Creating an image and reputation your fans and supporters trust takes time and a lot of work. When someone with ill intent decides to steal that image for sexual or financial gain, even with all of that work you personally put in gaining and building trust, you will inevitably have fans fall for their antics. This in turn negatively impacts that reputation you’ve worked so hard on.
As people who make most of their money online, this not only affects our image, but also our paychecks. Even if the person who fell for the scam got what they wanted, such as a video or a nude they paid for (leaving our images intact), we have now personally lost a sale. So catfishing is definitely a net negative for us models.
How catfishes prey on people with social media
Let’s discuss the intentions of a catfish now. They actually may vary, because it’s not always about money. They have endless time on their hands to manipulate their victims. Because of social media, we live in a time period where the concept of being catfished goes much deeper than someone on a dating app using a picture of themselves from 10 years ago when they weighed 40 lbs. less. It’s incredibly easy for a scammer to steal content, watermarked or otherwise, and then use it for whatever they want. Essentially, they steal your identity without having to ever break into anything.
For example, I’d like to tell you a true story about a guy named Lawrence. About a year ago, he saw me live for the first time on MFC and was so excited to finally talk to me, a person he felt so close to and was in love with, a person he’d supposedly been chatting with for three years on a texting app. It turns out he had been catfished and he felt heartbroken. Who knows what personal information or photos he sent to this stranger, only to find out it was all fake? You can watch the full story on my YouTube channel, “Secret Life of a Camgirl,” if you’re interested.
Social media support teams can't help you
Scammers know that social media does not give creators the tools needed to deal with these situations. They know that if they take from a marginalized group of people who already struggle keeping their accounts active and verified, they can create enough confusion to profit.
During 2020, most of the support teams on social media shut down due to the pandemic. This gave these scammers even more time, with less risk, to pursue whatever goal they were trying to achieve. Any time I or a fan of mine reported a fake account, we were given the message that they were “not reviewing cases such as these at this time.” The build-up for fake accounts of me personally was insane, reaching over 200 of them just floating out there, gaining thousands of followers. In a normal week, I discovered at least two fake accounts. Fortunately, between my awesome supporters reporting them and my use of BranditScan, which helps with DMCA take-downs, we got them removed pretty quickly.
Fighting Catfishing
All in all, this industry creates such conflicting feelings. On one side, sex work can make you feel such a sense of power and control. At the same time, it can also make you feel so helpless and unseen. Diversifying our platforms and having multiple accounts or backups can help us stay in a middle ground, but we all know that’s not always enough, especially when there are catfish out there using the same tactics to gain followers as well.
So how do we combat this? Is there a catch-all permanent solution? No. There will always be catfish and scam accounts unless all of these platforms implement a verification system which includes aliases and stage names, but we know they won’t. Still, there is hope! We can implement prevention measures such as fan awareness and listing our real accounts in our bios, link hubs and websites. We can also look into fiscally responsible DMCA/brand protection companies that also perform catfish removals. However, awareness is key. Make sure you and your supporters are on top of these scam accounts and take back control of your image.
Not all imitation is flattery, especially in the wild west that is the internet.
