How is the identity of women mediated via the internet and why is this problematic? - ej

Catfish is a  reality thriller/documentary film that follows the journey of the main character Nev a photographer based in New York, and his relationship with a family he becomes friends with on Facebook. The relationship begins when an 8 year old girl Abby contacts Nev on Facebook asking if she can paint one of his pictures.  He then becomes  friends with the family including the mum Andrea, the older half sister Megan, the step dad Vince as well as the brother.  Nev regularly receives packages of paintings of his pictures and eventually after forming a good relationship with the entire family which includes having phone call conversations with the mum and older sister he begins to find out what he has been told might not be entirely the truth.

In the film catfish, the main (only!) female character mediates herself via the internet through her multiple profiles on the website facebook. She creates different identities on the site using multiple fake names and pictures and uses them to represent different parts of her personalities. She  creates an entire family on  Facebook and uses them to convey the lies and events that she has been telling the main character Nev. She mediates herself as her 8 year old daughter Abby who is a rising star artist who paints nevs photos and owns a gallery.  She also mediates herself as the sister Megan who is supposedly a singer and creates a long distance relationship with Nev. She also mediates herself as the mum using a back dated image of herself and creates the story that she has cancer.  When Nev finally meets her he realises that none of these things she has mediated her self as are not true.

The way the character Angela mediates herself is problematic for multiple reasons. The first is that by using the internet and face book you can become anyone you want and angela has been stealing identities to mediate herself as the different parts of her personality that she has not been able to live herself.  The second major problem for the way Angela mediates herself is that she is committing crimes by stealing peoples identities and this can be a major crime. The fact that people can become anyone they want on the internet through social sites like facebook, twitter ect means that relationships made on the internet can be fake. It can also lead to more dangerous things such as murder, rape and abduction especially when the ones been influenced by fake identities are young children and adolescents.

How is the identity of women mediated via the Internet and why is this problematic? - Kirsten Toye

Catfish is a documentary film made in 2010. Andrew Jarecki, Marc Smerling, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman produced it and Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost directed it. The film is about a man called Nev who is a photographer that’s lives in New York with his brother Ariel and friend Henry Joost. An 8-year-old girl, Abby Pierce started to paint pictures of his photographs and sends them to him through the post. Nev becomes friends Abby and her family on Facebook. Nev becomes close to her half sister Megan, who is a songwriter who lives in Gladstone, Michigan. Nev later finds out that Megan isn’t a songwriter, nor the person he was chatting too. Abby is not a child prodigy and isn’t really into painting or drawing. Angela is the one who did all the paintings but mediated herself as many other different people.


The identity of the women, Angela, is mediated over the internet using Facebook. She has mediated herself as many different people coming from the same family. She has mediated herself as a little 8-year-old girl called Abby, who was painting pictures of Nev’s photographs. She also mediated herself as a 19-year-old girl called Megan, who was Abby’s half sister, who was starting a long distant relationship with Nev, and she also mediated herself as Angela, the mother of Abby and Megan who had cancer. None of this was true.


The woman has shown different identities to Nev. She made any different identities to make it seen real, and they were living a real life, but there were some things that didn’t piece together that made Nev realise that this wasn’t right. She has created multiple profiles of different people and represented parts of her own identity in them. This is problematic because anyone can put a false identity on the internet, through social networking sites and miss lead people. Although this is a serious case, it could lead to things much worse such as rape, murder, abduction and many more, as people can create a person who looks very real and start a friendship or relationship, like Nev and Megan did. Angela is committing major crimes as well as miss leading people. The people she stole identity from were people she knew, but stealing an identity is a crime.