You met someone online and you feel like you’ve met your soulmate. You are desperate to meet them in real life but they keep declining and postponing the plans. I’m really sorry to burst your bubble but my friend, chances are your new-found online soulmate is a catfish.
Catfish is a term used for people who hide their true identity and pretend to be someone else online. The reason behind this may be their low self-esteem or confidence issues but fooling someone is not at all a good act. Such people can go to extreme limits to support their lie.
Here are 5 ways how you can spot a fake social media profile.
1. Google It
Searching their names on Google is the best way to check a person’s existence. If the person is real, he or she will surely have some online footprints that’ll show up on a normal Google search of their name. It may be their other social media profiles or their LinkedIn profile, you’ll find at least something. Doing an image search is also an easy and helpful way to check a person’s real-life existence.
2. Check Their Timeline Posts
A real person will surely have relatives and friends who have posted on their profiles for once. Checking their timeline posts on their social media accounts can give you a hint on their existence. A birthday wish from a friend or a relative is enough to prove the person is real. But if their timeline has no such posts and is filled with spam posts, you need to be more alert.
3. Check Their Friend List
The world is no more a big place. You’ll find mutual friends in any random social media account these. Check their Friend lists to look for any mutual friend. If their friend list is filled with random people and no mutual friends, the person is likely to be fake.
4. Video Chat
Texting is fun but you have no idea who you are actually texting with unless you talk face to face. Video chatting through Skype or any medium is a foolproof option to check the reality. If the person constantly avoids face time, it simply means they have something to hide.
5. Trust Your Instincts
A fake person will feed you with lies to support their fake identity. Out of all the lies, there might be some loose ones that might seem odd to you. In such situation trust your guts and ask questions. If the person keeps on ignoring your queries he or she is surely a person pretending to be someone else.
The internet is the world bigger than the real one. It is filled with fake people who pretend to be someone else and feed on ignorant people. While some catfish pretend to be someone else with no evil motive, there’s a sum of fake people who do have sinister motives. They trap other people to profit from them in different ways and we should be careful from them.
You have tried both in real life as well online, but you still haven’t foud someone special. Well, makebe you are doing it all wrong. Here is a list of some probable resons why haven’t bagged a date yet.