Online Intermingling at SHS
Written by Shelby Barker, Former Student on Thursday, October 2, 2014
For the past week, Nev Schulman, creator and host of Catfish the TV show and Catfish the original movie, has been in Pullman, Washington to talk to students about the dangers of online intermingling.
Catfish is an extremely popular TV show on MTV, and has running for just two years. Catfish has become quite popular with young viewers, along with online dating.
Schulman may have been in Pullman, which is just a jump over the Cascade Range, but how close is online dating to SHS?
Senior Ian Price is currently in an online relationship with 15-year-old Madison Peters, who lives in Houston, Texas. They have been in a relationship for six months, and Skype daily. They discuss the various topics which brought them together originally. “We talk about anime, manga and web comics, the same as other couples do,” says Price.
“We met on twitter, actually. She started talking to me. She messaged me ‘I hope this doesn’t come off as really weird, but you seem really nice.’ I told her she was ‘really weird,’” says Price. From then on, they developed an unexpected, authentic relationship. “It just happened out of nowhere,” Price says.
Although online dating has really taken off over the past few years, the concept is still foreign to many, especially among teens. “Most people at school think it’s dumb, and that she’s a guy, and it’s never going to work out," says Price. "But my close friends are okay with it. People just don’t have a lot of faith.” Price struggles to get others to understand how genuine his relationship with Peters is, and most of his friends feel it’s completely frivolous. “Long distance relationships seem really high maintenance; I don’t know how Ian survived a month,” says Senior Shane Villanueva, a friend of Price.
It isn’t just his peers who don’t understand, but his and Peters’s parents as well. “My dad thinks she’s a guy, but I’m 100 percent sure I’m not being catfished,” protests Price.
“My mom thinks our dating is weird,” says Peters.
There are many differences between Price’s online relationships as compared to a regular old fashion teenage relationship. “We can’t hug” says Price, “but we talk every day.”
Junior Darian Hampton has recently been in an online relationship and feels strongly about the differences between long distance and in-person dating. “I don’t recommend an online relationship, because you get your hopes up for someone you’ve never actually met,” says Hampton. Hampton feels that in-person relationships are better because it is less fake. “You don’t get to see them, and you don’t know if you can trust them because they’re in a different state and you don’t know what really goes on.”
Overall, Price hopes to continue his and Peters’s relationship and is extremely excited to see her in person very soon. “I’m going to visit her after I graduate in Texas,” he says. When they meet, they plan to do everyday boyfriend and girlfriend activities. “Of course I’m going to take her on a date,” says an embarrassed Price.
