Catfishing Morality

Catfish is an urban term used to describe a person who keeps one on their toes and is often associated with the fabrication of online identities. Watching the ultimate "catfish" story was incredibly eye opening due to the extent to which the woman went to in order to fulfill some unsorted issues in her life. In my opinion, there were plenty of moral issues concerning this film though the woman could easily be sympathized with; however, the most prominent is that she lied. Yes, this is immoral and can be exemplified by Kant's viewpoint. He basically left his theory to two questions: "Can I rationally will that everyone act as I propose to act?" and "Does my action respect the goals of human beings rather than merely using them for my own purposes?" If the answer to these two questions is no then the action should not be done and consequently is morally wrong. A point was brought up about how was Angela's actions any different then alterations such as filters on personal photos on social media. I feel that what Angela did and changing settings on pictures are two completely different things. There is no degree of alteration to distinguish because Angela didn't alter anything. She replaced who she was with fake people and lied about everything that she said. It doesn't matter that portions of the truth were there if you lied about everything surrounding it. Also, filters aren't changing your image to the point that you look like someone extremely different and are lying about who you are as a person, and there is no sneaky hidden agenda behind it. I guess the conclusion is that as long as the altered form of yourself is extremely close to the "real" you then there is no harm done.