Catfish Analysis

Michael Hsu

5/5/11

Media Literacy

Catfish Documentary Analysis

            The documentary Catfish encompasses both the ideas of a democratized media and how Web 2.0 and social networking have changed the Internet. This documentary begins with the main character Nev who befriends an 8 –year old artist named Abby from Michigan. Abby sends Nev painted pictures of his photographs and they begin to build a friendly relationship. Upon their connection through the social network Facebook, Nev meets Abby’s older sister Megan who is an attractive woman about his age. They begin to talk and build a relationship over the Internet, and soon begin to exchange phone calls as well. Nev and Megan continue to talk and develop a somewhat serious connection over Facebook, and Nev decides that he really wants to meet her in person. Although he’s had doubts about this relationship he’s developed with Megan, Nev didn’t want to believe that she was actually a fake person. There have been many signs up to that point that Megan was a very shady character, but Nev truly wanted to believe that this connection he felt was true and authentic. After digging up more details, and making the trip to Michigan, he realized that the woman he had actually built a relationship was Angela (Abby’s mother) and not actually Megan. Angela created an entire network of imaginary people including Megan to gain the interest and friendship of Nev. She pretended that her daughter Abby was the artist when she herself was the one painting pictures of Nev’s work. In the end, it actually turned out to be a sad finish to what began as a promising relationship. You had to actually feel sorry for Angela who was this woman who married into a family of two mentally challenged children that she now has to take care of. As the viewer, you have to also feel bad for Nev who thought he had developed this real and true relationship with this beautiful woman, but turned out to be a fraud.

            This documentary definitely plays into the role of Web 2.0 and democratized media because you can’t always trust what you see in on the Internet. This woman convincingly created an entire network of people herself, and took the identity of a random person. Nev actually thought he had developed a true relationship with this woman, and actually cared for her. You could definitely see the pain in both their eyes in the end when they were looking at each other. This shows how in today’s Internet world, what you see can’t always be believed. This ties into what Andrew Keen believes that the new Internet has become a web where nothing is truly authentic anymore.

            Even though social networking has benefitted communication between people in so many ways, it also leaves room for deception as well. You can’t always trust the new people you meet, and as Keen stated, there are no fact checkers. There is no Internet authority to ensure that what you see and read is actually truthful information. Web 2.0 and social media has grown and developed to help our culture immensely, but this is evidence that social networking isn’t always perfect.