Catfish

When watching the film, I had no doubts about the authenticity of the film, but in the end when everything was revealed and exposed, my suspicion of the realism of the film escalated greatly as I lost serious trust in the film. It was filmed beautifully; everything seemed real as the filmmakers were very creative in what they wanted the viewers to believe. It might have started out real, but once the character of Megan Faccio became a protagonist, or antagonist if you will, they legitimacy of the film dwindled.
There’s actually nothing Facebook can do to prevent this and to be honest, Facebook should not care at all. Facebook puts all the power in the world into the user’s hands and if he or she can’t tell if someone whom they are talking to or even starting a relationship with is fake, then that is all on them, not the social networking site. All of the responsibility is on the user, but if a user reports a fake profile to Facebook, then the site can investigate and then do what they seem fit for punishment. I have never heard of a fake profile being deleted off Facebook from the site, but there are red flags like naked pictures or strong, hateful comments that can lead to a profiles termination.
I think the chances of something like this happening in real life are very high because there are so many people out there looking for love in all the wrong places, and it just takes one fake profile to tell them what they want to hear for them to believe the person they are talking to is the man or woman of their dreams.
I think Nev was disregarding the red flags because he was so attracted to what he thought she looked like and became engulfed into the lies she was telling him. I think he noticed the red flags, but looked the other way because he had so much hope and optimism that they could become something serious.
In my opinion, obviously she’s a huge weirdo on many levels and committed moral crimes, but other than that she did nothing wrong. If anything, Nev should be the one to blame for this for being so stupid and oblivious. She did everything Facebook allowed her to do; sometimes we all wish we were someone else, and yes most of us don’t go and do something like this, but she was merely playing out her “Utopia” and portraying someone she wanted to be through the tough times she was going through.
The impact Angela has had from this movie couldn’t be better. As the old expression goes, any publicity is good publicity. From this film, she has now gotten her website off and advertised, as well as being interviewed by serious programs and journalists. Aside from the death of one of her son’s, her family has undoubtedly benefitted from life after the film because now they are sort of like celebrities, especially coming from a small town in Michigan.
I think something that is hard to prevent, but is a major issue to not just Facebook, but to our society, is the relationships pedophiles can have with young kids. If you think about it, it’s quite easy for someone to create and portray a fake person, as illustrated in the movie. How we prevent this is something society, as well as Facebook, need to figure out.
I do believe that if someone makes a fake profile, posting pictures of other people as themselves is in fact identity theft. Say I put a picture of Lebron James and make that my default picture, that is not theft because it is just one simple image in an album where I am clearly represented. On the other hand, if I just put pictures of another person for all my default and all of my pictures and I say I am that person, then that is identity theft because you are literally stealing the identity of that person. It is an interesting debate, because we don’t own our own photos, Facebook does. Having a profile is like staying as a guest in someone’s house; you live there, but you don’t own anything.