Is My Life Sux Now Another Catfish?
That sentence probably doesn’t make sense to you on about a million levels. Let’s start from the beginning. Because I’ll eventually get to a point if you hang with me for a minute. Promise this time! hahah.
So there was a documentary (Mockumentary? Meme w/in a meme? Internet scam?) that came out a year or two ago called Catfish. A guy begins to fall in love online and he and his friends decide to start recording video about the whole internet side of it and the unveiling of this relationship over time. They spoke on the phone, shipped art to each other, wrote love poems. It was very sweet… and intriguing. Only glitch? The woman on the other end of the relationship was a sham.
The woman on the other end of the line played the part of a number of different people. She built whole eco-systems of fake Facebook accounts, fake facebook friends, emails, phone numbers, the works. All fake. How do we know? The guy who was falling in love decided to surprise her with a visit. And that’s when it all got crazy weird. I highly recommend the movie if you haven’t seen it already. Some say that the movie was a fake within a fake within a fake. Which sort of makes my head spin within a head spin within a head spin to even think about. Regardless, it was fascinating.
Now, out on Reddit, we have something similar. Only this time, we have a guy live posting about his marriage explosion. “MyLifeSuxNow” began posting out on Reddit and people upvoted the heck out of the story as it unfolded. Basically what Sux said happened was that he happened to notice texts between his wife and another guy. He then quickly decided to listen to the forum and take action. He hired a private investigator and had his wife tailed. His sister-in-law also may have been in on it because she was her alibi apparently whenever she went anywhere with her fling. What he then found out was that his sister-in-law was also possibly having an affair. The story grew and grew and grew very quickly over the course a days, not weeks. The PI came back with photos of his wife with another guy. Divorce lawyers were hired. Defenses were constructed and actions taken to out maneuver the cheating wife. And then ultimately the wife was confronted.
When I first heard about the story I thought, oh wow. Sucks to be this guy. Hope it all works out. I bought it hook, line and sinker. I even was offended when I read about how the particular reporter mentioning the story had his doubts it might possibly be a fake. Until I went and took the time to read the story for myself… which you can now do here: mylifesuxnow.com which he apparently had to create because the moderators out on Reddit were constantly deleting his story despite the upvotes.
Its an intriguing story, and I can see how watching it unfold in real time would have been addictive. But for me the timeline happens in a jack backwards sort of way. Much too fast, and extremely illogically. No real human would maneuver their wive’s this way. Regardless of what they think they’ve done. But what I do find interesting about it is the gameification aspect of it. Did he do it, did she? How can you figure it all out. Which is an enormously popular thing now that we have Serial as a podcast redefining how we interact with the past and the present. I just posted a story about a new game that is coming that will take the details of a story available and searchable in order to allow the player to reconstruct what really happened.
I believe that many have finally understood that the internet loves to solve a mystery. Give the internet a mystery to solve and they are on it. Put gold at the end of the path and they are doubly on it. If its a true mystery, all the better. But why don’t they just gamify the thing from the get go? SOLVE MY RIDDLE – IS MY WIFE CHEATING? I’ll tell you why they don’t pose it as a game from the start, because no one would play. Make everyone think your wife is stepping out on you while in the bathroom, right now, as you type this? And that is sensational. That get’s clicks. That gets momentum. Right?
I personally think our voyeuristic attitudes towards reality TV has awakened in us the next obvious step… and that is real reality TV. Amateur security camera video, with live text feeds, and social plugins to over lay. Talk about the next huge thing. I don’t even know why I’m telling you about it, I should just go and do it. Right? And it would look like this…
Single post on Facebook: TRAPPED IN MY HOUSE. CAN’T CALL POLICE. THREE HUGE GUYS WITH SHOTGUNS CASING MY HOUSE!!!
Nothing else for two hours. People in your friends list go nuts. Next stage? Have a “friend” post it to Reddit. And let the trolls go wild. Is it real? Where are they? What do we have to go on? How can we help? Obviously you would nudge both the Facebook front as well as the Reddit front with “friends of the victim” posts all along the way.
Next step? Say that his best friend, who has access to the web security cams (insert elaborate excuse here as to why he has access – bachelor party prank – whatever.) is now live feeding them out to a website he’s just setup. Make sure that there are blue and red flashing lights in the windows of the house.
Next post to social from inside: THEY JUST KILLED MY DOG and DEMOLISHED MY HOUSE!!! HIDING IN BASEMENT. DONT KNOW IM HERE.
The all caps posts are essential. Anyone in a REAL situation would type in all caps. I would. Wouldn’t you? heheh. And just continue escalating from there. Build out a press release in advance. Build out your website in advance. Make sure you have it ready for google ads in advance… no matter WHAT you do, make sure you have ads connected.
Reminds me of the time I wrote a 5 page single spaced treatment of a Punk I did with the help of my friends at work for one of my buddies at work. We decided he’d gotten away with enough fun and chaos, and that he needed a little love in that department. This is what happened there if you are interested. But ultimately it required a butt load of planning and detailed organization to make it come off like it was just happening. But it was doable. This would be doable as well. Hard. But doable with planning and collusion from a couple friends.
But that is where I think life is going now. Entertainment, written stories, performed and acted, aren’t good enough anymore. We’ve tasted from the fruit of the tree and we liked it. Now we want all our entertainment to be live and unscripted. We want our drama to be life threatening and immediate. We want our stories to be viral and on fire. And no matter what, don’t ever, ever, tell us you are lying to us. Even when we know you are. Just keep the tape rolling.
