Nev Schulman discusses friendships, mistakes, life with the Mix.
Dating in the 21st century is different. Students and adults alike are no longer meeting cute girls and boys in soda shops, asking them on dates and falling madly in love. Instead, this generation is creating online profiles and molding their dating lives into whatever they like. However, without this shift to cyber dating, Nev Schulman would not be where he is today.
“It was not planned, I made mistakes,” Schulman said about past experiences.
The New York City native, first gaining fame with his film, “Catfish” in 2010 which documented his personal experience with an online relationship with an unexpected twist. Schulman is now the host and executive producer of the movie-turned-MTV-television show. The show has become a television sensation, as Schulman and his friend and filmmaking partner Max Joseph, document the lives of those in online relationships as they discover hidden truths behind their virtual partner’s true persona.
In Schulman’s appearance at the Koger Center for the Arts Tuesday, he not only discussed his experiences filming the movie and show, but his even more important experiences in life that have led him to be the person he is today, advice on friendship and his impressive display of chesthair.
“I want to take a trip back in time and bring the audience on a bit of a ride,” Schulman said before the show. “Take them through all of the mistakes, life lessons, discoveries and eventual triumphs that I’ve been fortunate enough to experience.”
During his presentation, he shared his past experiences with friends, moments of low self-confidence, getting kicked out of school multiple times and how these experiences have resulted in a type of self discovery. His multimedia approach incorporated the short films, favorite quotations and pictures of his life that helped him to explain to the audience what he has learned about the meaning of friendship and how unpredictable life is.
“You want to be friends with people completely honest with you,” Schulman said.
Aside from his inspirational words of advice and interesting life experiences, going from rebel teen to motivated being, Schulman made sure to answer the question on everyone’s minds: What does Catfish mean?
He described his first meeting with the woman he had an online “relationship” with in his documentary and although he was astonished by the fact that this beautiful woman he had fallen for was a middle-aged married mother, he remembered a story her husband told. Her husband explained that when live bass and cod were shipped from Asia, the fish would arrive mushy and poor tasting due to their inactivity, so fisherman put catfish in the tanks to keep the other fish moving. Schulman remembered him saying, “I thank God for the catfish,” and so the title came to be.
But for Schulman, the title “Catfish,” has a very different meaning.
“A catfish to me is someone who thinks outside the box and goes against the norm,” Schulman said. “As you choose your friends, think of that also. You don’t want to be all the same.”
Now proudly living as a catfish, he said the unpredictable nature of his life has been the most important thing to him, As he reminisced about his life, he said if he had never met the woman online he would have never made a film, which would never have led to the television show and he wouldn’t stand in front of us that night.
“A lot of weird stuff happens that’s not part of the plan,” Schulman said.
Now an advocate of online dating sites, he thinks it’s amazing that people all over the world can now connect, but staying true to yourself, surrounding yourself by the people you’d like to and staying cautious of the lies is the best advice he can give.
“You have to go and live and date and get your heart broken,” Schulman said.