Maybe it's just me, but I prefer the catfishing that's like in a lake or whatever.

It’s absurdly dishonest.

My thoughts are the obvious, it's selfish, sad, dysfunctional, and/or not nice or very cruel depending on the details. It also kind of seems like there are a few people engaging with someone else's false identity knowingly, like an unspoken roleplay, like they're both in a shared escapism prison and are both gonna claim to be victims when it's all over. And I sort of wonder if they come out the other side of that bonded through the weirdness they created, or just fully hating each other.

I'm pretty sure that there's always a story (sad one) behind every person who does it and plenty of reasons why they do it. I have the impression that people always take the catfishing as an act from one person to get something from someone else (usually with an unethical reason). Sometimes it's not about anyone else but oneself but things happens...unexpected things and there you have the problem.

What Kate said, if they're good, they're good, regardless of identity. The problem is when their real identity isn't interested in me.

In my experience, catfishing is usually done for the purpose of scamming someone, which is totally evil.

If it's not catfishing to scam people, it's deceptive so it's unethical, but it's not a huge deal. Unless the catfish makes someone fall in love with their false persona; that's pretty bad.

I don't even believe real people.

I take everybody as what they appear to be. I don't really care if I do deal with a persona or with the person itself. As long as the communication is good and interesting I do not care much if you have a false beard. Though I guess yours is real?

You should stop doing that, it's not very nice!

Sad that there are people who feel like they have to resort to it, not much else beyond that - people have been lying about who they are for as long as they've existed...like everything else, technology just made it easier