My Decade-Long Catfishing Obsession
I am a FakePerson.
The first time I catfished, I was 12 years old, pretending to be a 16 year old girl. I told this to Katherine Dee, two years ago, when she was soliciting interviews on “childhood internet experiences.”1
When stressed, I escape into an out-of-body experience. Instead of smoking weed, drinking alcohol, or even watching porn, I dissociate from my identity and incessant anxiety by inventing hyper-sexualized dialogues.
I spam-message thousands of women to collect intricate details on their sexual preferences. We collaboratively write sex stories, imagining what life would be like if I had tattoos and took steroids and had double jaw surgery.
I am not myself. I am a rich Swiss skier; 6 years older; or 6 years younger; two inches taller with a PhD.
The process is as follows:
Create dozens of profiles, to cover all styles of attraction. Women have “types” and to maximize coverage, to cast the widest net possible, I adopt a multitude of different forms and split my time between them. I become a whole family of variations on a theme, like heads on a hydra.
Pay for unlimited swipes. By swiping on 60 profiles a minute for one hour a day, I rack up 25,200 swipes per week, 1,310,400 per year. (Approximately 1% of all Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge users, globally, over the course of a year, all for 1 hour a day of labor.)
Dating apps are my casino, with thousands of spins in the slot machine. The jackpot is some girl telling me weird sex stuff.
With a 1% match rate, I get 131,040 matches per year. If 1% of those matches confess their deepest darkest secrets, that’s ~3 confessions per day. Not enough to satisfy me, but enough to keep me wanting more.
It’s like fantasy football. Instead of putting $20 on Johnquavius Johnston, I stay up all night swiping on girls from Astana, Kazakhstan.
Why Kazakhstan?
I change my location to chase the time slot. Between the hours of 7pm and 10pm, that’s when the fish are biting, when they’re lonely and bored after the workday. They’re doomscrolling and bedrotting on Tinder, hoping that some real man out there can cut through the mediocrity.
Liberal locations are the worst. Feminists in San Francisco are too smart; too rich; and they have far too many options. To filter out men, they have to be extra selective. Because they’re so “open minded,” sexting is boring.
Liberal women get tired of sexting — enough words, they need action! Something real! They are seeking a visceral, physical experience, and probing questions come off as “weird” and are more likely to give them the “ick.” Women with higher IQ tend to be more aware of the danger of opening up to a stranger online, and are less likely to fall for my scheme.
The best fish are found in poorer, more rural, and more conservative areas. Lower levels of feminism bring lower inhibition. I prefer the challenge of overcoming tradition; it sweetens the victory of “winning.”
My favorite types are the women who present as innocent, and then go “mask off.” This taste of surprise and delight lasts briefly, because you can’t put the cat back in the bag. Then I move on.
I value deception. Lying is the only way I can get off.
Despite swiping on tens of thousands of girls from Asia, I’ve never tried to become an Asian man. To have my face verified on Tinder, the camera first measures the distance between my eyes, nose, and mouth. If I could hire an Asian to verify the profile for me, that would be cool to try.
Sometimes I fantasize about paying unethical models to produce multiple verified profiles for me. I could have a whole team, wearing their faces like a puppeteer, telling their story.
I love the idea of diversity, becoming every type of human, from Greenland to Sumatra. To become trans-racial, universal, free from limitations.
I’d like to be a woman too, but I can’t successfully merge my face together with a woman’s body. It either doesn’t look like me, or it looks horrifying, frightening, empty and hollow; disintegrated and formless. I’ll stick to men for now.
You’re farming their nudes?
To be clear, I’m not receiving nude pictures from these girls. It’s easier to just keep things text-based, on Tinder. For some reason, I prefer jerking off to non-nude pictures. What is erotic is what is hidden. My imagination is always more powerful than the real thing.
Nudity is too easy. If I wanted to see pornographic images, I could google “boobs.” Or I could even pay some OnlyFans girl to generate something custom, if what I was looking for was visual in nature.
Instead, I seek an admission of guilt. I want the women to admit to me,
“Yes, I am a slut, I am depraved, I desire evil things, things which would ruin my life if they were revealed. I am sick, I am deranged, I am insane, I am lustful, I am like a wild beast.”
I love hearing women confess sexual secrets to me. In that moment, I am no longer alone.
The confession, the crescendo, the catharsis of the reveal gives me everything that I want. This is impossible to fulfill sustainably in a relationship. You can only reveal yourself once.
Some of my “wins” are other men catfishing as women. I try to avoid them, but statistically speaking, if I can deceive others, surely I am also being deceived.
These men are my mirror image, getting off on the idea of confessing fake stories to someone else. Just two closeted homosexuals, talking about gangbangs and rape fantasies and cheating and so on.
My chat logs are scalps, evidence of my conquest, my accomplishment, my achievement, my rare pepe NFT. I possess powerful secrets, and this gives me control, like the locks of hair kept by serial killers.
