How to catch a catfish

Or not, in this case

Cartoon by Guy Richards Smit

I’ve been online dating for a very long time now, on and off over the years, but years it has been. And of course, during this time, I have also come across my share of catfish.

Catfish. noun. A person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes.

The word “catfish” entered popular lexicon in 2010, following the release of the documentary Catfish by Nev Schulman, he of MTV reality TV fame. It was officially added to the eleventh edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary in 2014, and today, has become universally common in modern language, especially in the advent and rise of dating app usage.

There are, according to Proofpoint, different types of catfish. Some deceive for financial gain, others manipulate for sexual exploitation, and more sinisterly, there are also those who seduce to lure recruits for terrorist groups. The people targeted are sometimes vulnerable, perhaps unhappy, and mostly willing to suspend reality for hope and wishful thinking.

It is ironic really, the number of people who feel increasingly disconnected in an increasingly connected world. People are lonely, and people crave connection, even if it is with a body-less stranger on the other end of a fibre-optic cable.

I know of someone who uses heavily photoshopped and AI-engineered images on his dating app profiles. He argues that this is not any different from women who use heavy make up to contour and change their appearance, that he is not using it to deceive, merely to entice women into taking the first step - which is agreeing to a first date. (Even if he does claim that his dates don’t have a problem with this. Different problem to tackle for a different day.) After which, all his natural charisma will surely takeover, she will forgive the deception, and fall deeply, madly, in love with him.

Reader: this has not yet happened.

But this made me wonder - is it catfishing to select a significantly more attractive photo of yourself to share online? To choose the most flattering image of you, and use that on your dating app profile. How is this any different to putting up a photoshopped image, or an AI-generated one? A photo that kind of captures the essence of you, except that it is a more chiselled, better looking version?

Based on the dictionary definition - yes, and no.

(Also, if you see a picture on a dating app profile that looks too good to be true, it probably is - scammer awareness tips suggest reverse image searching it to determine its origin.)

Social media has coined a new term - Dating Sunday. Apparently, the first Sunday in January is supposedly the busiest and most popular day of the year to be on dating apps. There is another statistic claiming that “Sunday is the perfect time for success on dating apps”, especially Sunday evenings “as people unwind and prepare for the week ahead”.

So I went online last Sunday, and I matched with a man. We’ll call him Topher, because that’s the name he used. His profile was funny, and his banter was sharp and smooth. The conversation flowed, and whilst I was enjoying chatting to him, my spot-the-catfish spidey sense was tingling.

Having encountered a few catfish throughout my years of online dating, here are some signs I’ve learnt to pick up on fairly quickly, that popped up throughout my conversing with Topher.

When they’re too complimentary too soon, or share just enough information about themselves to make you feel special.

And says things to make the rapid progression to emotional attachment - “This is so strange, I don’t normally do this, but I feel a special connection to you.”

Or “I firmly believe you were assembled in a factory just for me.”

Yes, yes he actually did.

Inconsistencies in chat - about work and other details - until their stories just don’t add up.

Or if they refuse to answer direct and personal questions - although, arguably, I could just as easily say this applies to me too. I’ve watched far too many episodes of Criminal Minds and CSI to share private details about myself online with a complete stranger. So much so that the name I use on dating apps is a misspelling of my actual name - although my justification for this is that my first name is rather unique and no one can ever pronounce my name anyway - and I do not share any identifiable information about myself, at least until after I’ve met you. Does this mean I’m a catfish too, or just a woman who has learnt to live in an unsafe digital world?

Making a date, but something inevitably happens to require said date to be rescheduled.

Because you know, you’re so important that the bossman has insisted that you, and no one else but you, has to go on an emergency business trip to Dubai, which then suddenly changes to Paris because you’ve lost track of all the stories you were telling (and to whom), because you are the only native French speaker in the French bank that you purportedly work at who is available to fly out at such short notice. Because you work in risk and this is entirely common practice for back office staff to do. (It isn’t.)

Changes location regularly or is on travel mode.

For those who have not used a dating app, some of the apps allow you to change your location, or pay to be on “travel mode” - which means you can swipe in any city in the world, even if you are not physically there. Understandably useful when you’re about to go travelling. Whilst being on travel mode doesn’t automatically qualify the other person as a scammer, every single catfish I’ve met on a dating app has either been in travel mode, or changed their location multiple times. Makes it easier to seduce, entrap, and run (if necessary), when the whole wide world is your oyster.

Always seem to use Marina Bay Sands as a point of reference - for work, or where they live, or where they go out to, because they don’t actually live in Singapore and don’t know anywhere else.

Whilst this is unique to Singapore, I do wonder if catfish “visiting” other cities do this too - using well-known landmarks because they’re not familiar with other parts of the city.

This reminds me of one catfish I encountered a few years back, who claimed to be a doctor working for the Red Cross. He said that work put him up at Marina Bay Suites and gave him a chauffeured car to drive him to the Singapore General Hospital where he was stationed at. (For those unfamiliar with Singapore, Marina Bay Suites is a block of luxury flats in an expensive part of town. Also, highly unlikely that the Red Cross would do this for a 28-year-old junior doctor.) At least this particular mystery was solved - he slipped up one day and went off travel mode, only for me to learn that he was actually based in Amman, not Singapore.

Which brings me to the next point - there are a lot, and I mean, a lot, of scammers on dating apps claiming to work in a medical or humanitarian field. And no shade to those who actually do, but I will almost always swipe left if they say this on their profile, because there is a 95% chance the person is a catfish.

Also pilots 🙅🏻‍♀️

No digital footprint to be found online.

Perhaps not a skill I should be shouting about from the rooftops, but if you give me a couple of pieces of information about yourself, I can almost always find something about you online, and fairly quickly at that. So if you give me your first name, the university you went to, your place of work, and the city that you claim to live in, and I still can’t find you online - more often than not, you’re not real.

Refuses to phone or video call.

The biggest red flag of all - Topher unmatched after I’d asked for a video call for the third time. To be fair, I was very amused when he continued chatting anyway after the first two times, and occasionally got the feeling we were playing a game - were we trying to see who could out catfish the other?

I have to admit, I was mildly disappointed when he unmatched. I hadn’t yet fully unravelled this particular puzzle, I still wasn’t entirely sure what his endgame was, and my curiosity kept me playing along (a shortcoming of mine, I’m afraid). Perhaps he was bored and trying to pass the time, perhaps he was trying to ensnare me in a scheme of sexual exploitation, or perhaps I will just take him at his word when he told me he was needy and seeking validation and compliments.