What does it mean to be catfished? However, if you notice any of the seven following signs, you may be the victim of a catfishing scam. Catfishers often do not have many friends or followers on their accounts. This is due to a few different reasons. First, the account is typically created for a specific reason: to catfish a particular target.
They may only use the account for that purpose but use their real social media accounts for more genuine interactions. Therefore, they may not invest the time needed to populate their catfishing account with friends or followers.
Often, to gain connections on social media, a user has to self-market, reach out to others, view posts, and like online content or follow profiles. Another reason is to reduce the chances of being caught. The more friends or followers a catfisher has, the more questions may be asked regarding their identity, their profession, or their location. The risk of getting discovered is also increased when the catfisher has more friends because accepting a friend suggestion verifies a connection made by the social media site's algorithm.
For example, if Facebook recommends someone as a friend, it may be because they live in your area or went to the same school. If a catfisher only changed how they looked or a few other basic elements of their identity, someone who knows how the suggestion algorithm generally works could figure out they are not who they say they are. Therefore, the fewer friends a catfisher has, the smaller the chances of them being discovered.
If someone refuses to video chat or engage in a phone call, they may be trying to keep you from seeing how they really look or hearing what they really sound like. In most cases, the catfisher will invent excuses as to why they cannot talk or video chat. For example, each time you agree to a time to connect, something comes up, or they claim their schedule is inundated with appointments.
They may also pretend to be ashamed of how they look due to a serious illness, such as cancer. Another excuse may be they are traveling or in the middle of visiting family. Regardless of the excuse provided, repeated rejections of a visual or aural meetup may indicate you are being catfished. Because a catfisher only has access to so many false profile pictures of the person whose look they are stealing, they may keep the same profile picture for many years. If you notice that the person is, for example, 45 years old, but their profile picture looks closer to 35, they may be falsifying their identity.
A catfisher may be able to grab several pictures of the same person online and then roll them out one by one as months or years go by. However, the pictures they take may have all been snatched at the same time, making them look as if they are not aging as time passes. There is no surer way for their false identity to be compromised. A catfisher who lives close to you will be easier to spot if they refuse to meet up, regardless of how public the intended location is.
If the catfisher lives farther away, it can be easy for them to repeatedly use that as an excuse. In that case, if you are suspicious, you can always recommend a video call. If they are not open to that it is highly likely you are being catfished.
Assuming another identity requires a string of flawlessly executed lies. It is easy for a careless catfisher to slip up. In other instances, the catfisher may claim to have attended a certain high school or university but knows little about the location or the institution itself.
If your suspected catfisher asks for money or a gift, your suspicions are likely correct. Even if you have already formed an emotional or business connection with the person, it is best to refuse their request. In general, you should never send money to someone whose identity you cannot confirm.
If you are in contact with someone you have never met and they make overly committal claims like they love you or want to engage in a major business venture with you, they may be catfishing you. More Definitions for catfish. See the full definition for catfish in the English Language Learners Dictionary. Nglish: Translation of catfish for Spanish Speakers. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!
Log in Sign Up. Save Word. Definition of catfish Entry 1 of 2. Definition of catfish Entry 2 of 2. She was an online thing. They'd been talking for over a year. We were all pretty sure she was catfishing him, but he was convinced she was legit and that they were in love. Naquin "Heather" stopped messaging me abruptly several months after we started talking. She was a grown woman, and I never lied about how young I was.
Even so, I've never been quite sure which one of us was being catfished. Illustration of catfish Noun catfish 1 In the meaning defined above. Other Words from catfish Did you know? Example Sentences Learn More About catfish. Other Words from catfish Verb catfishing noun … this novel is timely due to recent high-profile examples of " catfishing "—where an individual creates a false online identity, often with deceptive or malicious romantic goals.
Aside from being a delicious kind of river fish, a catfish is a slang term for someone who seduces a person with a false identity online. The documentary Catfish , directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman about a young man getting romantically duped by a woman with a fake Facebook profile, takes its name from a tale long told about catfish —that fishers would ship catfish with codfish because they would keep the codfish alert, active, and better tasting.
This is what happened to the subject of Catfish , Nev Schulman, who discovers that the woman he developed an online relationship had completely made up her profile. It follows people in online relationships, seeking to find out if they are getting catfished.
The term further grew thanks to the spread of social media and online dating in the s. There are a number of motivations for the practice of catfishing , including financial gain, cyberbullying , identity exploration , and crime-fighting. Catfish can be a noun or a verb, with the impersonator sometimes called the catfish. While early uses of the term centered on people creating false identities through fake accounts, the term has broadened to anyone who misleadingly presents themselves online as better in some way than they are in real life, often their looks or success.
This content is not meant to be a formal definition of this term.
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