Catfishing

Synonyms:	catfish (online), catfisher
See also:	sockpuppeting, pseudonyms
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Catfishing refers to the online deceptive practice of a user pretending to be someone they are not, usually through the creation of a false identity and using photographs of others. The term originates from the American documentary Catfish, which follows the executive producer through his own experience of being catfished online.

While catfishing is commonly known to occur on dating apps (see Catfish: The TV Show) it also occurs in fandom, by fans who wish to have an online persona that does not align with their real life identities, or in cases of sockpuppeting.

There is no documented analysis of catfishing for fannish purposes, though it can be speculated that fans may choose to catfish in fandom due to a desire for popularity, likeability, or identity credibility. Because the internet is by nature anonymous, users can reveal as much or as little about themselves as they wish; thus, catfishing may range from selective lies to creating elaborate backstories for a person who does not exist.

Some RPF fans have catfished celebrities or people associated with them, in order to get private information out of them. This is generally seen as highly inappropriate by most fandoms and breaking the fourth wall.

Catfishing can also be used as a humorous fanfic trope (usually when one half of the ship assumes the other is catfishing, only to be revealed that they are not) to get one's ship together.

Notable Cases/Catfishers

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

• The RinHaru Catfishing Scandal, a four-day imbroglio in Free! fandom during 2016, when a RinHaru BNF was exposed as a catfisher and a sockpuppeteer
• What happened with hivliving, where the user running the hivliving Tumblr account, as well as others, turned out to be a sockpuppeteer and a catfisher by claiming to be a nonbinary Chinese-Pakastani human trafficking survivor living in India, and their girlfriend, an American lesbian of color also living in India. They were later revealed to be a white American college student.
• The media team for Euphoria attempted to catfish fans, posing as a 16-year old girl on Tumblr under the username thunder-kit-kat.
• Sonny, one of the co-writers of In The Company of Shadows, a 1.5 million word original slash series, was revealed to have catfished their co-writer, Ais, along with their fans. Sonny turned out to be two people who had been referred to as his roommates, and had been catfishing both their co-writer and readers of their work for over a decade.
• Catfishing is not uncommon in fandoms that primarily interact on Twitter, particularly k-pop fandoms. Some users have reported that non-Asian k-pop fans have historically pretended to be Asian by posting selfies of random Asian people, as ulzzangs are a significant aspect of Asian online communities, thus making this practice easier for them.

Canon Examples

• Unique Adams/Ryder Lynn is a rarepair in Glee in which catfishing plays a central role in the characters' relationship
• In Panic! at the Disco bandom, Ryan Ross was catfished for months by a fan pretending to be Brendon Urie in 2012. Fans reacted to the news with disgust, and many blame the fan for being one of the reasons Ryan and Brendon may never repair their friendship in the future.
• In 2015, a Harry Styles fan professed to catfishing Styles's close friend, who is a private citizen. See: Xarry

Fanwork Examples

• how to fall in love with a catfish: a guide by wei wuxian (disaster rat) by Yuisaki and bwyn, a WangXian fanfiction
• Hook, Line, and Sinker by KuriKuri, a Boku No Hero Academia fanfiction
• Catfish by L1av, a Stucky fanfiction