There are plenty of fish in the sea but when it comes to dating the catfish needs to be thrown right back.
The age of the internet has brought with it a tide of tricksters. While some catfish capitalize on tape, contouring makeup, and filters to alter or improve their online identities, the more nefarious among them employ AI, stolen images and fictional back stories to lure the unsuspecting and the easily trusting into their (inter) webs of deception.
The term catfish entered the hallowed halls of our lexicon courtesy of the eponymous 2010 documentary that followed Nev Shulman, a NYC based photographer who engaged in a months long online relationship with a woman he connected with on Facebook.
Upon further investigation, and a fated road trip to Michigan, it was revealed that the woman Shulman was corresponding with was not a hot musician with good hair but a lonely painter/troubled housewife/fake cancer patient named Angela Wesselman, who used stranger’s photos and several burner phones to create a matrix of falsified online identities, presumably to escape her bleak Midwestern existence. Woof.
The film, and Shulman’s personal journey of betrayal are credited with giving live birth to the term catfish; defined as a person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes.
For context, Angela Wesselman is a Capricorn and Nev Shulman a double Libra and astrology skeptic who allegedly won’t trust the stars above but was willing to place his faith in a pixelated image and a handful of YouTube song covers. Bless up.
All people and thus all signs are capable of being fooled by the promise of connection, with the possible exception of super sleuth, suspicious AF Scorpio.
Read on to learn more about the zodiac sign most likely to get catfished.
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For Cancers, the desire to believe and to be of need often outweighs their ability to see clearly.
Cardinal water, Cancer folk are deeply compassionate and hopelessly romantic, twin qualities that make them vulnerable to the schemes of would be catfishers, emotional manipulators and serial cheaters. Representatives of the mother archetype it’s easy to play on their sympathies and take advantage of their squishy tartare hearts.
Evidence includes Cancer Comedian and “Wipeout” host John Henson who was catfished by a woman who claimed her cancer-stricken kid was a fan of his show.
The dubious character, later identified as Hope Jackson, sent Henson emails, drawings and journal entries she claimed were from her terminally ill daughter. Jackson allegedly fooled Johnny Depp the same way and duped country singer Brad Paisley and his wife Kimberly Williams (both Cancer moons) into buying a similarly fallacious sob story.
Believing she was days away from death, Paisley went so far as to sing “Amazing Grace,” over the phone to the fake kid.
For Cancers, the desire to believe and to be of need often outweighs their ability to see clearly.
Further, Cancers are homebodies who live to make excuses for the people (real and imagined) that they love.
With a heart on for the long courtships of yore, they are the sort to carry on an online correspondence for months or even years without seeing the person IRL.
For some this is emo nostalgia while for others, especially Cancers in committed relationships, strangers on the internet supplement their need for attentive tenderness. Case in point catfished Cancer Thomas Gibson.
Using Twitter as a platform and photographs looted from a popular porn websites as lure, a woman coaxed Gibson into an online affair that lasted over two years. When the ruse was discovered, the catfish in question retaliated by sending intimate video footage of Gibson to TMZ.
Ay dios mio.
While Cancers are more vulnerable than their zodiac counterparts to snake oil and charlatans, they get wise and emotionally calcified rather quickly. Fool them once but never again. As a caution to all; keep your wits about you, your banking information encrypted and your nudes to yourself.
Astrology 101: Your guide to the stars
Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports back on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture and personal experience. She is also an accomplished writer who has profiled a variety of artists and performers, as well as extensively chronicled her experiences while traveling. Among the many intriguing topics she has tackled are cemetery etiquette, her love for dive bars, Cuban Airbnbs, a “girls guide” to strip clubs and the “weirdest” foods available abroad.