[irishbro]

The 2010 documentary catfish, and subsequent mtv series, offers an interesting look behind the curtain at the type of people who create fake facebook profiles. It covers a wide variety of reasons for creating them spanning from people who suffer from low self-esteem and confidence issues to not being able to reveal that they are homo-sexual out of fear of their friends and family finding out, just out of pure malice or even in one case creating a fake account story to get the show to pay for flights so they could finally meet face to face. Its crazy some of the lengths people go to keep up the charade and how much evidence certain people will ignore to keep the idea that the person is real alive.

[underwoodley]

You should be aware that this is a very questionable documentary and the makers of the documentary who are now the presenters of the TV show have been credibly accused of faking footage and exploiting the subject.

> Some journalists and film critics have cast doubt on the filmmakers motivations. Kyle Buchanan of MovieLine questions why the filmmakers would begin obsessively documenting Nev's online relationship so early on, and argues that it is highly improbable that media-savvy professionals like the Schulmans and Joost would not use the Internet to research Megan and her family before meeting them. Buchanan and others have suggested that the filmmakers likely discovered the fabrications in Wesselman-Pierce's story earlier than is presented in the film and pretended to be fooled only so that they could exploit her story for the documentary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_(film)#Authenticity

[DanBC]

> You should be aware that this is a very questionable documentary

Your links only talk about the film makers; the phenomenon of cat-fishing is real.

[srtjstjsj]

You might also enjoy similar documentaries Cloverfield, The Blair Witch Project, and This is Spinal Tap ;-)

[Harvey-Specter]

> in one case creating a fake account story to get the show to pay for flights so they could finally meet face to face.

That's brilliant. I couldn't find anything about this episode on google, but I'm interested to know how the hosts reacted to that.

[irishbro]

It is season 4 episode 18. Here is a summary of the episode http://www.mtv.com/news/2244348/catfish-fake-victim/

I can't remember the exact reactions but Machine Gun Kelly was a guest host and was not happy about it. I imagine the producers where pretty happy that they got something exciting happening.