“Catfish,” the TV show that predicted America's disorienting digital future
Wesselman-Pierce lived with her husband, Vince Pierce, and her two children. “I didn't want to lose our friendship, no matter what,” a tearful Wesselman-Pierce told Schulman in the film. “Many of the personalities that emerged were just fragments of myself.”At the end of the documentary, a brooding Pierce recalled a story he'd heard and, in turn, gave the film — and the expression — his name. Cod, he said, was once shipped in vats from Alaska to China, but the fish arrived soft and tasteless. Catfish were eventually added to the tanks to keep the cod healthy. “There are those people who are catfish in life,” he said. In his mind, his wife was one of them. “They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking, they keep you fresh.”Life, he added, would be "boring and monotonous if ...