Why being real feels fake, and fake feels real.
Picture this: You’re doomscrolling at 2 AM, and you stumble across your own post from six months ago. It’s you, beaming at the camera, captioned “Living my best life! #blessed #entrepreneur #mindfulness.” You’re holding what appears to be a glass of gelatinated swamp mud, and standing in a trendy co-working space.
Here’s the thing: You’re not a green smoothie guy. You never saw that place again after that day. And you haven’t meditated properly in… well, ever.
Is that you, or a store-window dummy that just looks like you? Who is this person? And more importantly, how and why did you become them?
I’m going to explain what’s happening here, but this isn’t some self-help think-piece to help you live a life worth uploading. This is a mirror held up to modern culture. It’s black-flecked, cracked, and funhouse-warped. And we’re all reflected in it.
The premise is this: we’re gaslit, and we’re catfished. And we’re guilty of gaslighting and catfishing, too. In the process, we turn existence into one long audition for a role nobody will ever dare take credit for writing. We bend reality just enough to make it livable, and in doing so, sell a version of ourselves that doesn’t match the messy human lurking beneath.
I created gaslitcatfish.com to explore this paradox – how we ended up here, why it matters, and how tragic and comic the whole charade really is.
📱 Social Media: The Reality Distortion Machine
“Authenticity is just a content strategy with better lighting.”
Remember when photos were just photos? Grainy, awkward, red-eyed proof of life in a bygone age. Now they’re applications for envy. Porn stars for push notifications. Every Instagram feed today is a carefully stage-managed art gallery exhibiting someone’s personal brand. One where the curator is also the artist, the marketing director, the critic, the janitor… and the drunk outside bumming a smoke.
Social media has created a new species: Homo Aestheticus. They don’t eat lunch – they compose it. They don’t go on vacation – they max de-stress. We scroll, we compare, and we mentally downgrade our own lives because Becky from high school lives inside a perpetual sunset with an endless supply of strawberry daqs and happening hats.
The distortion is the reality. Being authentic has become a costume to wear. Crying selfie? So brave! No makeup filter? Wow! Inspirational! It’s all performance – scripted subscription services tarted up and sold as fact.
🗳️ Political Echo Chambers: Cheerleader Chants as Mission Statements
“You don’t just hold opinions anymore. Now, you are the opinion.”
Politics used to be boring – the sort of crap your Uncle Lionel prattled on about at family gatherings while everyone else wished they could roofie him. If only his tolerance wasn’t so goddamn high. Now, politics has been welded to identity. Your ideology isn’t just a set of beliefs anymore. It’s entrenched as deep as your DNA.
Echo chambers make people speak in bumper-sticker bites straight off the TV. Each scroll through a feed is less “What’s the news?” and more “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” You don’t support a policy – it’s your policy. And if someone disagrees, it’s no longer a debate; it’s a betrayal.
We’re gaslit by algorithms that serve us only what we already believe, ideas we’ve already had, and conclusions we’ve already come to. Anyone who doesn’t believe or think our way is the devil. A cartoon villain unworthy of our consideration. The political stage has devolved into the world’s most depressing cosplay convention.
❤️ Dating Apps: There Where Love Lies
“Everyone on Tinder is 20% taller than they are in real life.”
Swipe left, swipe right, and don’t forget to wipe. Dating apps are where the distortion really digs in. Most people aren’t maliciously deceiving anyone. They’re just… auditioning. Swipe culture is basically community theater. The audition? Six photos, a quirky bio, and a mandatory dog pic. The role? A “better” version of yourself who loves hiking (you don’t), traveling (does going to the pub count?), and tacos (ok, that one checks out).
We’re not catfishing others so much as we’re catfishing ourselves. The “me” you make on Hinge is taller, wittier, smarter, and mysteriously always standing near a waterfall. It’s not who you are. It’s not even who you wish you were. It’s who you think other people want you to wish you were. Someone who’s obviously got it together enough to eat brunch at any time of day.
💼 Workplace Persona: Best Face Forward
“I’m not burned out, I’m just #hustling.”
At work, you are definitely not you. You’re a brand ambassador with your logo tattooed boldly on your every word and deed. You’re essentially a trained and well-behaved hologram.
