Catfish is a documentary, made in 2010, involving a man being filmed by his friends as he builds a romantic relationship with a girl and a bond with her ‘family’ on Facebook.

I’m so happy because I didn’t really know what sort of stuff to write in my blog which is not part of the course content but relates to the course UNTIL i stumbled across ‘Catfish’!!!

I just watched this movie last night and realised i could write about it on my blog!! I thought i could do this as it has lots to do with networking and  it was very relevant to the lecture we had with Nate. What really struck me about the film is how anyone can easily create a network. The girl in the film totally made up an entire life that was fake. She added Nev Schulman, who the story revolves around and pretended to be someone she wasn’t. She built an entire false family – complete with Mother and Father and two daughters, one of which had a romantic relationship over the internet and the phone. She created hundreds of false accounts and added herself in order to make herself seem like a real person. She merely downloaded a random person’s entire photo collection and claimed it as her own. She would write, post and comment on all her photos with all her other accounts. As Nate pointed out in his lecture, it is so easy for anyone to use the internet and do all sorts of things with it. It is accessible for anyone do whatever like – including identity theft.

What also occurred to me is how a random person in Michigan added a random person in New york which lead to an entire film being made. This also demonstrates the power of the internet and how everyone is connected all over the world through a huge network, and in this case facebook…

I just find it so fascinating that it is so easy to create an entire network of people…especially fake!!!!! It just shows how far the internet has come from Paul Baran’s original idea of distributed communications. The film has really stuck with me and it has made me think about the internet in an entirely different way. It makes me realise how many different ways the internet can be used, including making an entire false network of people. Now i realise how useful Nate’s lecture was and how it relates to all sorts of things in regards to networked media.

Anyway, I’ll stop babbling along and end it here…BUT…

It was an incredible experience watching the film, especially because I had no idea what it was going to be about and I feel it was a couple of hours well spent!!