This woman has been hiding dirty secrets her whole life, and then she matches with me, FakePerson, and she confesses. I make her feel accepted, and her secret is fetishized. She is relieved of the guilty burden of shame by someone who shares her freak.
United in a momentary marriage of ecstasy, there is no chance of betrayal or abandonment, because we are wane ghosts. I can trust her completely. Since I am not real, I cannot hurt her, and she cannot hurt me.
I am benevolent, magnanimous, charitable, and gracious. I am healing her, fixing her, giving her what she wants. I am creating a safe space for her to experiment, to explore, to open up and be accepted without judgment. I believe that lie, and the lie becomes true.
But eventually we cum, log off, and go back to normal life. The whole thing disappears into thin air. I become just another guy she messaged on Tinder before finding a real partner who could actually satisfy her. The dream recedes like a subterranean mist, separated from real life by a series of masks.2
I am a writer. I am a philosopher. I am a customer at the self checkout. I am a guest in someone’s home. I am “too young to have life experience.” I am secretly right-wing. I am all of this, and I am nothing at all. I am here today; gone tomorrow.
Years from now, when AI demons have completed writer genocide, it will be as if I never existed. Whatever shock, disgust, or enjoyment you feel reading this will be swallowed in a sea of fake stories, all of which will be better written, more raw, and more intense. You won’t be able to tell the difference.
What do you ask them?
I ask a series of sexual and demographic questions:
nameuncomfortable?verified?heightagerace?ethnicityforeigntravellocationcountryfat?cleavage?midriffassswimsuitunderwearfirstlanguagesecondlanguagereligionintentioneducationsubjectdrinkingsmokingworkoutcannabiseye colorhair colorsiblingsiblingtypetattoos/piercingslongest relationshiphow long singlelast sexsex drive? compared to friendsfrequency masturbateexcitepornporncondomsbirth controlanalcumswallow?bithreesome2 guys or 2 girls?bodycountvirginityenjoy first time?oldest?cheated?This allows me to make a spreadsheet:
How did I get all these answers to all these questions? I ask. The same questions. Like a robot. It’s a pedantic procedurally-generated fetish. Doing the same thing, over and over.
Think of how many hours someone must put in to become a world champion Tetris player. Think of how boring it would be, to just play Tetris for hours every day. Wouldn’t you get sick of it?
Wouldn’t it ever be a bit too much, too simplistic? After a while, you’d begin to see through all the patterns, and it would just become repetitive, right?
Just as there are world champion Tetris players, I am a world champion FakePerson.
Why not use your REAL pictures?
Sure, sometimes I do. It gets less matches, but sometimes I tell “the truth.” Still…
Even if the pictures are technically mine, I am not the man in the pictures.
My abs are tensed, with killer lighting.
I look leaner and bigger,
My posture is erect, not slouched over a computer, writing 4,000 words a day…
my muscles are pumped,
every angle and feature is perfectly poised…
Even if it’s not AI or photoshop, with my own face, with my own pictures,
it’s still fake.
Even if I were to “looksmin” and use regular pictures, this is still deception.
If I am swiping on an app, my swipes are motivated by pathetic loneliness and needy desperation — not the confident, fun-loving, outdoorsy alpha pride that my “real” pictures communicate.
What you see is some guy smiling, laughing at the beach, hanging out with friends — but the man behind the screen is actually sleep deprived, hasn’t showered, and he forgot to eat today. The pictures are real — but the spirit is fake.
I am a dark gollum-creature, locked in the bathroom, limply jacking off to semi-erotic pictures of women in the hopes that one of them will spare me a crumb of attention, so that I can trick her into thinking I am socially and sexually desirable.
At my lowest point, I am drained, yet manic, exhausted, yet anxious, impotent, yet desperate, incapable, yet obsessive. Hiding my insomnia-ridden bloodshot eyes, I chase a fake connection.
At least they can’t reject me. They can only reject the character. I can always create a new one.
Why do you enjoy hurting women?
I get joy out of deceiving people, but I don’t hurt them or blackmail them. I want to provide them with a pleasurable shock — I want them to be excited, titillated, and pleased. That makes me happy.
I imagine this is how trans women feel when they pass. You have successfully tricked horny men into lusting after you! Triumph!
Sadly, those who chop off dick and bobs can never be normal again (even if they “detransition”). But I can simply put the computer down, walk away, and be perceived as a normal person.
I can write a political blog, then close my laptop, and be regarded as a regular by the cashier at the grocery store. If this blog crashes and burns (I’m surprised it hasn’t already), I can get a real job. I have no attachments, no reputation, no church, no community.
Can you try talking to girls in real life?
Even if I approach girls in public, it feels safer to lie. I never say “hey! I’m feeling pretty lonely and desperate, can you please talk to me?” even if that is my true motivation.
I pretend to be confident. I put on a foreign accent. I act silly. It’s never me.
