There Is No Ethan: How Three Women Caught America's Biggest Catfish

by Anna Akbari

If apps like Bumble and Hinge are a human catalog (imagecentric and glossy), old-school OkCupid was the Saturday night bar experience in virtual form (clever openers, witty banter, and long-game verbal rapport-building).

“And no matter our level of intelligence, we can always rationalize these emotions to fit into this box that holds all things we believe to be/can be true because we’ve performed an acceptable level of analysis. The box becomes bigger when an emotion such as hope becomes part of the equation, because we want so much for things to be true.

In a world of millions of virtual connections and increasingly fewer real-world interactions, we will go to great lengths to form connections, find happiness, establish trust, and bond deeply. Often, that demands presenting different aspects of our identities. Who I am with you may be slightly (or significantly) different from who I am with another. Is one false? When does it cross a line?