5 Top Tips How To Avoid Being The Dreaded Catfish

Do you know that feeling to meet someone really special online? When the first curiosity turns into a flutter of hope, a happy smile when your phone or computer blimps - followed by nightly facetime sessions. From there on all you do is planning a true, real-life meeting. Oh how wonderful will this person be who understands you so well, who makes you smile to yourself all day and had you develop carpal tunnel syndrome at your typing thumb. Surely, you will fall madly in love and finally be happy – sorry, I meant fall even more in love.

And finally that day comes. You prepare, you undergo beauty procedures you never thought you would do to yourself, after all, back hair is sexy, right?! And a little upper lip fluff never hurt a girl, or? But – you don’t want to take any risk. So there you are all polished and scented and in comes he/she half a foot smaller, 2 stones bigger and way more awkward then mentioned in all those hours of exchange. Of all the things running through your mind a thought pops up: respect to his/her selfie skills.

That is when you start questioning yourself: exactly how superficial are you? Would 5 inches have been OK, but the half-foot is killing you? Could you have managed overlooking one extra stone, but not two? Are sweaty palms and awkward body language really that bad? And what happened to all those butterflies? - That is the same person you saw yourself playing the keys off with ‘League of Legends’ just a few minutes ago, and now you feel so betrayed and resentful you’re going to block them on every social media site you have as well as on those you haven’t been chatting. You’ll probably change your name and move away, too.

If that scenario made you shudder, lets crank it up a notch:

So there you are, all polished and scented and in comes he/she all shiny and pretty… Your gaze meets and then you can practically see the light in his/her eyes get snuffed out. What happened? Are you the catfish? Could it be?

If that didn’t make you shudder, here are the five top tips of how to catfish someone:

1. Just assume that you will never meet anyone you met online in person. That way you can lie, scheme, and plot all about yourself. Make yourself a different gender/age/weight/colour. Just pray never have a true soul-to-soul connection, because then you’ll be screwed. And not in a good way.
2. Don’t know yourself. If you never reflect on yourself, try to understand your emotions and what makes you tick you will be blissfully broadcasting who you think you are, not who you really are. That’s the best way to catfish someone with your personality. Who wants the timid cutie he/she came to love online when he/she can have the choleric Crazy in real life!?
3. Be ashamed of yourself. You are old, fat and ugly. You can’t cook and your cat has diabetes, how could anyone love you? If you try really hard not to love or at least have an amicable platonic relationship with yourself, you will think it’s better to pretend to be someone else. And that’s awesome – people just dig being lied to by someone they let into their mental inner circle.
4. Cultivate a narcissistic personality disorder. Being humble is sooo 2015. OK, you may not have fit into your jeans for a while (give or take a few years), and that afro has faded into a few free flowing fluffs, but that doesn’t mean you’re overweight and bald. Also, your personality is so big that you may as well be 6’2, why not say it is!? Everybody loves you, and your online romance will probably not notice that you may not be as Caribbean, but a little more English rose than you hinted.
5. Put people on pedestals. Yeah, put ‘em way up high where the cold winds blow because that’s where you need someone to be in order to love him/her. And the higher he/she is, the less likely you are to share your flaws, ergo the real you. Other than not being able to make a deep and meaningful connection with someone you pedestaled, you will probably shock the living daylight out of him/her when meeting you in person, not being what one expected.

Following the 5 top tips can lead you to a lot of lovely situations other than catfishing your new online romance - they will help you alienate friends and get dumped by lovers. Assuming those goals were not your new year’s resolutions for 2016, I can only say: sit tight and do the exact opposite of them. It’s not easy to meet new people, make new friends or fall in love, and even the best of us are riddled with insecurities. But we can always strive to be the best version of ourselves, baldness and diabetic cat included. The more we learn to reflect upon ourselves and embrace what we think are flaws, the sooner we will meet someone who has a thing for free flowing fluffs. Because open, unapologetic acceptance of oneself is the most beautiful of all.