Why bother trying to be genuine? If sexuality is a scripted dance, a performance, a mask, why attempt to be authentic at all? If I feel repulsive inside, then being honest is merely spreading misery; but if I pretend to be confident and fun, then I spread joy. The former is parasitic, while the latter is altruistic.
Becoming someone else removes the anxiety between “authenticity” and “performance.” I no longer worry about whether I am lying or telling the truth.
I remove myself from the scene, watching Ken play with Barbie in the Tinder dollhouse.
Try “real sex.” Hire a prostitute.
You can call me a standard, run-of-the-mill narcissistic porn addict. I don’t reject the term to defend my behavior, but because the term “addict” implies that I am a victim of some outside force. Addiction is an excuse. I choose to do this, like how teenage girls choose to cut themselves.
Before writing this, I had my once-in-a-blue-moon sexual experience with a skinny, intelligent young woman, with a runner’s ass. Just to make sure everything still works. Twice in 24 hours. The first time was last night, then we fell asleep, then I woke up, then we had more sex.
And yet, I realized,
I don’t want sex.
The only reason I ever have sex is because it symbolizes connection, intimacy, and acceptance. Online, I can skip this useless physical ritual, and experience sexuality in a purely abstract form.
Real sex is scary. What if I’m not good enough, and she blocks me afterwards, sending me into a neurotic tailspin? What if she’s not good enough, and I have to reject her? What if she’s perfect, and I become dependent on her, and I can no longer live without her, but then my thin mask slips and she sees my flaws and the whole thing collapses like the Twin Towers on 9/11, and I spend years missing her and regretting everything?
When I feel good, confident, and happy, my sex drive is low. My sex drive is highest when I am self-loathing, self-hating, and alone.
Sex becomes a hyper-fixation when I am at my lowest. This “lowness” isn’t depression, but a manic, raging anxiety that I quell with 3,600 swipes a day.
I don’t want sex; I want a distraction from the disappointments and failures of life. When I feel humiliated, instead of lashing out, I get passive aggressive. My revenge against the world is silent and secretive.
I go to work, sending out thousands of messages, like a colony of ants collecting grains of sand, turning up diamonds every now and then.
I dumb down my frontal lobe, shutting up my incessant inner critic. My desire goes beyond the “physical sex drive.”
Unlike other “sex addicts,” I have no desire to go autogynephilic and get breast implants and cut off my dick. I’m not dancing in front of the mirror, crossdressing, wearing women’s clothing, jacking off to the idea of being a woman. I don’t want anyone to validate my pronouns. I desire a disembodied sexuality.
In this voyeuristic literary experience, “I” do not exist at all. “I” am merely the author and the observer, creating and consuming a fantasy.
The coarse, banal flaws of reality can never compare to the idealized realm of digital plastic.3
Katherine seemed like the perfect person to cover this topic:
In 2023, I had the misfortune of meeting and, thankfully, briefly befriending a pathological liar. This individual lied about everything—even mundane things. But the closer I paid attention, the more it was clear that they lied so much because they weren’t really living in the physical world. They were creatures of the Internet, through and through. The stories were a way to communicate what their essence was. They weren’t literally true, but they were symbolically true. But this principle is wider spread than just people who fib online or in more extreme circumstances, catfishers. This is what it means to be “post-truth.”
The ability to present different versions of ourselves online creates both opportunities and anxieties. In our conversation, I mentioned that the potential for shape-shifting online, be it explicitly, as with catfishing or deep fakes, or implicitly, with its lack of accountability and embodiment, has created unconscious fears in everyone.
She’s covered catfishing stories elsewhere too. She’s an expert on the subject:
Men can, for example, catfish as a woman, form a relationship through a woman with a man, but not necessarily be gay or bisexual.
There is the work persona, the “aw shucks” nerdy pencil-pusher, people pleaser, corporate-family loving, wholesome chungus mask. This mask brings money but little pleasure.
Sometimes there is a pleasure in “pulling it off,” and “getting away with it,” and winning the interview and getting the job. Sometimes I successfully trick the boss into thinking I love my job, and they trick me into thinking they love my work, and we match each other’s sick freak, which is quite nice.
WTF???
I was on the verge of “breaking through into the mainstream” and interviewing Obama. Now all my critics are correct and I will be stuck in purgatory forever. Or maybe this is the hot new thing, maybe this is entertaining and funny and insightful and people love it!
Or maybe this will have no effect, positive or negative. The result will be entirely neutral. People will comment,
“is this guy for real? Is this satire? I can’t tell anymore. I’m not sure whether to be angry or sad or disturbed or to laugh.”
And:
“listen young man, I’m 36 and I’ve been around the block, so I have some advice for you. GET HELP. go to therapy. touch grass. get a normal job. go to church. dig ditches in a monastery. I’m saying this because I’m looking out for you. You’ll thank me later
Personally, I find these comments to be the most entertaining:
you are gonna love reading anything by David Foster Wallace