Catfishing is, by definition, creating a fictional online persona, also known as a fake identity. The term “catfishing” can be defined as a practice of using catfish to keep cod active during transport. This definition was described in the 2010 documentary film “Catfish,” which can be seen as largely responsible for coining the term “catfishing”. The term was popularized by the MTV show “Catfish,” that aired in 2012. The reality show made the word mainstream. But in the late 2010s, Catfishing was considered to become a serious cybercrime, this resulted in significant financial losses, as the FBI and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) data reported from AllAboutCookies.org showcased alarming trends in catfishing: from the years 2019 to 2022, an average number of quarterly reports of catfishing and catfishing scams increased by more than 174%.
FHS paraeducator Cesar Linares shared his opinions on catfishing. “Personally, I can’t say that I have personal experience with catfishing, because I never experienced that myself. I did have a friend three years ago who talked about being catfished. This had happened on Instagram, which is how a lot of people meet people nowadays,” Linares said.
The term “catfishing” spiked and was popularized by a hoax concerning football player Manti Te’o. In 2012, Te’o reported that both his grandmother and girlfriend died on the same day, September 12th. His girlfriend at the time, Lennay Kekua, had been injured in a car accident. She was a student of Stanford University They both later discovered during her treatment that she had leukemia. Te’o did not miss any games while playing D1 football for the University of Notre Dame, stating that he had promised his girlfriend he would keep playing even if something had happened to her. Reporters Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey of Deadspin, a sports blog, claimed that in January of 2013 they received a concerning anonymous tip, and thus they began an investigation into the identity of Te’o’s girlfriend, stating that she did not exist, pointing their evidence to a friend of Te’o, Ronaiah (“Naya”) Tuiasosopo. On the same day Deadspin published the article, a spokesperson for the University of Notre Dame’s football team issued a statement.
Manti had been the victim of what appears to be a hoax, in which someone using the fictitious name Lennay Kekua apparently ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia,” the spokesperson said.
During a press conference, Notre Dame’s athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the university hired private investigators to look into the hoax and its source, clarifying that Te’o and his relationship with Kekua was “exclusively [an] online [relationship].”
On Dec. 6th, Te’o received a phone call from a woman claiming to be Kekua, claiming that she was alive. Reporting it to the University of Notre Dame board on the 26th of that same month. Following the phone call, Te’o mentioned the death of Kekua in four separate interviews. Te’o agreed to an interview on the 8th of January, 2013 — Te’o continued to maintain his freedom from guilt: he went on to elaborate that he had lied to his father and went to meet Kekua in person, because his father would have called him “crazy” because he had never met this woman in person. Te’o was confused while the situation appeared unclear to him: he further explained that Tuiasosopo was a cousin of Lennay Keuka, that Te’o and her had communicated only over several years and claimed to have met at a 2012 game when the University of Notre Dame played the University of Southern California. Tuiasosopo claimed responsibility for the hoax during a phone conversation on the 16th of January. Almost a year after the interview on Katie, a talkshow hosted by Katie Couric, Te’o played voicemails left by Kekua. He said that the voice “sounds like a girl.” During the talk show Dr. Phil a few weeks after, Tuiasosopo admitted to the hoax, as well as falling in love with Te’o while using the fake identity. Tuiasosopo created the female-like voice using a voice changer. The New York Post stated that Tuiasosopo’s female voice actually belonged to one of his cousins. Despite Kekua not existing, ex-Miami Dolphins player Reagan Maui’a said that Tuliasosopo had introduced him to a woman (twice, he claimed) who pretended to be Kekua.
“He [the friend] didn’t meet the person themselves in person, whoever this catfisher was. But in conclusion, I think it made him a little more guarded when it came to talking to people online, which isn’t a bad thing. Honestly, if you think about it […]it led it to him, just feeling a little more guarded and a little bit more aware of who’s talking to catching those red flags earlier.” Linares said.
There are also red flags. Linares continued to state some of the more obvious red flags: “If you do things like FaceTime, be on live video, and if they’re saying that they live in your area, but yet you can’t meet up ever, and there’s always an excuse. I think those are huge red flags. Yeah, I think those are huge red flags. I think also of the fact that this person never shows their face and it’s just like the back of their head, or maybe, like a tiny bit of a side profile, that’s kind of a red flag as well.”
In my opinion, catfishing and its red flags should be considered if someone’s acquaintance is acting suspiciously. Next time, when you’re talking to someone you don’t know, consider them, on the other side, to possibly be an older man; or an older person in general.
