How Catfishing (Sock-Puppetry) Might Affect Autistics

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I missed this earlier - what you are saying is different from what I read it as. I wasn't trying to make it anything, I was reading something that looked like a different sort of statement.

My post was in response to this post, the last post on page five:





Because someone expressed anxiety about the topic, and mentioned not seeing names as people any more.

I am not trying to control anyone or deflect anything.

I either do not have or am unable to understand my feelings about this topic, beyond my strong dislike of being lied to, so I don't really have much to contribute to talking about how I feel about someone using sock puppets or cat fishing. I know that I have a difficult time spotting trolls, but sometimes a very easy time spotting sock puppets - assuming I am familiar with the person making the sock puppet in the first place. Cat fishing I don't have any direct experience with.



It's the name of a logical fallacy. It means introducing information about a person in such a way that it creates a negative impression of them. I am sorry that it curdles your blood, but that's all it means. Perhaps it might be more nearly accurate to suggest such a thing is more generally a form of argument ad hominem - taking an argument to the person and making it about the person instead of about the topic.

My point there was that sometimes people see things that aren't there and act as if those things are real.



Fair enough.

Still, it is probably necessary to keep in mind that by bringing

Verdandi, no one wants to shake anyone's confidence by talking about certain subjects; and I know the ground is very shaky for some people, on this forum, especially; however, sometimes certain material needs to be in some way addressed, and it can empower people, and also sometimes one thing can be used to say something else. Personally I appreciate your good intent, but do think this forum needs you as a protector (or me either, for that matter).

Anyway, theater is a rich ground for working certain psychological difficulties through. Usually, though, the participants know it IS theater they are participating in.. If some do and others don't, then this strikes me as immoral, but is it?. One thing I would like to do on this thread is examine this kind of thing from an ethical perspective. For instance, as has been touched on in the Faith thread, is playing Santa Claus immoral? One Scrooge there would like to kill off Santa or at least ban him to the far corners of the earth, far from little children. Because Santa is not real, and these little children are being duped (and given presents:-)

One key point so far, imo, as given by myself and another person, the A person, is that the idea content overrides the character playing, but is this even true?--now I am questioning my own premise--I think it is true, though...

And why are some people on such shaky ground? I think that in some cases it is because they were not given a solid ground as children, but I do not think a person gets a solid ground by someone else telling them character playing does not exist. Also, interesting that one of the major themes of human story telling is character playing. For instance on many if not most t.v shows someone is pretending to be someone else or something he is not, such as nice..

I wasn't trying to protect anyone, nor was I trying to say this topic shouldn't be discussed. It's as valid as any other, I just wanted to say to Panddora that there's not much to worry about on that front.



I was not trying to say character playing does not exist. Rather, I was trying to say that the forum is not quite that unstable in terms of who people are.

I have had to abandon this thread as the subject was too difficult for me to write about, and I wasn't sure how productive it would be, and am now making just a temporary road stop. This is not in response to Verdandi's message which is just above this one, as what she wrote makes perfect sense, but rather I mean to talk about and try to touch upon the edge between two worlds, so two different paradigms and how they might possibly interconnect or never really connect.I think the subject of catfishing of sock-puppetry (a term I never heard of until right before I started this thread) in itself makes an interesting bridge. Actually people probably do this kind of activity to make some kind of bridge between themselves and others that they apparently cannot make in any other way, and/or they may do it for others or think/feel they are doing it for others. I suppose that is possible. I am not into shamanism, but from the little I have read or seen in documentaries on t.v, it seems these shamans stand between two worlds and are for the person for whom they are preforming their service, the bridge between two worlds. In this case, I think the person has to know the shaman is a shaman, or think of the person who is the 'shaman' as a shaman, so there is the placebo or confirmation bias effect.

