Nowadays technology has taken over many fields (if not all) of our lives. We use it for everything. Specially, human comunication has changed completely. Whether it's on our computer or over the phone, we can talk to other people instantly and at long distances.
This kind of comunication has also allowed the appearance of a new kind of relationship: internet friends. Now, being able to meet new people with your same interests from every corner in the world is a great thing. It's a really enriching experience that we can all profit greatly from. It won't be so weird iff someone tells you that they met their best friends or their soulmate through the internet.
Here's a beautiful compilation of internet friends
meeting for the first time.
But, like every technologic progress, it has its bad side too. In the last decade, approximately, the number of people who've had problems with internet users who held a fake identity has increased a lot. The term to describe this kind of emotional hustle is "catfish". To be "catfished" means to be fooled, and that's exactly what this concept is about. It consists on a very personal relationship between two people through the internet, with the inconvenient that one of them is faking his or her identity in order to bully the other person (cyberbullying), to swindle them or just for fun. This "so called friend" usually adapts his or her personality to draw the victim to them, building a relationship based in lies.
There is a show on MTV, Catfish, that shows how many people follow the thread of this internet friend to discover their real identity. Sometimes (very rarely), they end up being happy because their friend didn't lie to them, as was suspected. In most of the episodes, though, they discover a diferent person from the one that was expected.
Personally, I think that being catfished must feel really bad. Anyways, I don't think that I'd trust someone so much over the internet. I mean, you can make very good friends, I have some of my own that I really appreciate, but you must always be careful. Not everyone out there has good intentions towards us, even if we haven't done anything wrong.
So, to end this post I thought that it would be a good idea to include a video of the TV show Catfish. Enjoy!
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