Catfishing is building a fake identity online — stolen photos, invented name, fabricated life — to pull someone into a relationship with a person who doesn't exist. It's the heavyweight of dating deception: not an exaggerated profile, a manufactured human. Sometimes the motive is loneliness wearing a borrowed face. Sometimes it's a financially-motivated romance scam run with spreadsheet efficiency. Either way, the relationship has one structural rule: it can never survive verification, so verification will never happen.
What Does Catfishing Look Like?
- The profile is a composite of wishes. Model photos, impressive job, tragic-but-romantic backstory — calibrated to be just believable.
- Intensity arrives early. Declarations of love within weeks, future plans within a month. Speed prevents scrutiny.
- Verification always fails. The video call drops, the camera is "broken," the visit gets cancelled by a sudden emergency — every time, indefinitely.
- The life conveniently explains the absence. Deployed overseas, on an oil rig, traveling for work. Jobs chosen for unfalsifiability.
- Eventually, money. A medical emergency, a customs fee, a plane ticket to finally meet you. With scam catfishing, this is the entire point of the architecture.
Why Do People Catfish?
Social psychologist Theresa DiDonato, reviewing the research for Psychology Today, separates ordinary self-enhancement (everyone's profile is slightly flattering) from catfishing's intentional deception. The research she cites — including Mosley and colleagues' 2020 work — finds both men and women catfish, men proportionally more often, women more often targeted. One finding worth sitting with: anxious attachment shows up on both sides of the screen. People anxious about being loved as themselves are more likely to build a persona — and more likely to keep investing in one, because the manufactured relationship feels too valuable to audit.
Then there's the industrial version: romance scams, where the persona is a tool and the love story is a sales funnel. The emotional script is identical; only the invoice differs.
In Practice
He found her on Instagram — a radiologist in another state, gorgeous, warm, instantly attentive. Within three weeks: good-morning texts, "I've never connected with anyone like this," talk of visiting. Within two months he'd noticed the pattern he kept explaining away: the FaceTime that always failed ("hospital wifi"), the trip cancelled twice (a conference, then her mother's health), photos that were stunning but never casual — no friends, no mess, no Tuesday. Month three brought the emergency: her card was frozen and a licensing fee was due; could he spot her $800 until Friday? When he asked for one video call first, she was hurt that he didn't trust her — and gone within a week, profile deleted, $0 lost and a few hundred hours unrecoverable.
What to Do About It
Verify early, before attachment compounds. Reverse-image search the photos. Ask for a live video call in week one. A real person clears this bar without drama; a catfish produces drama instead of clearance.
Treat repeated failed verification as the answer. One crashed call is wifi. Five is policy.
Never send money to someone you haven't met. No exceptions, no matter how good the emergency. With romance scams the crisis isn't the obstacle to meeting you — it's the product. Report it to the platform and the FTC.
Don't argue with the sunk cost. The months you've invested are why it's hard to look, not a reason to keep not looking.
If you're staring at a months-long connection and realizing you can't name one verified fact about them, walking the evidence through with Lainie can help you see what you already know.