Warning: there will be spoilers for Netflix’s The Circle.
I don’t know about you, but one of my coming-of-age early teen go-to shows with MTV’s Catfish. The premise: two people meet each other online, typically fall in love and then one person decides that it’s time to meet each other in person. As a viewer, I’m always dumbfounded at how the person did not realize that the person they’re talking to is fake as there usually is some sort of situation where their lover can never speak on the phone, video chat or flakes on previous attempts to meet in real life.
We are living in a day and age where a lot of friendships can be formed online without ever meeting the person in real life and; these friendships can be with someone who means a lot to you. There used to be a stigma that you shouldn’t talk to strangers online but now the term “online friend” is one that is not met with such a negative connotation anymore. There is even the concept of “mutuals,” which may be two people who like each other’s tweets a lot, or when it just feels like you know a person without ever really meeting them. I know on my hand that there are people from high school that I never really spoke to, but we interacted a lot online to the point where had we been put in a room together we could refer to things we’ve talked about on Twitter or Instagram.
With a growing tendency to speak to people over the Internet comes another modern trend: reality shows. You love to hate them; an abundance of reality shows are clearly fake, yet they still are incredibly popular and mainstream. Netflix, the master of entertainment, has combined reality shows and meeting people over the Internet into something that is not Catfish but certainly has parallels to it: The Circle.
The basic premise of The Circle is that eight people are placed into solitary apartments with no contact with anybody except through a voice-activated social media network called The Circle. Through the social media site, they are able to see the other’s contestant’s profiles, have a main feed and be able to direct message other players. Players must interact and bond with other players and vote on their favorites — in most episodes, the two most popular players become “influencers” and must vote out one of the group.
In many episodes, the player that is voted out is one that everyone suspects to be a catfish or posing as someone else in their photos. Funnily enough, out of the five finalists, only one is a catfish in the most extreme way: a man, Seaburn, posing as his girlfriend, Rebecca. Throughout the entire season, Rebecca is seen to be a wholesome and sweet girl who ranks fairly high each episode and creates strong bonds with others.
There is the constant fear in many of the player’s hearts of wondering if the people who they are truly making emotional bonds with are actually the picture that they pose as. It gets to the question of would you really be talking to somebody if it were not for their picture? Karen, a proud lesbian, poses as a completely different person and once everyone votes her out of suspicion of being a catfish, she straight up poses that question. She argues that the minute they realize that Karen does not look like she does in her pictures, it changes everything.
Meanwhile, for Seaburn, this appears to be quite the opposite case. At the end of the season, the finalists all go to meet each other in person and despite being initially shocked that Seaburn is, in fact, a man, there is nothing but love for him. The others readily accept everything that Seaburn said and the friendship that they formed with Rebecca is the same now that they know it’s Seaburn.
There is a strong conversation going on these days about how people look and that some care too much about looks, but at the end of the day The Circle shows that appearance shouldn’t matter when it comes to the relationships you have with other people. Another example of this comes with Joey and Shubham, who right off the bat create a strong friendship with one another; Joey is a strong, popular jock type while Shubham is more of a reserved intellect. Michelle Buteau, the host of the series, asks the pair during the season finale if the two would even become friends had they met in person and they attest that they truly would because looks do not matter.
A lot of the characters are preaching that they are unapologetically themselves such as Chris, a Mexican gay man who is not afraid to speak his mind or show his true colors, or Sean, a plus-sized beauty influencer who starts off catfishing everyone with pictures of her skinny model friend but ends up revealing her real pictures. When Sean revealed to everyone that she had catfished them I thought she would get destroyed because she lied, but it turns out that The Circle had been loving and supportive, finding her to be brave.
Circling back to Seaburn, he makes a good point when discussing his decision to catfish everyone in the show: everyone found Rebecca’s emotional side to make her a very caring person but as a black man, being emotional is found to be rather shameful. Seaburn explains to Shubham that growing up, men are taught that they can’t be emotional, which is a very toxic belief to have about a man’s mental health. Bringing to light this conversation is something that not many shows or movies do so it is a huge step in the right direction to get the conversation started.
Sure, reality TV can come off as scripted and overtly fake, but you can’t deny the message that the show has. No one should have to hide who they are, regardless if they are meeting people on or off of the Internet. And something that is becoming increasingly true in this day and age is that you can indeed find true friends over the Internet — but still be careful!