The relationship lasted six months. The person did not exist.
Literal meaning: Catfishing describes creating a false online identity — using fabricated photos, names, and personal histories — to deceive another person into an emotional or romantic relationship. The deception is sustained over time, often through carefully managed communication.
Origin: The term was popularised by the 2010 documentary Catfish by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, which followed a sustained online relationship that turned out to be based on a fabricated identity. The documentary gave the behaviour a name that stuck, and MTV’s subsequent series Catfish (2012–) documented dozens of cases.The term is said to come from fishing, but this explanation is probably not true. The study by Tsikerdekis and Zeadally (2015) shows that users can easily create fake identities to deceive others. This is directly related to catfishing, a specific form of online identity deception in which individuals use false profiles to mislead others, often in romantic contexts.
The construction of a false online identity to build and sustain a deceptive relationship — enabled by platform anonymity.
The Appeal: From the catfisher’s perspective, the false identity often represents an idealised self — more attractive, more interesting, more desirable than the person believes themselves to be. The relationship is real in the sense that real feelings are involved; only the identity is fabricated. From the target’s perspective, the emotional connection is entirely genuine.
The Friction: Predatory Design creates the conditions: platforms with minimal identity verification, asynchronous communication, and algorithmic amplification of emotional engagement. Parasocial Relationship — one-sided emotional bonds — is what catfishing systematically exploits and manufactures: the target develops a real attachment to a constructed character. Online Grooming shares structural features with catfishing when the deception involves minors. The harm is not only that the relationship was false — it is that the emotional labour was real, and the person who invested it receives no acknowledgement.
Why This Matters: Catfishing makes visible the gap between identity and persona on digital platforms — and the emotional cost of closing that gap badly.
Related terms: Ghosting · Online Grooming · Parasocial Relationship · Predatory Design · AI Literacy · Phatic Interaction
Read more:
- Catfish: The TV Show —
Schulman, A., Joost, H. MTV (2012) — as primary cultural document - Detecting and Preventing Online Identity Deception in Social Networking Services — Tsikerdekis, M. & Zeadally, S. (2014). IEEE Internet Computing