CHAPTER 10

Avat-Are You Kidding Me?

How do you set up your online profiles? Maybe you pick a flattering picture of yourself… or a photo of someone else entirely. Maybe you describe yourself… or the person you wish you were. Maybe you tweak your profile with someone specific in mind in order to appeal to them.

Catfish are extreme examples of this—like my own catfish, Angela, who created online personalities that were designed to appeal to my love for bands, ballet, and photography—but we are all guilty of it, to some degree.

Including me. I’ve done it myself, more times than I can count: picked a photo that hides all my shortcomings or included only part (the most flattering part) of the story of my life. On Facebook, I’ve been known to look up the profile of someone I’ve just met to see what they are interested in—books, bands, movies, TV shows—and then, whether I like those things or not, add them to my Facebook page so that when I friend-request that person, they’ll see that we have common interests: “Hey, we both like Family Guy!”

One thing I know for sure: Manipulating your photos and your online profile to “hook” people who wouldn’t otherwise be interested in you is not going to improve your life. Sure, you may get a momentary thrill when someone shows an interest in those altered photos. But the truth is, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Ashley was an insecure twelve-year-old girl when she met a guy named Mike in a chat room (episode 210). She was really struggling with her weight. As a result, she’d become a kind of recluse, so insecure about her appearance that she wouldn’t even allow herself to be photographed at family events. But she did have a Facebook page. And there, she posted photos that she’d run through Photoshop in order to trim herself a little. Nothing dramatic—she didn’t pretend that she was radically thinner—but she’d lift her cheekbones, remove her double chin, and post only photos taken at one specific, flattering angle.

But in the meantime, Mike was also overweight, and he was also lying about his appearance. When Ashley asked to see Mike’s photos, he sent bogus pictures of some handsome Abercrombie & Fitch–like model with ridiculous abs. Ashley wasn’t stupid. She didn’t buy it. But she didn’t say anything because she knew her own photos were dishonest, too.

This went on for six years, until we finally met them both. Each of them was terrified to reveal themselves. They never made plans to meet, because they were too embarrassed about their appearances. Instead, they hit a kind of glass ceiling on how close they could get. Luckily Ashley recognized that it was time for some honesty, and she reached out to us. Only when we showed up on their doorsteps did they feel ready to take ownership of their lies.

It didn’t go well. They both realized that they’d been dishonest with themselves and each other. And that ended up getting in the way of more than six years of friendship—a beautiful, magical relationship that had been a consistent presence for both of them through some really awful ordeals.

When we left town, it looked like that was going to be the end. Fortunately, though, Ashley and Mike stayed in touch, and their feelings quickly regenerated. Soon, they admitted that they were in love and started moving toward being in a relationship. It was a rare happy ending, but it was also incredibly frustrating: All that time had been wasted. So much could have been if those doctored pictures hadn’t gotten in the way. (Most devastating of all, Mike ended up dying a few months later, making that wasted time even more tragic.)

Technically, theirs was a catfish story—but it’s also not terribly far from what countless other people do every day.

Take a look at the photos on your profile. If you’re like me, you often take a picture a half dozen times to make sure you look exactly the way you want to before you post it. You add a filter and only post the most flattering photos. It’s what everyone does, barring the handful of people who honestly don’t care about how they look (they are rare, but they exist, and they tend to be comedians). We believe—and rightfully so—that we’ll be judged on how we look. So we do our best to appear put together.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But it’s something to pay attention to because it’s a stepping-stone, a gateway into the realm of Internet identity addiction. Once you start adjusting your photos, what’s next? What else don’t you like about yourself that you can fix with a few keystrokes?

I hear extreme catfish stories all the time, stories about men and women who told massive lies and duped people for years. But the stories I hear the most frequently? They’re the everyday minor deceptions, the people who tinker with their pictures. Especially in the world of online dating. I hear these kinds of stories almost every day: “I didn’t get catfished, but I’m on PlentyOfFish and every time I go to meet the guy he totally doesn’t look like his pictures.” Or “It wasn’t even him in his photos.”

People do this because they know that when you’re trying to catch someone’s interest online, the most important thing—like it or not—is a picture. After all, if you don’t like someone’s picture, you’re probably not going to click on their profile. People who fudge their photos justify their decision by saying, “It was the only way to get to know the person I was interested in.” Maybe they are right. But it doesn’t help them in the long term.

As humans, we want to believe that love is blind. That if someone really loves you, it shouldn’t matter what you look like. Looks don’t last, and accidents can happen, but love is forever, right? There is no doubt some truth to this, but equally important is the truth that we are beings for whom romantic relationships are based in no small part on physical attraction. It’s mammal science. I can’t speak for everybody, but in my experience, no matter how much I’ve wanted to like someone or longed for it to work out, when there’s no spark there’s just no spark. You can’t convince yourself to be attracted to someone.

I’ve learned this, over and over, from doing Catfish: No matter how close two people get online, if one person has lied in their photos, the relationship almost always ends when they meet for the first time. When a catfish is revealed, the hopeful almost never says, “Our relationship isn’t about the physical, so your looks don’t matter to me.” (They also almost never say, “I don’t like the way you look”—they’re not that cruel.) Instead, they say something about not trusting the other person anymore (which is also true) and then quietly end the relationship.

Ashley and Mike were able to move past their fudged photos, but they were the exception, not the rule, and even then it was a tough hurdle. The truth is that romantic relationships require some physical attraction. Pretending you look different than you really do may help you meet someone online, but it won’t help you develop a true relationship with them. Because the minute you meet that person in real life (and if you want a real relationship, you will have to meet up eventually) they’ll know that your photos didn’t tell the truth. And that’s exactly where things will end: with a lot of wasted time and the potential for a broken heart.