Catfish

In the documentary, Angela “catfished” Nev in that she deceived him and pretended to be a lot of different people such as her daughters and other friends. I do, however, feel a little bad for her because she seems to have had a rough life in that she is lonely and has a lot of emotional stress from her two disabled step-sons. On the other hand, she did commit some major moral wrongs, such as lying, telling her daughter to lie, and cheating, at least emotionally. Because of this, she did not appear to be in order as Plato would say, and therefore could only do wrong based on her situation and no good could have come out of her actions. Her desire to have a relationship with someone other than her husband resulted in what seemed to be a game for Angela where Nev thought he had a genuine relationship with Abby and her family. In the process, Angela took the role of her daughter “Megan” and began an intimate relationship with Nev as that daughter. In this way she emotionally cheated on her husband even though she was not acting as herself. She also never lied about her and Nev’s relationship to her husband and told him Nev was commissioning her paintings. Angela then continued to lie when Nev showed up at her house in order to deceive him by saying that there was at least some truth in the lies and it seemed to work until Nev found out that those were lies too. Through Kant’s eyes, all lying is bad and therefore even though she attempted to keep some of the “truth” behind her lies and keep some of her credibility, it is absolutely wrong for her to do. In my opinion, the worst thing she did was manipulate Abby into lying too because she is still very young and does not know any better yet. By lying and manipulating her daughter, she is setting a bad example for the future. Even though I do sympathize and feel pity for her, I do think that what she did is morally wrong.