Seth Manilove anxiously sipped his smoothie as he waited to meet the mystery girl he’d been talking to for the last two weeks. When the blonde, green-eyed beauty entered the juice bar, he was pleasantly surprised. She was everything he hoped for, or so he had thought.
Within five minutes of meeting her, the 20-year-old University of Miami student noticed his dream date was acting strange.
“I asked her if everything was okay, and then she told me what was up, literally,” Manilove said. “She had a penis.”
The predicament Manilove found himself in is commonly known as cat-fishing, and it’s nothing but rare. Fifty-four percent of people believe that someone they’ve met through online dating has used false information, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center study. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a catfish as a person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes.
To prevent being “hooked” by a catfish, online dating websites encourage their users to look out for three important things: minimal Facebook friends, elaborate stories, and magazine quality photos. Next time you go fishing, watch for this bait.
No New Friends
The number of Facebook friends someone has directly correlates to how popular, or real, they might be. “If they have no new friends on Facebook or haven’t updated any social media profiles, it’s a major red flag,” said Hannah Ostrow, a 23-year-old Manhattan resident. Ostrow is a user of OkCupid and Bumble.
“Sometimes the best way to learn about someone is through their friends,” stated Tony Neate, the CEO of Get Safe Online. Neate suggests looking at the profiles of the friends to see if they are similar to the user’s age or hometown.
Having less than 100 friends on Facebook and no other social media accounts can suggest a cat-fisher is present. “I think it is super important to find out more about the person through different social media platforms,” said Alex Williamson, VP of Brand Content at Bumble, a mobile dating app.
Mobile dating apps like Tinder and Bumble have acknowledged the importance of having friends by sharing the number of mutual friends on Facebook users have. “Before swiping left or right, I always look at the mutual friends that we have with each other,” said Ostrow. This helps her decide whether the person is real or fake.
Unrealistic Responses
Dramatic stories and irrational responses can be another sign of a catfish. When asking to meet, a sudden claim of a serious injury or a broken camera is a major red flag.
“The fact that people use the excuse of not having a camera is absurd, because in today’s society basically everyone has an iPhone, smartphone or computer with a working camera,” said Manilove.
Julie Eyink, a psychology professor at Indiana University, believes that to avoid being caught, catfishers make up elaborate stories to gain sympathy and acceptance. “When people can’t trace our actions back to us, we tend to do unreasonable and stupid things, especially online. This is one of the many examples of deindividuation,” she said.
Eyink defines deindividuation as the loosening of normal constraints on behavior when people can’t be identified, which leads to more impulsive and deviant acts.
Along with deindividuation, other reasons for cat-fishing are revenge, boredom, loneliness, and curiosity. Thus, online users should always protect and filter themselves. “You should always be wary of giving away your personal information, whether online or in real life. You never know what other people’s intentions truly are,” said Neate.
Picture Perfect
“There are a lot of accounts that are clearly fake solely based on the photo,” Ostrow said. The reason why these users have false or heavily edited pictures is mostly caused by low self-esteem.
“People want to be thought of as likable, and if they don’t fit the ideal image or meet society’s standards, they are likely to lie about themselves, whether it’s their appearance or sexual orientation,” said Eyink.
The easiest way to determine if you stumbled upon a catfish is to search their profile picture in Google images. If the same image pops up multiple times, then you’ve been cat-fished. “I met this guy on OkCupid who had a professional-looking photo and automatically got suspicious,” Ostrow said. “I dragged his picture into Google images and found out this guy was pretending to be a 32-year-old male model from California.”
Ostrow messaged the man and called him out for using a false photo. “The only thing he could say was, ‘Oh, you caught me’,” Ostrow stated. The man turned out to be a short, 26-year old Indian doctor from New York.
Dating apps like Bumble have developed new features that force users to verify their identify and other information through selfies and additional social media accounts. “We launched photo verification that makes each user go through a process with prompts from us and in real time our photo monitors will determine if their photos are real,” said Williamson.
Over the last decade, the amount of people who knew someone who has dated online has increased by 31 percent, from 11 percent in 2004 to 42 percent in 2014, according to a Pew Research Center study. The increase in online dating makes it much easier for cat-fishing to hook and bait others.
“To settle any suspicions before meeting, I recommend that the first date be on Skype or Facetime. It is a really easy concept and keeps you safe,” said Neate.
