With Manti Te’o in the news, everyone is talking about Catfish the TV Show. Which is a shame, considering how depressing it is.

From the Catfish pilot, Sunny. She was in love with a boy named Jamison,  until he turned out to be a bisexual woman. She “dated” him for 8 months and thought she might marry him. Photo: MTV

Horrible, Shallow People

Catfish does take a stance against the outed liars on the show, but most of the hilarity is placed on the “gotcha” moment when the naive mark realizes they have been fooled. And in most cases, they’re also outed as extremely shallow people. Because they don’t care about who they were talking to unless they are the same image they were imagining. (Which isn’t wrong, attraction is a factor for dating.) It’s disheartening when you see so many people who are more angry about someone’s looks than they are about the lies. And while we don’t adore shallow people, is it fair that they end up looking like the bad guy in the situation? Is being shallow worse than lying to someone for months, sometimes years? Isn’t this show just totally depressing? Everyone is so desperate for love they’ll believe anything.

Sure, Of Course I’ll Meet You Now!

In every episode that has aired, the mystery girlfriend/boyfriend has always agreed to meet in person. That’s right. After a long time of refusing, they easily give into meeting up on camera. Are all of these people really so willing to go on TV and admit this horrible thing they did? It’s frustrating not to know what Catfish does to pre-screen people for their episodes. Do they contact the person right away to see if they’ll say yes for a meeting? If not, why aren’t most of the episodes cut short when the person refuses to come out of the dark? Do you mean to tell me all of these liars were all totally willing to admit their bad behavior in front of the world with just a little extra prodding?

Sexism: Because Girls are just Idiots!

Thus far on the series, more females than males have been tricked by liars on the internet. This just stinks of sexism. The first four episodes all featured a female getting tricked. Although, all in all there will be four guys being tricked out of the ten total episodes for Catfish season one. And yes, this evens things out a bit. Maybe the series got criticism for this early on, which would explain why the “guys getting tricked” are all shoved in at the end of the season.

Catfish airs Mondays on MTV.

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