Back in 2012, I knew nothing about Catfishing. Heck, I don’t know how much I know now.
But, I can tell you, my ignorance spilled over into how I reacted to the news that Manti Te’o’s girlfriend didn’t exist. And, when I say, didn’t exist, I mean didn’t exist.
As the story started to unfold, hardly any of it was believable to me. I couldn’t understand how you could “meet” someone over social media, develop feelings only for the person on the other end to be acting like someone else.
As I got older, I started to understand how the younger generation was weaponizing the internet to present themselves in any manner they wanted.
It’s why I kept shaking my head when I watched the Netflix documentary, “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist”.
The documentary went into incredible detail exposing how people’s conspiracy theories ran rampant and something that seemed far-fetched was nowhere close to being far-fetched. A lot of this was the fault of my generation not understanding the social and cultural impact dating via social media had become. It was our misunderstanding that drove the story to being unbelievable.
With each passing minute, my heart went out for Te’0. As a parent, I wonder how I would’ve felt if that was my son. Heck, as some points, I wonder how I would’ve felt if it was me.
In my day, we would’ve said Te’o was conned. The modern term in Catfished. Whichever one you used, it was heart-wrenching watching the impact being conned had on Te’o, his mental health, his career.
I’ve never met Te’o but I felt like I owed him an apology along with a lot of other people who had larger platforms than I’ll ever had.
But don’t expect Te’o to need one an apology from anyone. What we could see in real-time was how a college student handled a situation no one would want to play out in front of the world. He handled it with class and grace… something I know I couldn’t have done at that age.
