Are you catfishing?

I first learned about the word “catfishing” via Nev Schuman’s infamous MTV documentary turned TV series, Catfish. For those not familiar, catfishing refers to the process of luring someone into a relationship by means of a fictional online persona. Catfishing has increasingly come up in conversation as new domains for (potentially) falsifying yourself crop up — from dating apps to Instagram to the decentralized web. But why are we falsely presenting ourselves more and more? Are the platforms at fault, or is it us?

The truth of the matter is — we all have multiple identities already. For example, you talk differently with different groups in your life. We speak with buttoned-up language on LinkedIn, we’re off the cuff on Twitter, and manicured on Instagram — it’s a byproduct of the audience each platform exposes us to. It’s like how we speak differently to our friends than we do to our parents. Of course, the idea of having multiple identities typically skews negative but I actually think our exploration of our multiple interests (and identities crafted within these interests) are net positive. The age of the internet has opened us up to new ways of thinking and being. By recognizing we have multiple “identities”, we are provided the opportunity to build our confidence in these different “roles” as we go.

I had a conversation in Diem with Amber Atherton the other week. Her viewpoint on all of this was:

“As we spend more time in a screen, whether on a laptop or phone or a version of mixed reality. The more our identities are different… For example, a big trend on Twitter at the moment is changing your profile picture to NFTs that you’re buying. How much more are people spending on their profile pictures? In many ways that’s like investing in clothing, that picture is your identity online… We’re just at the beginning of seeing the different identities we can take on. You already have a different identity in a WhatsApp group, on different social platforms, when you’re talking to your parents vs. when you’re talking to your colleagues, and I think that’s fine. I think we all shape-shift.”

The idea of exploring and creating different identities has taken on a new realm in the digital world. But while pseudonymity and the acceptance of digital identities are in their infancy, the idea of testing out different identities for ourselves is not new — it’s cropped up in history and been studied at length by psychologists. People have often presented themselves in a way not consistent with who they “really” are — this gap between the “real self” and the “ideal self” was first explored by Carl Rogers in the 1950s. In the 1960s, Donald Winnicott researched the development of the “false self,” believing it to be a more defensive, protective self that hides our “true self.” There are multiple reasons for our desire to adopt a “false self,” such as safety, self-consciousness, and judgment. An obvious historical reference of adapting pseudonyms to break societal barriers is the Bronte sisters penning their iconic novels under male pseudonyms — Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell — due to their style of writing not being deemed “feminine” enough.

Digital landscapes present a new domain for the gap between our “real self” and “ideal self” to develop. Ideal self-presentation is not always bad, by the way. There are short-term advantages to presenting ourselves differently — it opens a new realm for a person to explore and adopt different identities that are different from his or her own identity. In a process explored by Sherry Turkle, “identity play” online can be freeing. Often we choose what we believe to be the best of ourselves to share with others and highlight knowledge and skills that help establish our connection to communities we desire to be a part of. Sociologist Erving Goffman believed that this sort of editing of the self to shape the impression we make on others sits at the core of social interaction. However, the impacts of straying too far can be detrimental to an individual’s confidence and mental health. Caterina Fake wrote about “social peacocking” and how current platforms encourage us to hide our “shadow” in favor of the sunnier side of life — something many of us feel the impact of daily.

I am really excited about the possibilities of digital identities as a means of self-actualization and self-exploration. Amongst other reasons, and as I explored the other day, digital pseudonymity (a form of identity play) may be an effective tool in combating real-world biases, like gendered and racial beauty standards. In worlds where you can technically manufacture your own identity, it becomes possible to shed the visual signals that may result in discrimination. So at what point does exploring our identities (digitally) become harmful? Does it only become harmful when there’s malicious intent or when we cross the digital border to the “real” world? Have we all been catfishing each other with our digital relationships that center our “ideal self” over our “real selves”? Has our identity become who we are on social platforms? Or maybe, it was always who we were — we just didn’t have the tools to explore it.

A bigger question: What happens when our identities are assumed by society? We kicked off the exploration of that this week, with a look at the effects of gendered terms like Ice Queen and Manic Pixie Girl.

This article originally appeared in Diem’s weekly newsletter on Feb 15th 2022, subscribe here.