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The MTV show Catfish, along with the 2010 documentary of the same name, introduced the world to the idea of ‘catfishing’.

Catfishing, for those of you who have just emerged from whatever cave you’ve been living in, is the practice of pretending to be someone else on social media or dating apps with the purpose of defrauding or deceiving other users.

Since the onset of the pandemic, the dating scene has become a breeding ground for catfish as more and more people connect online to curtail the risk of meeting up in person.

The meaning of the term has become more nuanced and layered since it was first introduced to the world. Nowadays, catfishing ranges from using only your most flattering pictures online or lying about your interests, to outright identity theft.

The upside is that you generally get a ‘good’ story out of it, and VICE rounded up a few of those for you to cringe through.

These really stood out.

Elderly OkCupid Lady

The writer was 24 when this all went down. He’d matched with someone on OkCupid who seemed to be into many of the things that he was into including fire dancing, theatre, circus arts, rock climbing, and going to Burning Man.

I got there and the woman who walked in was at least as old as my mother. I’m guessing she had to be north of 50. She was obviously very out of shape, too, and couldn’t possibly be doing the activities she described.

Out of kindness and curiosity, he went for a walk with her and discovered that the things that she’d listed on her profile were things that she would have liked to have done, but never actually did.

Sushi Catfish

Having matched with a girl on Bumble, the writer was keen to meet up for a meal. She insisted on going to a pricey sushi restaurant.

She was an hour late and kept warning me about how she might look different. I didn’t think too much about it but when she finally arrived, I wanted to bail, hard. I genuinely didn’t recognise her.

She didn’t look bad in real life, but her photos were not an honest representation of how she looked.

She proceeded to order the most expensive sashimi cuts and drinks on the menu, didn’t make conversation, and left immediately after dinner.

Throwback Catfishing

AOL Instant Messenger was launched in 1997, so don’t feel bad if you have no idea what it is (or if you do know what it is – age is just a number).

This particular guy met someone on AOL, who would tell anecdotes about herself and her twin sister. Some of them were odd…

During one memorable exchange, she told me about how she and her twin sister had a foursome with their boyfriends while their parents were out of town.

Then after a month or two of daily conversation, she told him that her sister and her father died in a car accident.

The stories became wilder. She said her mother suffered a debilitating accident and died soon after. She was supposedly sent to live with her uncle, who forced her to work at his strip club.

Then she learned that she had been adopted at birth.

Before you start judging the person telling this story, you should know that he was 16 when all of this was playing out. Even so, he eventually came to the conclusion that it was all a scam and gave her an ultimatum – she could either come clean about who she really was, or he would cut off all contact.

The twin, I learned, never existed, and the girl’s parents were both alive and well. All of her stories, she claimed, had been invented to “keep me interested,” because according to her, I wouldn’t have kept talking to her if I had learned who she really was.

In the end, she was proven right: I did stop talking to her, because by then, I had learned that I couldn’t trust a single thing she said.

Creepy.

Cheating with your girlfriend

Lincoln, not his real name, was sent a friend request on Facebook. He was immediately suspicious.

We had no mutual friends and she was far too attractive to decide that I should be her first Facebook friend. Then I noticed the name: Eilla.

I might not have noticed that her name was my girlfriend’s name backwards, but she had also given this fake account her backwards last name.

He confronted his girlfriend in a private message and she came clean.

They are no longer together.

Read more catfishing horror stories here.

The internet is dark and full of terrors.

[source:vice]