This show premiered last night on the ID Channel. From the
previews and first few minutes of the trailer, it looked like Catfish for
adults with a fatal factor involved. People meet online lovers in person and
realize that the person they came face-to-face with differed drastically from
the person they had gotten to know (or fell in love with) online. I think that
in today’s society, where online dating is no longer looked at as the desperate
person’s playground, it is still important as ever to remember that you should
be just as, if not more, cautious of the people you come across on these sites.
There are never too many PSA-style warnings to give in situations like these,
because even as the concept of ‘catfishing’ someone is becoming more
commonplace, there are still many people out there who intentionally deceive
others and use the Internet as their playground for indulging their
psychopathic needs and desires.
The first episode features a Las Vegas realtor named Mary
Kay, who turned to online dating after being tragically widowed. When she’s
nearly at the point of giving up, she meets a man named Wade who appears to be
what she needs in the fresh start department. At first, everything seems fine
and he seems honest about his character and past experiences. He briefly touches
on the most recent ex, who he neglects to mention looks eerily similar to Mary
Kay in appearance, and simply says that their relationship ended badly, with
restraining orders on both sides. The morning after this little confession, the
red flags appear in quick fashion and Mary Kay breaks things off with Wade. He
doesn’t forget about her, though, and breaks into her home three months later
where he brutally stabs her 10 times, beats her viciously and leaves her for
dead. She survives the murder attempt but is left with a brain injury and
post-traumatic amnesia, leaving her unable to identify the person responsible
for the attempt on her life.
Wade returns to Anne, the ex he briefly mentioned to Mary
Kay, who lives in Phoenix. He breaks into her home as well, where he murders
her, steals her car and her boyfriend’s clothes/credit card and returns to
Vegas, intent on finishing the job and killing Mary Kay. Fortunately, thanks to
Anne’s boyfriend tracking the movements of his stolen credit card and the
Phoenix police issuing a BOLO, Wade was arrested in Las Vegas. He confessed to
both Mary Kay’s attack and Anne’s murder, where it comes out that he’d created
a list of people to kill and had returned to Vegas with the intent of killing Mary
Kay before getting to the other names on his list. He was also dealing with
what I believe to be a psychotic break due to mental deterioration following a
failed suicide attempt and unsuccessful treatment of bipolar disorder. After being
convicted of attempted murder and getting the maximum sentence, he was then put
on trial for the murder charge, but took the cowardly way out by suffocating
himself in his cell.
I think that this show is going to do a lot by showing the
extremely negative side of online interactions, not just dating. Now I’m not
saying that it should scare you off entirely. I can’t say that; my last
relationship was online and there was no deceit or anything like that on either
side; we even lived together for almost a year. The only thing that the
computer did was show us the other existed; our success….and later failure….as
a couple was all on us. LOL I’m not in any way trashing online relationships
because I still believe in the concept and in their success. But I do feel that
it is important to show these potential conclusions to friendships or
relationships started online because not only are they still very commonplace,
they happen to even the most skeptical and cautious of us sometimes. Nobody is
immune because the rub with online anything is that you can jump on a computer
and create a profile, website, or whatever and become someone completely
different. That’s half of the entire reason why half of us are here; to indulge
in things we would not otherwise do, to become better or dream versions of
ourselves. Catfish is the PG version of what happens when online dating goes
wrong, but Web of Lies is the R-rated version, where you don’t always make it
out alive and if you do, you’re damn grateful for it but your life has forever
changed.
This show does scare me a little, but it should. I spend a
great deal of my time online and have done so consistently for nearly 9 years.
Even for me, someone that has been around and on so many different websites,
the lesson that I should never let my guard down is reinforced because of this
show, which I do have to admit gets hard to remember when I’m alone and/or
lonely. That lesson is especially true when someone with the gift of gab comes
along and says everything you need to hear at a time you need to hear it. The
thing is, how do you ever know who you’re speaking to? The exact same thing
could happen with someone you met face-to-face. So with that being said, I think
the larger more obvious lesson to be learned here is be careful. But when
speaking in terms of online, you have to keep that radar up even more. You have
no idea who you’re speaking to through that computer, where they’ve been or
what they’re really about. Kids are online, entering situations like these in
complete innocence and predators are capitalizing on that more now than ever.
I enjoyed this show and for it to air on the ID channel,
where most of the victims’ stories are unfortunately told posthumously, I was
really relieved and glad to see the victim telling this story herself. It’s
very rare that ID actually features shows in which the victim makes it out
alive, so maybe there will be more stories that end happily in the case of
massive obstacles, like Mary Kay’s.
This show comes on every Thursday at 8MST,
and I recommend you watch it.
p.s. Sorry for the long review!
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