Love in the time of digital

I can’t get over the MTV production Catfish: The TV Show, which is a spin-off of the acclaimed 2010 Sundance documentary that also goes by the same title. It has absolutely nothing to do with catfish, but plenty to do with bait.

The documentary tells the story of photographer Nev Schulman, and follows his budding online romance with “Megan.” The two met on Facebook, and over the course of a few months began to spend a great amount of time talking to each other, exchanging flirty texts and “I love you’s,” and even long intimate conversations on the phone. Nev has never seen Megan, he only speaks to her via Facebook and hears her voice over the phone.

The twist at the end of this documentary, which I might as well spoil for you now, is that Megan is not who she says she is at all. The profile pictures, the identity, the back-story, are all false. Nev discovers this when he decides he wants to meet her in person, and goes all the way to visit “Megan” to find out. The reveal of the real person behind “Megan” is unsettling.

Now maybe even more unsettling but just as addicting is Catfish: The TV show. Every episode features the story of another hopeless romantic who feels they have found their “one true love” on the Internet.

Never mind that the people they describe seem too good to be true: in the first episode, a girl falls in love with a model/TV show writer/anesthesiologist named Jamison. Hmm, my initial thought would always be why someone that accomplished still has time to flirt online, and why no living person has attempted to pounce on him yet. By the end of the first episode, we know why.

It’s scary, this Catfish thing. And I wonder how many people out there have replaced their real lives with their online lives. People can get carried away with the online identities they’ve built, but forget to keep in mind that they also have to manage the identities they have in real life. You know, the one that actually walks, talks and breathes. Even more disturbing is that sometimes, these online identities are borrowed. Someone else’s profile pictures and someone else’s stories, and poof, perfect bait for an exciting game.

An American Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o made headlines lately when it was discovered that he fell victim to “catfishing.” Manti’s so-called girlfriend, whom he met via Twitter, did not actually exist. And that the profile pictures being associated with his “girlfriend” belonged to someone else. The truth came out when the real owner of the pictures saw her face splashed on the news, identified as Manti’s girlfriend who passed away of leukemia. Tragic, right?

I have nothing against love in the digital age, I’m all “hands up” for it. Sure, a first date today can be arranged through text. The escalation of a relationship determined by how many times in a day you Facebook Chat. The suitability of dates judged through profile pictures. It’s easy.

But Catfish made me realize as well that the identities we encounter online are different from the identities we encounter in person. You can be an absolute baller in some big online community, but a jobless 30-year-old who lives with his mom and locks himself up in his room 24/7 in real life.

Relationships developed online are fine, for as long as the path down the road stays there. For as long as the people involved are perfectly happy with the texting, chatting and phone calling. But what happens when there is a human longing to touch, to see this person in real life, to smell his perfume, to hear the baritone of his voice? True romantics cannot be limited to an LCD screen, a couple of JPEGs, and your heated chat history.

Maybe the goldmine today would be to find someone who has no interest in online social networks. No Facebook account, no Twitter, no Instagram. No online identity carefully crafted. No thousand-number of friends to validate his popularity. No need to announce the daily misadventures he goes through every day to prove he’s up to no good. No need to build an online persona to project something.

Someone who is as detached from the digital world as possible would be a find, because people like this don’t spend time living their lives through a camera or cell phone lens hoping to capture everything. They just live. And what “love” means for him would not be a language. It would be a verb.