angela had told Nev was a lie.

What is a "catfish", you ask? Well:

Wikipedia posted:

Vince, talking with Nev, tells a story. He says that when live cod were shipped to Asia from North America, the fish's inactivity in their tanks resulted in only mushy flesh reaching the destination; but fishermen found that putting catfish in the tanks with the cod kept them active, and thus ensured the quality of the fish. Vince talks of how there are people in everyone's lives who keep us active, always on our toes and always thinking. It is implied that he believes Angela to be such a person.

Essentially, a "catfish" in the context of the film/show is someone who leads someone else on for some purpose.

Flash forward to 2012: Following the success of the film, Nev and his filmmaker partner Max Joseph decided to reach out to people across the country who were in relationships either online or over the phone but had never met the other person and believed they might be getting "catfished". Hence, Catfish: The TV Show was born.

In order to track down the "catfish" in an episode of the show, Nev and Max will use various tactics such as looking up phone numbers/addresses online, using reverse Google image search, talking to friends/family members, etc. And a lot of the time, the catfish will be someone the person knows, like a friend, family member, former friend or ex-girlfriend/boyfriend.

To give you an idea of how crazy the show can get, here's the story from an episode last season: This girl Carmen writes in to the show, as she is concerned that her cousin Antwane is being catfished by a guy named Tony he met through a gay phone chat line. Antwane and Tony have been talking to each other for 3 years but have never met. Antwane barely knows anything about Tony: not his last name, not what he looks like, not where he lives, etc. Nev and Max do some research and discover that Tony might be in jail. But since they aren't completely sure, they decide to check out 3 different addresses that came up in their research. 2 of the addresses have residents but the residents do not know who Tony is. The 3rd and final address is an abandoned, padlocked house in a terrible part of town. After finishing looking around at the 3rd house and feeling discouraged about their search, out of nowhere Carmen blurts out "I'm Tony." As it turns out, Antwane had said some bad poo poo about her years ago and so Carmen, vowing revenge, created the Tony persona and decided to get Antwane on Catfish so she could reveal herself to him on national television. She has different voices she uses, so Antwane never caught on that it was her. At the end of the episode, Antwane, feeling betrayed, decides to no longer maintain any type of contact with his cousin Carmen.

So if that sounds :psyboom:

enough for you and you want to start watching the show, it airs Wednesday nights on MTV at 10/9c. And after each episode airs, there's a live show called Chatfish in which Nev, Max, the catfished and the catfish themselves are all in attendance and talk about the episode.

The season 4 premiere is tonight (Wed. 2/25/15). and here's the setup for the episode:

Official Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOkk4IRYBzQ

Max was directing a movie at the start of the shooting of this season, so Nev has enlisted various celebrity guest hosts to go on the first few episodes with. Then Max will return later in the season.

In the past, Catfish has been some great trash TV for the most part. Some episodes are duds that aren't worth discussing at all, but then others really make you want to evaluate the entire human condition. So let's hope that this season has some real weird episodes with some real sociopaths doing the catfishing, as those are always the most interesting.

Rageaholic fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Feb 25, 2015

# ? Feb 25, 2015 07:17

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# ? Apr 20, 2024 01:13

Rageaholic: May 31, 2005; Old Town Road to EGOT

If you're wondering whether or not this show is scripted, this vulture.com article explains the process of casting and making an episode from beginning to end:

quote:

The liars get cast first.
As you might have surmised by now based on production logistics alone, this happens most of the time. MTV�s casting application first asks, �Do you have a secret or something to confess to your online partner? Have you made any fake online profiles?� before it asks if you feel like your online crush is lying to you. �It�s often the catfish we hear from first because they�re looking to unburden themselves,� Eisen explained. �It�s not always the case, but it probably happens more than people realize.� Take for example the season two episode �Mike & Kristen,� which began with Nev and Max receiving a letter from Mike (subject line: �Separated by less than 40 miles�), asking for their help to connect him with the girl he�d met on Facebook and spent the last three and a half years falling in love with. In fact, it was Kristen who wrote in asking to get on the show. To recall: Kristen was revealed later in the episode to have been involved in a car accident that left her physically handicapped, kicked out of school, and so depressed that she gained 130 pounds. Mike had been there for her after the accident, though he thought she looked like someone else, and she wanted to come clean. The first thing she said to Mike when he showed up to her door with Nev and Max wasn�t a surprised �Hi ... � but an �I�m sorry.� Producers haven�t �felt compelled� to construct an episode that starts with the POV of the catfish just yet, but reserve the right to do so in the future. Eisen said that from a storytelling perspective, it ultimately doesn�t matter whom producers hear from first � the hopeful or the catfish � �because we�re not doing an ambush show.�

