Nev Schulman Talks Catfishing

Further proof that the Internet is as much of a weird uniter as it is a divider: it somehow managed to make a conversation between Catfish's New Schulman and composer Nico Muhly logical. Low brow, meet high brow: thanks to The Wall Street Journal. The paper brought Schulman together with Muhly to talk about digital deception and the crazy-weird shit people do when they're masked by the ol' WWW.

Muhly's most recent operatic work, Two Boys, debuted at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on Monday and takes the meat of its material from a based-on-true-events stabbing of one teenage boy by another (thanks to some encouragement from a bunch of anonymous Internet folk). And in the video below, the duo speak to the weird world of human connection on the Internet.

The conversation touches on both men's entrance into the weird world of fake online personas, both as insiders and outsiders. Schulman thanks to his documentary that spawned the same-name MTV series, and Muhly due to his work with Two Boys. The opera, based on real events that occurred 10 years prior in Manchester, England, tells the story of a 16-year-old boy who nearly killed a younger boy thanks to some mysterious people he spoke to in a chat room.

Both men have different viewpoints on the matter of catfishing — no surprise given their own points of reference. Schulman, always the first to remind you of his status as a victim of such shenanigans, stays on message with his seemingly perma-we're-here-to-help song and dance, whereas Muhly's opinions feel more in line with the casual Catfish viewer. In that complicity is the name of the game: "A part of you does know, and you keep it going anyway," Muhly states. And surprisingly, it's that glaringly raw admission, speaking to the general loneliness that fuels such Internet dalliances, where the two find common ground. Have a watch.

Image: The Wall Street Journal