If you've never woken up next to a woman...

...You might think we're all catfishes

One Colorado morning, I had driven my son to school in my bathrobe, as one does, and was preparing to enjoy a rare day off.

By “enjoy” I mostly mean letting the civil war between my animals simmer as I unpacked another antique box from my uncle’s estate. I almost never get any rest. I can’t decide if that’s a failing of mine, or the world’s. Maybe both.

There was a knock on the door, and I went to open it, thinking it was our handyman or another delivery.

My hair was only barely combed, and I was wearing just sunscreen (always remember sunscreen, especially when you live close to the sun) and the bathrobe.

An old friend was standing there. By “friend,” I mean that he’d been more than that, years ago - before I moved to Colorado to wander under its clouds and star scapes and complain abut I-25 - and had been meaning to drop in on me for a while.

My hand went up to my barely combed hair (let’s face it, it was more like a nest by one of those tragic birds who don’t abide by standards in nesting), and I took a step back in embarrassment. I’d forgotten that he was supposed to pick me up for breakfast that morning. If you’ve ever wanted to impress a guy and wound up looking like a doofus, you know exactly how I felt.

He said, “holy balls, you’re beautiful,” and I blushed horribly and promised I’d get ready right away. Which I did. He took me downtown, and the two of us sat in a booth together, sharing our breakfast like we used to do, and talking about our lives. Then, he drove me back. It was a good morning.

Random highlights from my personal life are not the point of this essay. The point is that the internet is constantly producing new fuckery.

For example, the recurring trend of incel and manosphere accounts taking unflattering or simply unglamorous photos of famous women without makeup and claiming that they’re “catfishing.”

Here’s an example of what I mean:

If you’re not completely insane / not farming for engagement, you can see that these photos of Sydney Sweeney, recently published after some creeper photographer spied on her, are just normal, un-retouched photos of an abnormally hot woman.

And that most of the “men” hating on her would give their right testicle for her just to spit on them.

It used to be that it was tabloids who thrived on this kind of bullshit, but now that people can get paid for being pricks online, anyone can do it.

For example, a certain “influencer” whose name I will not spell out in this text as to not drive up her traffic, made an entire thread shaming more successful and better looking women than her for being “catfishes” (I may not agree with the Redheaded Libertarian account on anything, but even I can admit she’s hot):

Obviously, this “influencer” is doing this for engagement money and/or to satisfy the misfiring neurons in her worm-damaged brain. She’s found a market in unhappy men who want to be told by a woman that other women are trash, and is monetizing their insecurities and her own insecurities.

Again, normal people know this.

But in an age where less young men are approaching women, we should probably take note of the weirdos who expect us to be perfectly airbrushed at all times, and here’s a graph I found via datepysch to show what I mean:

What are most of these men doing instead? They’re playing video games and otherwise hanging out online.

Meanwhile, lack of intimacy and the filter the internet places on most interactions mean that our perceptions of one another flatten out. We become pictures, flattering and unflattering. We become viral clips and our pithiest (or stupidest) moments.

In this environment, everyone’s a catfish. Ludicrous catfish discourse simply reinforces this point.

Speaking of catfishing, this is the avatar that I use on most of my public social media accounts right now, taken by local renaissance woman and marketing guru Winni Carter:

It’s pretty and I love it, but I obviously don’t look like that in my daily life! I’m not heading down to the grocery store in fake eyelashes and beads, and don’t recommend that you do either, unless you are in danger of death from a severe lack of attention.

What I look like on an average day, sans makeup and professional lighting is more like this:

Pretty decent for a woman in her 40s who hasn’t done plastic surgery yet (aesthetic injectors don’t count as plastic surgeons, but they do count as angels of God), but not exactly stunning.

When I opened the door to my “friend” that morning in my bathrobe? Hell, I looked much messier than that. In that sense, I too am a total catfish! I await my award 👀

The thing is, I know exactly what my “friend” meant when he called me beautiful. He’d kissed my unadorned face awake in the mornings that we’d shared together. Seeing me in my natural, unvarnished state recalled the intimacy that used to exist between us. I didn’t need to be done up for him to feel close to me, to be attracted to me, if anything, it was the opposite. My utterly unglamorous appearance instantly made us more connected to each other in that moment.

When we lose out on intimacy, we lose out on deeper connections, and I don’t just mean love and sex, though love and sex are pretty awesome. We get lonelier, more atomized, and more susceptible to whatever fucked up bullshit internet grifters are peddling. And we get angrier as the result too. It’s not a good place to be. I do not recommend it any more than I recommend listening to men named “rationalwizard1488” for advice on women and love.

When I discuss dating safety, especially as it pertains to the apps, I always tell people to watch out for heavily filtered photos. I’ve seen men in their 50s claim they are in their 30s to lure in much younger, inexperienced women to give just one example.

At the same time, a dating profile is just another advertisement, and we are the product. The same goes for our social media accounts. If we can accept that, we can all be better off. If we do not, we will simply grow more isolated from each other. Online fantasy seems “safer” than reality, but it also cuts us off from the moments that matter - even if they occasionally include someone you want to think of you as hot seeing you looking like a scarecrow.

Life is meant to be lived. Life is tragic and embarrassing, full of sunlight, breakfast burritos, and unexpected situations. You live less when you constantly fall into the trap of dumbass monetized discourse, and you meet people less - just like the young men in the study cited above - and that sucks. Don’t do it. Put your phone down more often.

As usual, the Glorious Normie Restoration depends on your subscriptions and spreading the word about its gloriousness. Before you ask, no, I’m not about to rekindle anything with breakfast guy. But. it was nice to catch up.