Everyone signs a waiver to appear on-camera before filming begins.
In the original Catfish documentary, Nev and filmmakers Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman turned up with cameras rolling on the doorstep of Angela, the woman they had discovered had been lying to Nev about who she was. Catfish the TV show doesn�t work that way. �We can�t do that and won�t do that,� Eisen said. Producers are in touch with all parties, albeit separately, to conduct background checks and to make sure everyone is onboard to film before Max and Nev are brought in to do their digging. (So, in the example of Mike and Kristen, Mike agreed to let producers construct the episode as if he had written in to Nev and Max without knowing what the outcome would be.) Most people don�t need much convincing to participate, even if they�re the ones being caught in a lie. �Lying is a very hard thing to do,� Eisen said. �It takes a lot of energy. Most of them feel relief saying, �Oh, I can end this.�� This explains why the catfish is usually already miked for sound when the hopeful arrives for the confrontation!

But the waiver doesn�t guarantee cooperation.
In the season three premiere, �Craig & Zoe,� a girl named Zoe (real name Cassandra) had been caught catfishing not only online boyfriend Craig but Craig�s sister and her friends. (Craig wrote in to the show first in this case.) When Nev, Max, Craig, Craig�s sister, and the crew showed up to confront Cassandra, she was not home. Eisen said it happens. �If this had been our first season and we hadn�t had a lot of experience, we might have stopped shooting there,� he said. But since producers had already spoken with Cassandra and gotten her okay, they felt somewhat certain she would eventually turn up, which she did. But had she decided at the last minute to tell the crew to get lost? �We would have. That would have been the end of it,� Eisen said. �We never know 100 percent for sure if the catfish is going to go through with this, even if they commit to filming. That�s why there is a lot of tension in those scenes when we pull up for the visit because we�re all waiting for the day when the catfish will not respond or change their mind.� That hasn�t happened yet, but if and when it does happen, Eisen said production is prepared to pack it up. �They�re real people and they�re exposing themselves, making themselves vulnerable, and we�re never going to force them to do it,� he said.

Nev and Max are kept in the dark more than anyone else involved.
Beyond the producers overseeing each episode, Nev, Max, and most of the crew have no idea where each story will take them. Producers, of course, have mapped out the beginning and ending, but as far as getting from A to Z, Nev and Max do real legwork to connect the deceived with the deceiver. In last week�s episode, �Antwane & Tony,� said legwork led them down the wrong path. (To be fair, they were dealing with an expert catfisher: Carmen wrote in asking them to help her cousin Antwane meet his mystery man Tony; in fact, Carmen had been pretending to be Tony for years as part of an elaborate revenge scheme.) �Our whole mantra for the guys is, �If you can�t figure it out, just go with it and see where it takes you,'� Eisen said. In �Antwane & Tony,� �they�re completely wrong and they lead the hopeful into a situation they didn�t see coming, and they feel really bad about it. It�s a total surprise to them what�s going to happen. Sometimes they get really flustered by what they see.� And boy, did they let Carmen have it.

It can take Nev and Max a long time to crack a case.
�We edit the investigations down. They can be grueling,� Eisen said, laughing. �There have been very, very long days where Nev and Max are trying to figure it out, and we can�t help them.� Producers do their own trial and error investigations prior to filming to get some idea of how long it might take Nev and Max to get to the bottom of a fraud, but their estimates aren�t always on point. �The guys are better at it now, but it�s not always obvious how to crack these things. We�ve condensed what�s taken them ten hours in some instances into five or six minutes, but we try to show that it was difficult.�

Plenty of people want to catfish MTV now.
The show�s popularity has given way to a lot of people faking their stories �just to see if they can fool us,� Eisen said, but once the fact-checking begins it�s not difficult to tell who�s lying. �We just have to work harder to make sure they�re real, which we didn�t have to do at all in the first season,� he said. �It�s just a pitfall of being more of a known thing.� You�ve been warned, fake catfishers.

