The Love Jewce: In Real Life with Nev Schulman

“I don’t want to know this is a lie, because then I’ll not only have been betrayed but also have wasted all this time.”

Those are the words of Nev Schulman, co-creator and host of MTV’s Catfish, a real-life show documenting victims of catfish.

Not familiar with the term “catfish”? Well don’t try and look up the definition in Google, they haven’t quite got with the times, although most of us would be better of if it still simply meant a marine animal. This is an Urban Dictionary word us millennials have coined.

“A catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they're not using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances.”

The actual show Catfish came from Nev and his brother Rel who began filming Nev’s online relationship with a girl for pure entertainment. At the time Nev had gone from a lifestyle of playa’s gon’ play to basically in love with a girl whom he had never met, Megan. This relationship that sprouted from a conversation with a Michigan girl via MySpace who requested Nev’s pictures so she could paint them had now turned into a full blast e-relationship and was the starting point of a now world-famous television show.

We won’t got into all of the details of Nev’s online love affair, you’ll have to read his new book In Real Life: Love, Lies & Identity in the Digital Age. In the book Nev outlines the crisis of the online dating world and shares his own catfish story for all of us to learn from. Nev has done us a favor, he’s showing us that, though this digital world may be useful most of the time, it may not be doing us so many favors long-term. My advice... if you’re looking to find your lover hop off Instagram and Twitter and try the old-fashion way, actually talking to people face-to-face.

“We may all speak the same language, use the same emoji’s and acrynoms, go to the same websites, but we’ve lost something important in the way we interact with one another.” -Nev

Andria Kaplan is ShalomLife's 89% kosher resident dating/love columnist. Find her on Tinder, but only if you're Jewish.

Want to share your own Tinder stories, awkward dates, or interesting JDate experiences ? Email Andria at andriakaplan@gmail.com or tweet your suggestions to @ShalomLife, or @AndriaKaplan.

Tune in next Tuesday for the next episode of The Love Jewce.