Catfishing, not to be confused with catphishing. . . or, um, exactly to be confused with catphishing. I don’t know. This is all very confusing. I feel like my real skill or gift or—I don’t know, inclination?—is writing and not researching, but I gave the full breadth and depth of the internet’s resources an exhaustive search for about three minutes. Look, I’m trying to say that research isn’t my thing as far as this blog goes. I don’t know the difference.
What is my thing? I have a few things. Promoting sweater vest awareness, making furniture, writing about cool shit like this, emotionally abusing one of my cats. I have a very fulfilling life. Another thing I do on a regular basis—besides actually doing work for the “man”—is entertaining myself, so I don’t lose it. And there are some pretty niche pursuits that amuse me, so it can take a bit of work sometimes.
One of those pursuits is to screw around on the internet. Not doing research, of course, nor gaming. And I’m no hacker like Anonymous or anything like that. I’m more into my personal brand of foolishness, and one of my most beloved foolish things to do is to engage with catfishers or catphishers. I don’t know which, really, maybe both?
I think catphishers try to pretend they’re someone who wants to establish a relationship with some unsuspecting dope—like me—to get access to whatever info they can—my bank account, my work stuff, etc.—while catfishers do, like, exactly the same thing, but they go right for it and try to get money from whichever dope they’re targeting—again, frequently me.
Or vice-versa. I don’t know, and If I can’t figure it out after my exhaustive research, then you know no one may ever be able to solve the mystery of what the difference between catfishing and catphishing is. It’s just one of those eternal questions, like, “Is there a God?” Well, except that I know there isn’t a “God,” but I don’t know the difference between catfishing and catphishing.
I do know that the term comes from actual catfish. Well, not from them. Catfish didn’t come up with the term about themselves like some goddamn narcissist and then decide to misspell it sometimes just to fuck with everyone. Catfish aren’t like that.
However, I did learn in my “research” that when fish-shippers used to, I think, ship live cod all over the place, the cod would get all fat and lazy if they were shipped alone. So, here’s what the fish-shippers started doing, see. They started putting catfish in the codfish shipping containers, or something like that. (I keep wanting to coin the term, “fishippers.”) So, then, when the cod saw the catfish, the cod thought the catfish were super-hot babes who were interested in sex and relationships with cod. The cod then decided to get gym memberships and stay in shape along the way, so they could try to impress the catfish. There was a lot of competition for the attention of these catfish, so by the end of the trip, the catfish had suckered all the cod into giving up their userids and passwords for their work accounts and financial resources. Devastated, the cod all killed themselves and had their bodies donated to fish stick manufacturers and science or whatever. Tragic.
The first time I heard the term “catphish”—or “catfish” or whatever—was a couple years after I had actually engaged with my first catfishers. I heard about it in relation to the story of University of Notre Dame football player Manti Te’o.
Te’o was a Heisman Trophy finalist and an All American that
year. Notre Dame was having a great season—leading up to the National
Championship Game against Alabama. (During the game, whilst Alabama was drubbing
Notre Dame, I started an online petition to try to get Alabama to stop beating
them so badly. It
did not work.)
One week, much earlier in the season, they announced that Te’o’s girlfriend had died. “They” were the sports media. (I don’t remember this all that clearly, and I blew my entire research budget trying to figure out what the difference between “catphishing” and “catfishing” is. Well, maybe we should all stop writing the word and reading it. If we just say “catphishing” or “catfishing,” no one is going to ask if we mean “catfishing” or “catphishing” because they sound the same—unless one of them doesn’t use the voiceless labiodental fricative ⟨f⟩ sound, and I’m not about to try and find out.
Anyway, everyone was all sad because Te’o lost his grandmother and his girlfriend. Sad, huh! Or not. Well, it was sad that he lost his grandmother. I can sympathize with that. I’ve lost a grandmother or two along the way, myself. Okay, two actually, along with a couple grand dames who felt like grandmothers to me, emotionally speaking, of course. (I’ve lost a few grandmothers along the way? I obviously can’t be trusted with grandmothers.) But Te’o, then grandmotherless, lost his girlfriend, too.
He kept playing, though, because that’s what athletes do. They play the fucking game, man, and he did it to honor their memories. That’s what athlete’s do, unless, of course, they take a game off to grieve, because athletes also do that sometimes. In many ways, athletes are just like you and me—except they’re probably a lot cooler than you and nowhere nearly as cool as me.
But yeah, goddamn Te’o, man, he lost his grandma and his girlfriend. At least that’s what we thought, and the past tense in “that’s what we thought” is doing some heavy lifting here because it’s been past tense for a long time. Well, “thought” has pretty much always been the past tense of the verb “to think” in modern English, but we’re not going that far back. We’re going back to a point that happened pretty quickly after the sports world was shocked by that young man’s tragic losses during that season.