The stories have gotten pretty dark.
Most of the requests to appear on the show continue to come from people who want to figure out (or make a confession about) their online romances, and the prevailing theme of those stories continues to be people not feeling great about how they look. This season, MTV wanted to get away from some of that and didn�t have to look far to do it. �When we saw that was repeating itself, we definitely tried to diversify, and there were plenty of other stories to tell,� Eisen said. So far this season, the strategy has resulted in two episodes about mean-spirited, �I�m just doing this for fun��style fraud. �We talk about whether or not we�re promoting this bad behavior,� Eisen said. �But a lot of the time once Nev and Max start talking to the person lying, there�s always an underlying issue. Sometimes it takes a while getting there, but it�s never just a sociopath.�

MTV sends therapists to meet with everyone after production wraps.
Sociopaths or not, everyone who appears on the show, as Joseph told us, speaks with a therapist after filming is over. �We want to make sure that a professional is there in case the person needs it,� Eisen said. �Fortunately we haven't had any issues after the show has aired, but we need to make sure that people are taken care of if they need to be.�

# ? Feb 25, 2015 07:19

precision: May 7, 2006; by VideoGames

This show is prime Guilty Pleasure at full volume and I love Nev and Max so consider me psyched.

# ? Feb 25, 2015 07:50

WeedlordGoku69: Feb 12, 2015; by Cyrano4747

That article makes this show sound way less exploitative and lovely than it looks on the screen.

# ? Feb 26, 2015 00:52

Rageaholic: May 31, 2005; Old Town Road to EGOT

One of the best episodes was Artis & Jess from season 2. Basically, this guy named Artis was in a relationship with a girl in real life, but he also thought he was in a relationship with a girl named Jess online. Along with Nev and Max, he met up with who he thought was Jess and it turned out to be a dude named Justin. Justin acted like a dick/literal crazy person to everyone, said he wasn't gay when Nev asked him point blank if he was, etc. Justin later revealed that his girlfriend had been cheated on in the past, so he made it his mission to pose as a woman online, make guys who were in relationships already fall in love with this fake girl and then reveal himself to them, embarrassing the poo poo out of them and making them think twice about cheating on their girlfriends. It was easily one of the most outlandish reveals of the entire series.

There's no good version of the reveal clip on YouTube, but here's a recap of the episode along with part of the reveal on MTV's site:

http://www.mtv.com/shows/catfish/catfish-the-tv-show-season-2-ep-9-recap/952292/video/#id=1713521

# ? Feb 26, 2015 01:21

Rageaholic: May 31, 2005; Old Town Road to EGOT

"She owns a fishnet top and I'M BASIC?! :catstare:

"

So at first I thought it was pretty weird how that went from how it started to how it ended up, but then when Nev sat down with Kara, it became pretty easy to understand.

Also :lol:

, the new season of Teen Mom is called "Teen Mom OG" and they're bringing back all the girls from the first season. That's gonna be a loving trainwreck and I kind of want to watch it.

# ? Feb 26, 2015 05:01

precision: May 7, 2006; by VideoGames

Episode isn't on MTV's website yet :argh:

Though I realized I never watched the last couple of season 3 episodes, which are on Hulu.

# ? Feb 26, 2015 06:20

Rageaholic: May 31, 2005; Old Town Road to EGOT

Here's the scoop on tonight's episode, guest hosted by Cassidy Wolf (Miss Teen USA 2013):

Also, uh oh, precision, you and I can't be the only ones that get any enjoyment out of this dumb show, can we? :ohdear:

I thought there would be a bigger audience for this show than just a couple of us, but maybe not.

# ? Mar 4, 2015 08:24

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# ? Apr 20, 2024 01:13

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

I watch every episode, and I think I just realized the last post here was March 4th and not May 4th. Ooops

# ? May 16, 2015 01:42

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > Catfish Season 4: Your weekly dose of fraudulent cyber seduction