What is "catfishing"

n. (context internet psychology slang English) the act of setting up and running a false puppet social networking identity profile for fraudulent or deceptive purposes

Catfishing is a type of deceptive activity involving a person creating a sock puppet social networking network for nefarious purposes. The modern term originated from the 2010 American documentary Catfish.

Catfishing can be part of a romance scam. According to Vince Pierce, the husband of Angela Pierce who deceptively creates an online profile in the documentary film, the term catfish comes from fishermen "putting catfish in with the cod to nip at their tails and keep them active" during overseas transport in order to produce more lively and fresh meat. This etymology has been described as having "all the hallmarks of apocryphal folklore" by Ben Zimmer writing for The Boston Globe, pointing out that catfish were used "as a kind of Christian parable (referring to the Atlantic rather than [as in Pierce's explanation] the Pacific fishing trade) in Henry W. Nevinson's 1913 Essays in Rebellion and again in Charles Marriott's novel The Catfish published later the same year."

The term rose in popularity during an incident involving Manti Te'o, a Notre Dame football player in 2013.

According to a Washington Post article the Rolling Stone University of Virginia rape hoax story may have been an example of catfishing.