🐱What is Catfishing?

Why someone builds a fake profile

The word comes from a 2010 documentary about a man who fell in love with a woman who did not exist, and it stuck because the situation is so recognisable. The reasons behind it vary more than people expect. Some are running a scam and want money. Some are bored. Many are simply ashamed of their own face or their own life, borrow a better one, and then cannot find a way to climb back down.

It helps to separate two things. A photo from three years ago, a couple of centimetres added to a height, an age rounded down — that is vanity, and almost everyone does a version of it. Catfishing is different in kind: the person on the other side is not a flattering edit of someone real, they are an invention.

How to spot it

• Video is always impossible: a broken camera, bad signal, shyness — a fresh reason every time you ask.
• The photos are few, oddly polished and never casual; a reverse image search finds the same pictures somewhere else.
• Details drift. The job, the city, a sibling's name quietly change between conversations.
• Feelings escalate fast, and then money appears: an emergency, a stuck payment, a short loan.

The one check worth making

Ask for a short live video call in the first week, before you have invested anything. Keep it light: five minutes, just to see who you are talking to. Someone real will do it, or will say plainly why they cannot and offer another time. A live call is hard to fake convincingly, so a person who dodges it four times has already answered you. And never send money to someone you have not met.

One honest note about apps, this one included. On Qulo each member writes their own questions and you match only by getting them all right — but that proves someone read your profile, nothing more. Qulo does not verify identity, screen photos or detect fake profiles. Asking for that video call is still your job.

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