Catfish: A catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they’re not using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances.
I met someone online at a talk group where I volunteer to talk to people with depression and similar problems. After a few conversations this person said can I have your email please I want to show you some artwork that I did. I said ok. Two or three months later I was in one of the most crazy and painful situations of my life.
This person claimed they were kidnapped and raped at age 14. They then claimed they went to the “girls home” where girls beat her up and molested her. Then she was molested in turn by, her therapist, two teachers, a neighbor, her brother in law, a shop keeper, a family friend and then a random person in town. I figured she had been raped or molested at some point and was now making up stories to get attention. I was stupid enough to play along and listen.
Well, in the past 10 days she has claimed: to be in court for the kidnapping case, to have tried to commit suicide and went to the emergency from for pills, to be raped again by her brother in law and, finally, that the cousin of one of the people on trial threatened her on the street with a gun. So at this point I am in a crisis of conscious. I feel like I need to call the police in her town and mention the brother in law thing. But how could I??? How could I make an accusation like that based upon the word of someone who was most obviously a liar. So I wound up telling her, look, you had a suicide attempt so I can’t talk to you anymore (I was on messenger talking to this person at the time of the fake suicide event)… so I can’t talk to you anymore unless you tell me the address of where you live and your parents name and phone number. They of course would not provide me with this information so I said, ok well talk to you later and banned/blocked the person without telling them. Oh, yes, She told me like a month after we were talking that she was 17. She told me a month later that she had “fallen in love with me”.
So was this person a catfish or just an insane demented liar? If they were a “catfish”, someone who pretends to be someone they’re not using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances, wouldn’t they have told me they were 23 or 37, someone closer to my own age?
Ok so I feel stupid telling that big long story. Stupid that I would believe such a crazy liar. But except for my sister I would feel so embarrassed to tell anyone in my life about this. So, I wanted to vent a bit. I just feel so stupid!!!
I will probably answer responses to this thread but at some point I may get tired of talking about it. If you respond and I don’t respond that is why. I’ll be here for like an hour though I think to answer questions or comments.