Catfishing
Let me dust off the old blog (seven years after my last post) to bring you a hilarious tale of how I was accused of using my own photos to catfish on Reddit.
I have had the unfortunate pleasure of catfishers using my photos and identity to catch victims hundreds of times over the seventeen years my website has been active. Normally, someone contacts me via my email address or social media accounts to alert me about a faker or a catfisher. I then report the catfisher using my photos and/or identity on whatever website they used me on. Eww. That sounds dirty. This used to happen a few times a week when my blog was active, but these days I have someone contacting me maybe once a month to report someone using my photos or identity. You know how it is estimated the average person spends five years waiting in lines and queues in their lifetime, I wonder how long I will spend replying, reporting, threatening legal action, etc catfishers who use my photos?
Recently I was returning to Perth from a holiday in Bali. As I was about to board the plane I jumped on the wifi to soak up some sweet delicious data before boarding a flying metal machine and staring at the heat cream adverts in Balinese on the overhead compartments for hours, wondering exactly what the cream is meant to heat and why the girl in the advert was smiling in a sly manner. My money is on boobs. I checked all the usual suspects; Instacrack, Facepalmbook, YouTubbin and of course my beloved, Reddit. I noticed a direct message, which was new, no one ever contacts me on Reddit. I rarely post something of substance. I mainly lurk, upvote dog pics or gaming-related posts and make sarcastic comments. I was surprised to see some random wanting to message me. Maybe they want to send me a photo of their dog because said dog is so cute? Maybe they knew the worlds best cookie recipe to eat while gaming?
I opened the direct message in anticipation and was greeted with the following exchange…
TLDR: I was accused of using my own photos to catfish others as myself on Reddit, accuser refused to email me via my website address for confirmation and wanted to play 20-questions instead.
Blondieeee (who has no posts or comments and a 25-day old account) continued to harass me because they were convinced I could not possibly be the real Kitta and I must be stealing Kitta’s photos and catfishing on Reddit. Fun fact: if you look at my comments on Reddit, you would spot a post I commented on in r/pics where someone caught a catfisher using my photos on Reddit. Even though all I do on Reddit is write sarcastic comments and post about my dog, nails and gaming, not catfishing others myself using… myself… in my profile pic. Furthermore, Blondieeee accused me of registering an old domain and emailing me would prove nothing, even though a simple whois check shows my domain’s nameservers haven’t changed in years and the contact details haven’t changed since 2002. Represent! I am not going to even venture into how I, the accused catfish, would possibly recreate an entire website’s design without said website experiencing any outages or DNS changes. I would be a fucking catfishing web-master wizard.
After that ridiculous exchange where I tried to explain how the fucking internet works, Blondie still claimed I was not legit, email proved nothing, and threatened to report me to the Reddit gods and expose my account as a catfish account unless I answered questions that only the real Kitta (and the rest of the internet who has read my blog or follows my social media) would know. I don’t know about you but my mind was officially fucked and I was questioning my existence. Are we really real? Is that plane real? Does plane have feelings? Would plane catfish as another plane if it could?
I blocked and reported their account for harassment (there wasn’t a ‘batshit crazy person is accusing me of catfishing as myself’ category in the options) and hoped on the plan to ponder the heat cream advert. I gathered that would be the end of it, until a few weeks later when another suspicious 9-hour old Reddit account with zero posts or comments slid into my direct messages…
Not going to lie, totally bummed they didn’t say something nice or share a cat fact and their message was of no value. Did not live up to username.
I am feeling a troll vibe here. My troll senses think it’s the same person harassing me for the lols or someone who is catfishing as me and wants to know more about me. I could also be overthinking this like the heat cream thing. Nevertheless, I find it hilariously frustrating that I am being accused of catfishing by using my own photos of myself in my Reddit profile pic after years of my photos and identity being used to catfish others.
For future reference, I am me… Kitta… the only Kitta, and I do not catfish others using my own photos because that’s not a thing. Consider this my confirmation…
Yes, I do write like a kid and seventeen years later I still give good selfie.
Nikita is a 30-something year old geeky girl that resides in Perth, Western Australia studies event management, works at events and runs EnjoyPerth. She is a self confessed high heel worshipper that suffers from multipletabitis. Kitta spends her spare time blogging sporadically, volunteering, gaming and likes taking photos of the contents of the universe.
Kitta.net 