You see, Te’o had more than one reason to play through the pain of losing his girlfriend. Sure, he legitimately blew off his grandma’s funeral because he wanted to be there for his team, man. He was part of something bigger than himself—and his grandma—and he wanted to dedicate his play to her. He was so goddamn dedicated to the team that he was going to blow of ol’ girl’s funeral, too.
The thing is, see, there was no funeral for his girlfriend. No, everyone in the girl’s family wasn’t so dedicated to Notre Dame football that season that they decided to not even bury this girl.
“Just leave her in the cooler, Marty. There’s football yet to be played.”
Can you believe they said that to Marty? Well, believe me, you can’t make this shit up. No, you can’t make this shit up because I just did. (I will probably never explain my personal interpretation of “you can’t make this shit up” again. Take note.)
So, there wasn’t a funeral for Te’o’s sweet love because she, well, wasn’t.
When reporters started sticking their noses into this young public figure’s business, so they could, I don’t know, appropriately memorialize her for the world, they discovered that there was no girlfriend. (Now go back and read that again, but make sure you click on the link in “that” before reading on. You’re welcome.)
That’s right, Manti Te’o had been catphished. (I’m pretty sure I’m using the appropriate “catfish” in that sentence but not in these parentheses.) Someone—and I didn’t care enough to try to find out if anyone ever found out who—had been pretending to be in a relationship with our erstwhile young Fighting Irish?. . . Fighting Irishman? . . . our erstwhile young Notre Dame football player.
Indeed, and while there’s no evidence—that I can remember—of Te’o’s, um, would-be young love trying to get money from him, that may have been the plan. And why did I tell this story? A, it’s hilarious, and B, it really brought catfishing or catphishing—fuck it—cat⟨f⟩ishing into the public eye for many people, especially college football fans. And I like me some college football.
I kind of felt bad for Te’o. Kind of. I mean, he did bring this on himself by falling so hard, apparently, for someone who was pretending to love him online during a season when Notre Dame was getting more attention than normal because they were, you know, good. He had to face a lot more press than usual because he was playing in the National Champeenship, and he was a Heisman finalist. If he’d only been playing on a suckier Notre Dame team that year, maybe he wouldn’t have received so much attention.
The poor bastard couldn’t even use the age-old “my girlfriend lives in Canada, so you wouldn’t know her” thing because he was famous, and the American sports media would have known how to get to Canada and ask around for this young man’s girlfriend. Well, I guess he could have said, “You don’t know her. She’s in Canada, and she’s dead.” But no, he had to go public with his online love.
One of the upsides of Te’o’s story—along with not only learning what cat⟨f⟩ishing is and realizing that I had been so targeted—is, of course, the memes. The meme campaign against him was hilarious. I won’t search for them, because I’m pretty lazy, but you can. My favorite had a couple pictures of notable football players from the Southeastern Conference (SEC) along with their attractive girlfriends. It said, “The SEC: We have real girlfriends.” Hilarious. . . And who am I kidding. There is no downside to Te’o’s story for me.
You’re probably thinking that I’m getting some kind of perverse glee out of piling on Te’o by revisiting his notorious late—albeit fake—girlfriend story, and you’d be right. I am. It is so goddamn funny, but I can also identify with the poor bastard. I’ve been cat⟨f⟩ished. Well, there’s been an attempt. . . okay, attempts, many attempts. But I must admit, there were moments, initial moments, when I would have loved for the women in these pictures to have actually been interested in me—and, of course, to have actually been local—even as stupid as they came across sometimes. That’s kind of a turn-off for me. I’m into smart women. (But maybe, I thought in those moments, maybe they just don’t write good, like me, you know?)
I’m not going to sit here nor stand here nor drive here nor take a shower here nor whatever I’m doing here—or wherever—when you’re reading this and tell you that I didn’t have moments when I wished that it all could have been true—one internet lady at a time, of course—even at times when I’ve received message requests from people using the same goddamn picture as multiple attempted cat⟨f⟩ishers have used before. (Wow, she looks familiar. Oh.) Even then, in those lonely moments, when I’d wished that I didn’t have my head so far up my ass, so that I could possibly make a real connection with someone, even then, I’ve thought to myself, ever-so-quickly, I wish this could be real.
But those moments pass, for me. I’m no Manti Te’o, neither on the football field, nor with the fake internet chicks. There is a teeny-tiny part of me that just adores Te’o’s then innocent response. Someone, someday, could write a beautiful coming-of-age story—maybe a screenplay—inspired by Te’o’s ability to love and then learn.
That somebody will not be me. I have different stories to tell: my Russian loves and my Nigerian girlfriends among others, and the time I was one response away from actually sending one of my cat⟨f⟩ishers money. Seriously.
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