I have never done any of this kind of role playing. I have been cash register honest my whole life until in the last year or so I because of the economy I started lying to my customers and saying I was having a sale when I was not. The experience of doing this was very liberating for me. I have written about it on another thread someone made about lying, but basically the idea is is the price is already lowered, then the customer does not try to bargain you down, and in this economy that works much better, as if a higher price is given the customer will just walk away. But before this I could never make a higher price, anyway, with the expectation of being bargained down (and even most customers expect to be given a higher price initially when the item is not marked), so I would start at my real wished for price and then get angry and frustrated when the customer tried to bargain me down. So for me starting, as always at my wished for price, but saying it was on sale, was a big innovation:-)

Anyway, to me role playing on the internet was and is unwholesome, and my opinion on this will never change a whit, but a lot of people do it, though maybe not so many here, so it must make sense to them, and in regular life people do play roles all the time. I went to this business meeting yesterday, and this one woman who is an inspector with a weird agenda is a b--tch. She has been messing with me and my business and other people's businesses for many years, and I had to pretend that I like her and be really nice. People have to do this all the time. In fact many of the people at this meeting were playing various roles, and I presume aware of it to some degree (as in this particular situation of this very formal Robert's rules of order meeting it was more obvious, albeit vaguely or on a subliminal level), but if you say to the guy sitting next to me, a person I have known for thirty years, though not so well, "You are playing a role," that would be a crazy thing to say, even though it might be true. He would say what the ++//#???

Moreover, one thing can mean another. If I say I am cash register honest and never lie, that would be a lie, as in actuality I lie all the time, to myself and to others. I have caught myself telling myself all kinds of lies and stories, and caught myself having false memory, the latter of which the veil has been lifted from on rare occasion. And for many years with no compunction, though a little bit of a tug at my conscience, if my competitor asks me how much gross sales I had that day, when I do really well, I always give a figure that is much less, as I do not want my competitor to smell how well my business is doing, but on certain rare occasions when I am doing very poorly and had low self esteem at the time and someone else was doing well, I was tempted to give a figure much higher, but I would never once allow myself to do this and have even once in my life told this kind of lie. Nor could I ever lie to my parents, as my conscience would not let me, but I think there is another reason. I think I felt on a subliminal level I would die if I did so, and so I put all of my psychological money into being good. Not a bad approach in some sense, but I think I was stuck at a certain developmental level, and one of the affects of this was a naive genuineness.. It was beautiful, but it was not mature. It makes me sad to think about it now, as hiding behind this innocent, sincere girl were certain things I needed to feel in order to grow up, but I could not feel. So there was a pure world and an impure world, and as long as I was stuck in the pure world (yes, stuck) and could not feel what I needed to feel in the impure world, I could never be a whole person, My genuineness, as genuine as it really was, was not me, as I was disconnected from a major part of myself. I was cash register honest to the degree of being naive, and there was (and still is to a lesser degree) a purity about this which other people, especially men, constantly noted about me and commented upon in years past, though I didn't really even understand what they were talking about. I kind of knew, but my brain could not really resister it.

I think to some degree we are all catfishing ourselves, so why is this, and how does this work in regard to the function of speech?.

For anyyone interested in objects relations theory, please read the previous message which is on that subject and which I used this topic of catfishing to layer into by speaking of my own personal experience, and hopefully someone will glean something out of it, but I think I should say something about why I started this thread originally, for those who do not have not read it from the beginning.The reason I originally started this thread is that I spotted a thread made by a catfish or what some call a sock-puppet (though I think the meanings of these two terms may be a little different) and I started a thread to point it out. This thread was immediately locked as it was against system protocol, which, being new here, I did not realize. So then I started this here thread to appropriately delve into the topic of catfishing and the psychological implications of engaging in such activity.

What was disappointing to me was that this other thread in which a person presented a big elaborate obviously made up fake story about how his fictional son committed suicide was not just locked, which it surely should have been in this instance, or so it seems to me, but that it was entirely deleted, as I felt it could have been of some value as a learning tool, though I can see why in that particular instance it may been deleted, as new readers who were just reading the into by the OP and not going to the final page were still getting hooked into it..

