MANILA, Philippines - How do I get you to watch something without telling you anything about it? Because that’s what happened to me when I saw the documentary film, Catfish. I randomly saw it hopping from film to film on the Internet movie database (imdb.com) and I ended up stopping at the most interesting of posters. Catfish, it said, “a most amazing correspondence.” The tagline mentioned something like, “You won’t believe what you are watching.”
With a promise like that, I immediately stopped reading. I didn’t read the synopsis. I just went out and looked for a copy and watched it blind. The moment the film begins, it grabs you and it doesn’t let go. And the tagline runs true — you really will not believe what you are seeing. But if you’ve been involved in social media networking sites like I’m sure we all do, then deep down inside, we know that what we are seeing, when we watch Catfish, is real and true.
So how do I get you to go out of your way to watch this documentary without ruining anything about it, so you can see it the way I did?
Let me just say that at some point in time, we’ve all found someone online and we began to obsess over in our own little way about them. We gather what we can from reading the info portion on their profile and look at the pictures and glean as much of their character as we can read from the places they go to, the company they keep, the way they caption or comment on photos. We sometimes Google their names to see if we can find any more information about them on other websites.
Yes, I’m talking about stalking. We do it. I know I’ve done it. We get obsessed with someone we “meet” online. It happens. It happens a lot; more than you know or care to admit.
But the truth is, until you actually meet this person, you don’t have real feelings for them. What you think is love or affection is created by you, created by your imagination which fills in the gaps that the Internet cannot provide — which is contact, actual connection.
The fact of the matter is, no matter how hard we try, we are not our Facebook profile. We can dump all our thoughts and our pictures and our favorite YouTube videos on our wall, it still doesn’t grasp the entirety of who we are. We are not our Facebook.
Basically, this is what Catfish, the documentary, tackles. It deftly covers the complexities of online relationships. It is more than that, as well, but that you will have to discover on your own, watching the film. But while my sort-of review tries to grasp and simplify everything that the movie has to offer into a hypothesis, trust the film that it humanizes the whole subject matter and turns it into something cheerful, sometimes creepy, and maybe even a little sad. But definitely, it is something worth watching and for us stalkers, it serves as a reminder, that a Facebook profile is only the tip of the iceberg.
Considering everything I’ve said, I’ve done everything I can to contact the filmmakers. But if you see Catfish, you probably understand why, even until now, they haven’t even bothered to e-mail me back. Either they have wizened up, or they refuse having to defend their work as people in the industry call it “the best fake documentary they have ever seen.” Fake? Well, I didn’t think so. It may seem so extraordinary, but it doesn’t seem at all implausible.
All fiction, after all, is based on fact.
I hope I got you to want to watch, Catfish, but I hope I didn’t ruin it for you.