catfishing

The documentary Catfish (opens in a new window) premiered at Sundance in January 2010. It follows a photographer through an online relationship with a woman whose profile turned out to be run by someone else, and takes its title from a story told near the end, in which catfish are shipped in the vats with cod to keep the cod active. In 2014 Merriam-Webster added the sense (opens in a new window): “a person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes.” Dictionary.com (opens in a new window) gives the verb: “to deceive, swindle, etc., by assuming a false identity or personality online.”

The word then named a market with a regulator. For 2022 the Federal Trade Commission (opens in a new window) reported that “nearly 70,000 people reported a romance scam, and reported losses hit a staggering $1.3 billion,” with a median reported loss of $4,400. The suffix went on to supply a family. Kittenfishing names a profile rounded up, hoodfishing a persona borrowed, and wokefishing a set of views overstated, each a smaller fraud of the same species.

Under load, catfishing exploits a market that settles in messages. A conversation can run for months on text and photographs, none of them checked at the point of sale, and the counterfeit holds until the first transaction that requires a face. The family that followed records the same discrepancy in smaller denominations. The original is the only member in which the discrepancy is the whole person.