BEFORE: This is another party that I'm coming to late, because at this point the directors who made this film have a series on MTV and I've seen a few episodes, so I know what the deal is. Also, in the last year the term "catfishing" has entered the vernacular, thanks to that college football player who had an online relationship with a young attractive woman who turned out to not be a real person.
THE PLOT: Young filmmakers document their colleague's budding online friendship with a young woman and her family which leads to an unexpected series of discoveries.
AFTER: And because I've seen the TV show, as the film started detailing this wonderful online relationship developing over time, the one thing I knew in advance was that things would turn out to different from what they seemed - so it was like waiting for the other shoe to drop.
There are apparently questions about how "real" this documentary is, but in essence the brother of a documentary filmmaker met a young girl online who was a painter, and he started forming a relationship with her older sister, Megan. I suppose you could say the director started filming his brother on the off-chance that this would lead to a real relationship, and if that led to marriage, it might be nice to have a video record of their earliest conversations. At the same time the young girl, Abby, started sending him paintings, and Megan started sending him songs she had recorded, presumably to use in the soundtrack of a film.
It makes sense that the filmmakers would check out the copyright of a song or demand a release from a songwriter before using it in a film, so it makes sense that this is where they started to notice inconsistencies in Megan's story (after finding extremely similar or identical songs performed by others on YouTube) - but ironically the filmmakers have also been sued by songwriters for NOT clearing songs that are in this film.
To weigh in on the validity of on-line profiles and my thoughts on the matter, I have to reveal a bit of what I do for a living. Part of one of my jobs requires me to keep a database of creative personnel at all of the advertising agencies in the U.S., plus freelancers, and this now numbers over 17,000 people. This is for the purpose of sending those people promotional e-mails, invitations to events, and being able to contact them to inquire about their animation needs. In maintaining this database, I've had to become something of an online detective, using Facebook and LinkedIn to determine what companies people work for, what their exact jobs are, and when they've moved on to other positions.
Surprise, some people beef up their online resumés, which means that they're lying. That "art director" is really just a designer, or maybe just an intern. And Bob Smith, freelancer, lists himself as Creative Director and CEO of B.S. Industries - sure, everybody does it. What I have to do is take the information I see online and process it, and if there is conflicting information, determine what is "true". But if they really want to be identified as an art director or producer, they have to pay the price - this means they'll be getting promo mails from me, since conveniently nearly every company issues e-mails according to a particular formula, so once I see ONE e-mail address from a company, and learn that the formula is firstname.lastname@companyname.com - well, now we can reach the other 200 employees as well. Gotcha.
This film sort of got marketed all wrong - the filmmakers decide to fly to Chicago and drive up to Michigan to drop in on Abby and Megan and confront them about the inconsistencies in their story, and this is where the commercial made it look like they'd be entering some kind of serial killer's home, or perhaps the grounds of some cult where horrible things took place. The truth of what they found in Michigan is tamer than that, but also quite a bit sadder.
As the "Catfish" TV show went on to reveal, different people have different reasons for creating phony online personas (or networks of personas, as the case may be). Sometimes these people have self-esteem issues, sometimes gender confusion or orientation issues, and sometimes they just need a creative outlet, a chance to be someone besides themselves for a few hours each day. This is the world we live in now, where someone you form a friendship on-line could be chatting with you to promote a product, or to (eventually) ask you for money, or even just to get revenge for something you did to them long ago.
Someone can even download your stash of personal photos, I suppose if your life looks more interesting than their own, and Photoshop themselves into your photos, and lead a very interesting virtual life. But it does cause me to wonder if their efforts would be better spent improving their own real-life situations than creating a more exciting virtual one. Telling the truth is always easier than maintaining a complex web of lies, isn't it?
Starring Yaniv Schulman, Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost
RATING: 4 out of 10 postcards
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