There’s your LinkedIn self – crisp, competent, passionate about “synergy” and “optimization.” Then there’s your Slack self – emblazoned with emojis, viciously positive, and just a little too into gifs for your age. And your real self? She’s sneaking cold leftovers for lunch, and downing them in record time lest anyone notice she’s not the fastest hamster on the wheel anymore.
Hussle culture has convinced us that everyone else is absolutely crushing it career-wise. All while running marathons on the weekends, juggling a transcendental work-life balance, and feeding underprivileged kids for extra points every month-end Friday. Burnout isn’t a workload issue; it’s the strain of maintaining this nonstop game face. The longer you do this, the harder it is to remember which face to wear and when to wear it.
🌟 Influencer Inspiration: Desire by Gaslight
“Behind every sad and lonely ring light is an exhausted nobody wondering how they can go viral without actually selling their soul?”
The influencer doesn’t just sell you products. They’re selling aspiration and top-drawer FOMO – a condition so astroturfed it requires industrial-strength dissonance to maintain. None of it’s real. They’re just as frazzled and insecure and confused as everyone else. They just hide it better.
Suddenly, everyone’s a life coach, wellness guru, motivational speaker, or holy roller. And they’re so good at spewing what you want to hear that they’re actively fashioning who you say you are. Influencer lifestyle modeling is the ouroboros of gaslighting, a muscle-bound snake eating its own buff tail. And it’s got unbeatable discounts on boner pills and oolong tea as well. For a limited time only.
🏡 Generational Trauma: The Family Dynamic
“Like Netflix autoplay, it keeps going whether you want it to or not.”
Before the words “social” and “media” were stuck together, when politics wasn’t all performance and nobody thought of catfish as anything but a noun, families were there. Families are the OG of reality distortion.
“We don’t talk about that.” “Everything’s fine.” “That’s just how we do things.” Entire generations learn to misrepresent themselves because Grandma insisted depression was just laziness, and Aunty Ethel wouldn’t allow bad language.
Patterns repeat. Trauma echoes. One minute yu’re enlightened, the next you’re gaslighting your own kids with “I was beaten every day, and I turned out A-OK.” Because the poison has been passed down like Daddy’s watch stashed you know where.
🛒 Naked Consumerism: Brands as Personality Prosthetics
“You don’t own sneakers, they own you.”
We don’t just buy things these days, we assimilate them into our identities. Nike isn’t selling sportswear, they’re selling grit and determination. Apple sells genius, and Armani sells magnetism. Everyone sells a sense of belonging, and everyone buys it.
We’ve been told that our purchases reflect our values for so long that we now identify as our own shopping carts. We’ve outsourced our personalities to corporations. We don’t just drink coffee anymore; we become one with the brew.
🧠 Performance Anxiety: The Wellness Industrial Complex
“I’m fine” is the most convincing lie of our century.”
We post about mindfulness while having panic attacks. We brag about self-care while ignoring the warning lights screaming from our dashboards. Even vulnerability is monetized as brand collateral. It’s the final frontier of pretense: breaking records on the treadmill while cracking under the weight.
This is the cruelest gaslight of them all: convincing the world (and ourselves) that it’s going well inside the hell. Mental health struggles are hidden behind Joker-grin smiles, endless productivity, and relentless optimism. “All good, thanks!” is the soundtrack to the whole world falling apart.
🎤 Final Word: The Club inside the Fishbowl
You’re already a member. So am I. So is Becky and Uncle and Aunty and everyone you know and everyone you don’t. We’re all gaslit catfish, wading through the aquarium, occasionally bumping into each other’s carefully crafted bubbles.
gaslitcatfish.com isn’t here to make you feel shit about it. Quite the opposite. It’s about outing the absurdity and poking it with a satirical stick. It’s asking: “What would it be like to stop lying to ourselves and others? To start insisting on a representation of ourselves that lines up with reality? What would a world where that was acceptable look like?”
So pull up a chaise longue, take that face off, and scroll easy. Hold my hand, and I’ll hold yours. It’ll get a little scary at times, but we’ll be fine if we lean on each other when we need to. We’re in this together, after all.
Wayne McRae is a writer and analyst with a background in tech, coding, and digital strategy. Drawing on years of experience in content creation and marketing, he breaks down complex issues with clarity and edge. As gaslitcatfish, Wayne explores the intersections of technology, media, and culture with an eye for what others overlook.
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