Catfish: The TV Show

2012

Date: 12 November 2012 · Place: MTV, produced in New York City · Figures: Yaniv 'Nev' Schulman, host · Max Joseph, co-host · Ariel Schulman, producer · Henry Joost, producer · Tags: Reality Television, Online Identity, Documentary 01. From 2010 Documentary To Weekly Series Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman's 2010 documentary Catfish followed Ariel's brother Nev as he discovered that his online romantic partner was an invented persona maintained by an older woman in rural Michigan. On 12 November 2012 MTV launches a weekly series in which Nev and co-host Max Joseph investigate other online relationships built on fabricated identities. By the third season the verb catfish has entered general American usage to describe the deceptive practice. Merriam-Webster adds it in 2014. 02. A Word For The Internet Lie Catfish supplies a vocabulary for a phenomenon that was previously unnamed in mainstream culture. The show's house structure, hopeful subject, weekslong investigation, awkward meeting, becomes the template for a decade of online-identity reality television. It also legitimizes the documentary-as-reality-format on a music-television network, contributing to MTV's mid-2010s pivot away from music programming entirely. Sources • Catfish: The TV Show, MTV episode archive (2012-present) • The New York Times, 'MTV Finds a Hit in Catfish' (14 January 2013) • Merriam-Webster, 'New Words 2014' announcement (19 May 2014)