Catfish - The "Other" Facebook Movie

Do you really know all of your "friends" on Facebook? It all depends on your particular purpose for using Facebook, or social media in general, but I've noticed some who have several hundred or a few thousand friends. The limit for a personal page is 5000 friends, but fan pages can have millions. Though Lady Gaga has passed many, Eminem has over 46 million fans on facebook.

How do you police (for lack of a better word) your friend requests and communication on Facebook? I tend to only friend or accept friend requests from people I actually know or have worked with. I use the mutual friends list to jog my memory when needed, and I don't accept friend requests from people I don't know and don't share mutual friends. Again, this is all determined by your purpose in using Facebook.

The reason I ask these questions is because Phi Beta Lambda and SCC's Student Activities and Marketing & Communications Departments are sponsoring TweetUp SCC. This is a week of information about professional and networking uses of social media in addition to the personal uses everyone is familiar with. One of the movies that we will be showing that week was featured on ABC's 20/20 on August 28, 2011 - Catfish.

This movie is a documentary about a photographer in NYC who was contacted by an 8-year-old artist in Michigan who paints reproductions of his photos. He builds a relationship with the family, speaking to the 8-year-old, her sister, and her mother. He also accepts friend requests from many of her friends and family. As the relationship continues, he speaks with the sister more and more, begins to fall for her, and essentially begins a romantic relationship. When he and his friends are hired to work on a project in Colorado, they decide it is time to meet the family and make the detour to Michigan on their way back home. What they find when they get there is crux of the film. After investing all of the time and emotion into the relationship with the family, their circle of Facebook friends, and particularly with the sister, it becomes all too real that you may not know all of those who you call "friend."

Here is the link to the episode - 20/20. I hope everyone will come out on September 29 to see the documentary and participate in the privacy and security discussion that will follow. This will be held in the St Charles Community College's Social Science Building Auditorium and will begin at 6:00 p.m.