I must also note that I felt great anger and indignation that so many innocent and naive people people were duped, and I wanted to protect them, perhaps because they unconsciously represented myself to me, but the problem is that when you see a catfish and point it out, that can not only be wrong but can arouse paranoia in other people who are already shaky and make them feel unsafe here, and in general I do not think there is really that much of this activity going on. Verdandi has already mentioned both of these points. But, in the spirit of enquiry, what is worse, seeing a catfish or pointing it out? There is in short no way to point it out publicly, here or probably on any internet forum without arousing suspicion in the general atmosphere and shaking people's faith in the stability of their own perception of reality, and if you point it out in private and make a good case of it, the material of the catfish will be erased, which maybe is a good idea, but what if the material is interesting and even of some value to study? Of course if other people do not know it is a catfish, or think, even wrongly, that it is a catfish, they will be looking at the material from a different angle, so they will perhaps miss out on what is there to be learned. I have wanted to write my feelings about this since the beginning when I started this thread, but I was afraid, as the topic felt taboo to even talk about, though I do not think it really is. At this time I have a little more courage to touch on this subject, though not much.

The point that is valuable to me and why I am writing about this now is that before and even after that thread was realized by many to be a hoax (and not because of anything I brought to anyone's attention but because it was obvious) the feeling of concern for the people being duped took me over and I felt great outrage; however, it is obvious that the people who were being duped weren't suffering in the same way I was, feeling this indignation and outrage, because they were not aware of being duped. I was like this (and still am but in no way as much) and was duped in many ways....and even more interesting, as mentioned in the previous post, is how I duped myself, but was unaware I was doing so because I was omitting certain details that would allow me to be in full relationship with both others and myself, so whole. Though at this point when I see other people who are as naive and 'innocent' as I once was, I am able to grieve my past trauma, and not use this anger to buffer feeling the grief. Now without anything that has proceeded, I would not have been able to experience any of this. And look back to the previous message to see why I put the little what is called scare marks around the word innocent.

Littlebee wrote:

This will be a boring message for some, but maybe there is something in it for someone. I was catfished at work yesterday and gave forty dollars worth of merchandise (a very low price as I was desperate to get money to buy some decent food on the way home from work) and also sixty dollars change for a counterfeit 100 dollar bill. This is very disturbing and painful for me to write about, as actually I was not only duped by the person who completely conned me in our interaction which was somewhat lengthy, but in some way 'allowed' myself to be duped, though of course I didn't know it, or I never would have accepted that bill. This part I will write about in a message to follow, as it is too painful to write about now,

The whole experience was very bad, looking back on it, from the beginning to the end, (though I suppose it is not ended until I transform it within myself), as I received this 100 bill at a time when I was not feeling that much hope, though not depressed, and it gave me joy to be able to go get food. I do have food, but not food that I really like. To make it worse, the experience at the store was very humiliating, even painful, plus then later my daughter called up that night and said her husband was going to 'buy' the counterfeit bill from me for an actual real 100 bill, and that made me feel very weak and vulnerable as I already owe her 200 dollars plus there many other loans they forgave, and also they are paying for my cell phone, but I had to accept.

I was going to start a thread on this subject, but I am putting this here as it fits in with this thread and somehow with the ideas that are being expressed on the faith thread.

Previously to taking the fake bill I had only gotten 43 dollars which I was feeling quite good about because in the previous two days I had only gotten 25 dollars (often I get between 100 and 150 or sometimes even 200), and then he came along and bought 40 dollars worth of merchandise for which I gave him 60 dollars in change. The worst part is that when I was at the store checkout counter with the food, when they wouldn't take the money and told me the bill was counterfeit, then I was too embarrassed to put the food back, which food I never would have bought without having that extra money, so I gave them most of the little real money I had left for the food. The good part is that at least I have some breaded Alaskan cod, french fries, sweet potato chips and some feta cheese and organic persian cucumbers. Usually I eat a lot of organic grains etc.and no dairy products, but recently got off that for a while.