Catfishing

I have so much time on my hands as a SAHM with 2 little kids. I’m always lying about on my chaise lounge, flipping channels on the idiot box while my fulltime Eunuch feeds me juicy green grapes and fans me with a banana leaf.

If you don’t know I’m being facetious right now, you are not, nor have you ever been, a SAHM.

That being said, after the kids go to bed, I occasionally have to turn everything else off, turn the TV on, and zone.

When I do that, I tend to make really highbrow choices.

Like Downton Abbey.

If you don’t watch Downton Abbey, you’re probably not as sophisticated as me.

I’m totally joking. I listen to people talk incessantly about how wonderful Downton Abbey is, but I just can’t get past the title. Give me RuPaul’s Drag Race any day.

Recently, I stumbled across the show “Catfish.”

Have you guys seen it?

I saw the movie and found it fascinating, but then sort of forgot about it. The fact that this reasonably smart, cute, seemingly sane guy got sucked into such a crazy Internet ruse seemed like a total anomaly.

Turns out, it’s not.

As Manti T’eo will attest, this just might be the new national pastime.

How big of a hole do you have in your life to create a fake Facebook profile (or a bunch of fake profiles), steal someone’s old photos from Myspace – even their entire identity – and then pretend to be that person for YEARS? Can you imagine how much of a time suck that is? I can’t even keep all the things that are TRUE in my life straight. Imagine having a stack of lies as tall as the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Okay, I sort of get the ones where it’s a “friend” of the catfished person who has a “crush” on him or her and is trying to feel it out. Or the enemy of that person who wants to exact some kind of revenge. I don’t truly “get” either, in the sense that I doubt I’d ever have enough time or cray-cray to perpetrate either asinine crime, but at least I can find some minute understanding of a motivation in those instances.

But I’m just so confused by the complications some of these people interject into the situation.

I just watched an episode of “Catfish” in which a WOMAN pretended to be a TRANSGENDERED MAN looking for another MAN to have a relationship with.

Isn’t it hard enough just to be a real person of some sexual orientation looking for another real person of the preferred sexual orientation, without injecting anything extra into the mix? What was she hoping to catch when she dropped that line into the pond?

And don’t get me started on the poor, misguided people who fall for this.

In fact, just completely as a public service to these people, I’m gonna lay out for you right now The Top 10 Ways To Tell If You’re Being Catfished.

1. You have never heard your online pal’s voice because she does not own a cell phone, nor a landline, nor access to either. Maybe if you send her some money, she can get one.

2. He is a fashion or fitness model and is frequently unavailable to you because he’s traveling internationally.

3. The camera on her computer is broken so you can’t video chat. The camera on her cell phone doesn’t work, either. She has no friend or acquaintance with video capability. In fact, video features have been malfunctioning in Milan, Paris and New York for the entire year you’ve been in daily communication.

4. He suddenly has to go underground because he’s hiding from drug lords or gangsters.

5. When your Internet girlfriend Whoopi Goldberg calls you to chat, the area code indicates she’s from Podunk, Mississippi and she sounds like a teenage white girl.

6. He’s a cardiologist, has won the Tour de France three times, and his best friend is Chelsea Handler. Sometimes he holds the cue cards for her during her TV show, just for fun.

7. She plans to meet you in person, but suddenly has a family crisis or a business emergency in London and has to cancel. You’re either in a relationship with Kim Kardashian, or you’re being catfished.

8. Every time you question your incredibly handsome, perpetually shirtless, muscle-bound but unlucky boyfriend, he has a terrible car accident or is struck down with leukemia, Yellow Fever, or scurvy and just needs your support.

9. You have to keep the relationship a secret because she is a Peruvian Princess/famous actress/alien from Mars and no one would understand her deeply intimate relationship with someone so different from her.

10. You have one and only one Facebook friend in common with your Internet boyfriend. Take a REALLY close look at that “friend.”

If you’re prone to online relationships and have a low bullshit meter, please print this list out and tape it to the wall right next to your computer. And someone please laminate this and send it to Manti T’eo. Tell him you’re a secret agent who looks like Angelina Jolie and your mission is to help him fix his life.

On second thought, please don’t.

Toulouse is a SAHM of 2 stinky boys who works hard to exercise her family’s sense of humor by writing about them on her blog, Toulouse & Tonic. While her methods are unorthodox, she is succeeding at making her kids hate her one post at a time.