People can change their pictures or use someone else's, fake personal history and even create their own unique worlds with individual characters, like a drama played out over social media and mass communication, often without the other ever person realizing it.
The moment of truth can be tragic for both partners, but for Nev Schulman, creator and host of MTV's "Catfish," it was the start of something bigger than just a strange life lesson.
"I certainly never expected it to sort of continue to grow and escalate or change the topic of conversation," Schulman said. "Every time something like this happens I'm like, this is crazy, I can't believe this is all happening because I fell in love with some strange lady in Michigan 5 years ago."
Schulman was at the Auburn Arena Tuesday, October 22 on behalf of UPC to speak to students about the hazards of entering a relationship not based on truth or personal interaction, as well as respecting themselves and being comfortable with revealing their true personality.
After his film "Catfish" began playing on TV, Schulman received a flood of emails from fans describing their own experiences or concerns about their online partners, asking him to help them discover the truth.
Though he never intended to explore the uncharted territory of online romance, Manti Te'O, Saturday Night Live and more have cemented the term "Catfish" in pop culture, making Schulman the first visible authority figure on what is increasingly becoming a more widespread form of relationship.
"It's very intense because in the 5 or 6 days we typically have to shoot an episode, I do my best to be as open and honest and present and vulnerable with them as I can to encourage them to do the same," Schulman said. "I really try to involve myself in their lives and find out as much as I can about them, and hopefully get them to trust me and tell me what would usually be intimate and personal stuff."
Schulman asked the audience at the beginning of the show to turn off their phones and block out the online world, if only for a moment, in order to have a real, honest conversation about embarrassing topics in his own life and about the lives of the people with whom he meets.
One story that aired near the end of the second season about couple named Mike and Ashley particularly affected Schulman once the gravity of the situation completely manifested itself.
"[Angela] had been photoshopping her pictures to seem a little slimmer, but was still very overweight, and he had only just recently, after 5 or 6 years of talking, sent her pictures of what was obviously not him, because if you looked like that you would have sent pictures to her sooner. They met, but she wasn't attracted to him even though they had this amazing connection. They stayed in touch moved towards giving it a shot because I think she realized how great he was, and then like a little over a week ago he died, he had a blood clot in his lung and just died," Schulman said.
"So many years wasted not being honest with each other, it's just such a heartbreaking story, what could have been, just the possibilities that could have been if they had been honest with each other, that's been weighing on me."
To avoid falling victim to a constructed identity online, Schulman said, it's necessary to be open an honest in all parts of your life and share your relationship with your friends and family in the real world, not isolate yourself because you think it might be embarrassing.
A theme that Schulman has noticed in couples throughout the show is that despite their suspicions the "hopeful" is unwilling to pull the plug after investing so much time and energy because they either are afraid of being let down or are still hoping that the person on the other end really is the soul mate they've been looking for.
"My advice in that case is to really open about your relationship to someone in real life, I think the more involved they get with these people that they're dating online, the more they isolate that relationship from the rest of their life," Schulman said. "They know that people are going to be skeptical, they don't wanna deal with potential ridicule or embarrassment, so they isolate it and it sort of consumes more and more of their time until they get lost in it."
Schulman is working on a book, touring college campuses around the country and developing a couple different TV shows and a feature film with his brother and friends now that the second season of "Catfish" has finished airing.
The third season of "Catfish" is in the works and will air on MTV in the summer of 2014.
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