Entertainment
This Week's 'Catfish' Is Bound To Get Complicated
Sometimes, even the smartest people can be dumb when it comes to love. At least that's the message you'll hear on this week's Catfish, "John & Kelsey." The lovesick Internet user at the center is John, a 27-year-old IT consultant from Michigan. He met Kelsey in a public psychology chat room about a year ago, and the two have gotten more intimate since in their own private chat room. And as is often the case on Catfish, they are in a relationship even though they've never met.
Everything John knows about Kelsey comes from the photos she has sent of herself and the conversations they've had online. She doesn't have any social media profiles, and they've never actually spoken to each other. Like ever. Even video-chatting, usually a Catfish staple, is out of the question. Kelsey has body dysmorphia and she says she's too insecure to face John on video chat, even though she has sent him a photo of herself in a bikini. This hasn't stopped John and Kelsey from doing a little sexting, though. Well, mainly just John sending Kelsey a photo of his junk. But don't worry. His face was not included in the photo. John's smarter than that.
Nev and Max think John seems intelligent, and he should probably know his way around a search engine since he works in IT. They're surprised to learn that John hasn't done much online sleuthing on Kelsey other than a simple Google Image Search, which didn't bring up any red flags. In his defense, John is trying to redeem himself for the times in the past when he would snoop around online for info about his girlfriends. All right, we can't fault John too much for trying to improve himself. See more of his story in the preview below.
So there really isn't much here that we haven't seen before. But what does kind of switch things up is the fact that John has never actually spoken to Kelsey. Though catfish-er tend to be pretty sneaky, there's usually contact over the phone—however that doesn't mean the person on the other end will turn out to be who they claimed online (remember Antwane and Tony?).
It'll be interesting to how Nev and Max try to track down Kelsey with such little information to go on. Her absence from social media will probably become a roadblock, since they're usually instrumental in learning the true identities of catfish-ers. Without being able to discover things like multiple Facebook profiles, "friends" to get in contact with, or borrowed music filling up a SoundCloud account, Nev and Max are just going to have to work much harder than usual.
Luckily, they do have the luxury of Kelsey's phone number, which they often use to plug in online and see who it's registered to. Sometimes this helps to immediately expose the catfish-er's real identity. Sometimes it doesn't, like from the memorable Season 2 episode when Derek's number was registered to an R. LeVourne, even though he was the real deal for Lauren.
Needless to say, with a screen name like Kelsey.Beezlebub, this girl's bound to be interesting. And John has to be hiding something, right? I mean, not using all that tech knowledge at his disposal would either make him truly air-headed or the noblest guy ever. For now it's impossible to predict, because no matter what theories we come up with, Catfish always find a way to stump us all.
