I love a good catfish story.
The film Catfish, the spin-off series, even the new Netflix show, Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare, scratches that guilty itch for me.
That being said, it’s a weird catch-all term, isn’t it? Of all things to be compared to... a fish? I guess that’s what you get for lying about your identity and manipulating somebody into falling in love with you.
Well, if you’ve been wondering as much as I have, the answer is: it actually came from the Catfish film. Simple.
Well, that and a crucial misunderstanding of how fish behave but still... simple-ish.
Where the term ‘catfish’ actually came from
If you weren’t familiar, the original Catfish film in 2010 documents Nev Schulman as he confronts the woman who he had a long-term online relationship with. Contrary to the young, single woman he thought he was meeting, his catfish was actually a married woman in her 40′s.
Her husband explained what had happened by way of metaphor, saying: “They used to tank cod from Alaska all the way to China. They’d keep them in vats in the ship. By the time the codfish reached China, the flesh was mush and tasteless.
“So this guy came up with the idea that if you put these cods in these big vats, put some catfish in with them and the catfish will keep the cod agile. And there are those people who are catfish in life.”
If you thought this was a case of rose-tinted glasses, his final words on catfishing are... impressively optimistic: “And they keep you on your toes. They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking, they keep you fresh. And I thank god for the catfish because we would be droll, boring and dull if we didn’t have somebody nipping at our fin.”
Personally, I like to keep my fins nip-free but of course, the metaphor is thoughtful and it’s no surprise that the spin-off reality series was named after it.
However, according to experts, it’s a little misguided.
Speaking to Slate, Jennifer Jacquet, a professor of enviroare “Cod are a population of fish (Gadus morhua) off the Eastern coast of North America, while “the fish we most often think of as catfish are freshwater.”
She added: “Anything coming from Alaska would almost certainly be saltwater.” And “most catfish are bottom feeders—by no means voracious predators that would keep the cod agile,”
She said that a pirahna or shark would be a better metaphorical device.
Not as catchy, though.