Social Networking and Catfish

Megan Scott

English 307

Dr. Covey

3 March 2012

Social Networking Gone Awry

While Catfish (2010) does not seem as big a public hit as closely related film The Social Network (2010), the Catfish documentary does not condemn social media but shows the potential broader consequences of using new media, particularly Facebook. The web gives ample opportunity for communities of like-minded peoples to foster and also provides just as equal opportunity for predators and scam artists. Reality within the realm of social media, like Facebook, is never as it seems because all users have the ability to alter and perfect not only their persona but also their art, interests, and accomplishments. Though there is also opportunity for false representations of these things in real life—i.e. art galleries, concerts, dance recitals, poetry readings, etc.—it is easier to construct deceiving characteristics or accomplishments online since the medium, Facebook, is already itself a form of alternate reality mixing real and fantasy into virtually non-discernible fake-truths. Whether real or fake this documentary teaches us that within social networks the only part of this alternate, real-fantasy world we can control is our own participation within it.

As the debate over how authentic the Catfish documentary is ensues, one comes to realized that the debate of authenticism in all documentaries is the same. As Bruzzi makes clear,

[we need to] simply accept that a documentary can never be the real world, that the camera can never capture life as it would have unraveled had [the camera] not interfered…documentaries are performative acts whose truth comes into being only at the moment of filming. (Branston and Stafford 365)

No matter how authentic or true-to-life a documentary attempts to be the bottom line is that it will never be the same as reality. Forms of social media, including Facebook, parallel documentaries precisely in that no matter how hard we try to make our accounts true to...