Sometimes, catfishing isn’t born from cruelty. Sometimes, it’s born from grief. From the unbearable silence after someone stops choosing you. From the need to be seen—even if you have to become someone else to make it happen.
The words pour out faster now, less journalism, more confession. My chest aches with every paragraph, my heartbeat syncing with the rhythm of the keys. We pretend it’s research. We call it curiosity. But what we’re really doing is searching for the version of ourselves we lost when love left the room.
They say catfishing is the cruellest kind of deceit the digital age’s version of playing god with someone’s heart. We build false faces, spin curated truths, and throw them into the algorithm, hoping someone will love the illusion. It’s manipulation disguised as connection; validation wrapped in betrayal. It’s wrong. Immoral. Damaging.
At least, that’s what I used to think before I became the catfish.
It started as research for this very piece. A deep dive into the psychology of online deceit why people do it, how they justify it, and who gets hurt along the way. But somewhere between setting up a fake profile and choosing a name that wasn’t mine, I stumbled upon something I never expected: my husband.
The man who’d promised me forever, then disappeared like smoke. The man I’d built a life with, mourned, hated, missed. There he was smiling, charming, swiping right.
So, I did too.
What followed wasn’t research. It was resurrection. Or maybe it was revenge. Somewhere in the blurred lines of curiosity and heartbreak, I found myself becoming both the villain and the victim of my own story.
Catfishing isn’t just about lies. It’s about loneliness. It’s about wanting to be wanted so badly that you build an entirely new self to make it happen. It’s about seeing the person who broke you fall for the ghost you created and realizing that maybe they never really knew you at all.
This is what happens when truth and deception fall in love.
The pros, the cons, the drama…all of it waits in the blink of the cursor. And I, Penn, sit here, hands hovering, heart bruised and messy, building Pandora from the fragments of my own grief.
A sharp knock slices through the quiet. Once. Twice. Then the door swings open before I can answer.
Carrie.
She strides in like she’s been carved from precision killer heels clicking against the polished floor, nails painted a dangerous red, hair slicked back into a bun so severe it could cut glass. Her pencil skirt doesn’t dare wrinkle. Her confidence doesn’t dare falter. She looks like power stitched in silk.
And I? I look like the ghost of it.
“Good morning, sunshine.” Her voice drips with irony as she claps her hands together, the sound snapping through the room. “Tell me, did you sleep, or did you wage war on the keyboard all night again?”
I force a smile. “A little of both.”
Her eyes sweep over my screen, over the headline glowing in bold black letters. I see it that flicker of recognition. She knows.
“Jesus, Penn…” she murmurs, stepping closer. “You really went there.”
I shrug, the gesture too small for what’s unravelling inside me. “It’s the truth, isn’t it? Or close enough.”
Carrie’s gaze softens, just a little. Beneath all that steel, there’s the woman who’s held my hair back while I sobbed on herbathroom floor. The one who’s seen every broken version of me and still showed up anyway.
“It’s good,” she says finally, sliding into the chair across from me. “Raw. Brutal. A little unhinged. You’ve got blood on every sentence.”
“Occupational hazard,” I say, voice dry.
She smirks, crossing one leg over the other. “Don’t you dare try to pass this off as journalism. This is confession dressed in editor’s notes.”
Her words hang there, daring me to deny them. I don’t.
Carrie leans forward, elbows braced on her knees, eyes like sharpened glass. “So, what’s next, Miss?” she asks. “You’re going to publish it, right? Because you kinda have a deadline. And are you finally going to look that man in the eye and hand him his balls on your outstretched palm—then slap him sideways with them?”
Her challenge hits me dead centre. I don’t have an answer. Not yet.
My gaze drifts back to the screen, to the blinking cursor pulsing like a heartbeat—in, out, in, out—waiting for me to make the next move.
Carrie exhales, smooths down her skirt, and rises. “You’re not finished,” she says, softer now. “But you will be.”
She’s halfway to the door before she glances back, that wicked smile tugging at her red-painted mouth.
