Following a couple of recent events I thought it might be useful to have a bit of a discussion on the topic of fakes and catfish, again.
Who they are and why they do it is something we've discussed many times and if you have something to add please do leave your comments below but today I wanted to do a bit of a practical "how to" for anyone wondering just how to spot a fake.
Most of the time it becomes obvious pretty quickly, and I'm not talking about those who are unwilling to send photos as there are plenty of legit reasons for that, no I'm talking about the kind of more subtle (and not so subtle) clues that come out as you interact with a fake or catfish who does send you photos.
Most often one of the giveaways is an immediately willingness to perform quite extreme acts, often with extremely elaborate reporting that seems, well, too good to be true. It's an odd paradox that so many of these extreme subs are oddly camera shy, or if they do offer photos they always seem to be out of focus, strangely cropped and tiny.
A great example of this was, for those that may remember the variously named Joanne Tan (aka hornylittleplaytoy, etc, etc) was someone catfishing on Kink Talk when I first arrived here. This one wasn't shy with photos but the quality was, um, terrible.
Here's just a little sample of "her" photos posted right here in our media galleries. These were, for the most part, taken from a website called Pacific Girls which provided thousands of photos of Japanese girls. But this catfish didn't bother to stick to just one model and used various different ones often with terribly photoshopped body writing included.
Reusing someone else's photos is a common tactic. If you find someone is forthcoming with photos but they always seem to be oddly cropped, tiny and/or blurry there is a high chance they using collected photos from the web. A big giveaway here is requests for photos taking a while to be done, what should be a 10 second snap on the phone takes days to get back to you. Searching for just the right shot online takes time.
Now photoshopping is another thing entirely, sometimes people get more ambitious and go for something altogether more elaborate. Here's an example posted by a new member several years ago purporting to be "her".
In each of these examples is the image posted here on the left, and the corresponding image I found quite quickly from a pro website. The instant giveaway here was the pro posing, who does that? Trying too hard and despite passable photoshop work still an obvious fake.
"But I've been chatting to someone and I know they're genuine because they sent me proof when they wrote out a sign I told them to do." Well yeah about that...
Now this one was tougher to find the source but it was faked. The original photo had a sign and fingers even fairly plausibly inserted proclaiming these photos should be exposed. As you can see by flipping the original and adding in the sign then doing some softening and colour manipulation it becomes a passable image that will fool the too keen quite easily.
Ok so that's just a tiny sample of the kind of manipulation that can happen, I've seen a few better but in general most are more in the Joanne Tan style, awful obvious fakes.
So what about genuine photos, what helps you make sure they're genuine? Well for a start they will usually be in a normal format and size, colour will be natural and most tellingly they will look like, well home made selfies. Now most people these days take fairly decent selfies, phone cameras are excellent even in low light and so the photos usually look pretty decent. Another key factor is the background, most subs will be taking photos on their bed, the room, the bed etc will be the same in most photos.
Genuine photos are less posed and better quality, more real and recognizably so.
Here's a good example from Sub A, a simple task to hang some specific items from her nipples. See how all the photo match, she's wearing the same clothes in the same room. Not a bunch of random photos of odd sizes, weird and blurry that just don't look like they were taken at the same time.
Anyone should be able to get photos as good as these, it's not hard, in fact phones now make it easy.
Photos are not something to be assumed or expected, it's a deeply personal choice and for many not supplying them is quite the most sensible choice. But if someone does send you photos, maybe a little too willingly that seem a bit odd, maybe too good to be true, look again and just be sure what you're looking at isn't just what you wanted to see.
Who they are and why they do it is something we've discussed many times and if you have something to add please do leave your comments below but today I wanted to do a bit of a practical "how to" for anyone wondering just how to spot a fake.
Most of the time it becomes obvious pretty quickly, and I'm not talking about those who are unwilling to send photos as there are plenty of legit reasons for that, no I'm talking about the kind of more subtle (and not so subtle) clues that come out as you interact with a fake or catfish who does send you photos.
Most often one of the giveaways is an immediately willingness to perform quite extreme acts, often with extremely elaborate reporting that seems, well, too good to be true. It's an odd paradox that so many of these extreme subs are oddly camera shy, or if they do offer photos they always seem to be out of focus, strangely cropped and tiny.
A great example of this was, for those that may remember the variously named Joanne Tan (aka hornylittleplaytoy, etc, etc) was someone catfishing on Kink Talk when I first arrived here. This one wasn't shy with photos but the quality was, um, terrible.
Here's just a little sample of "her" photos posted right here in our media galleries. These were, for the most part, taken from a website called Pacific Girls which provided thousands of photos of Japanese girls. But this catfish didn't bother to stick to just one model and used various different ones often with terribly photoshopped body writing included.
Reusing someone else's photos is a common tactic. If you find someone is forthcoming with photos but they always seem to be oddly cropped, tiny and/or blurry there is a high chance they using collected photos from the web. A big giveaway here is requests for photos taking a while to be done, what should be a 10 second snap on the phone takes days to get back to you. Searching for just the right shot online takes time.
Now photoshopping is another thing entirely, sometimes people get more ambitious and go for something altogether more elaborate. Here's an example posted by a new member several years ago purporting to be "her".
In each of these examples is the image posted here on the left, and the corresponding image I found quite quickly from a pro website. The instant giveaway here was the pro posing, who does that? Trying too hard and despite passable photoshop work still an obvious fake.
"But I've been chatting to someone and I know they're genuine because they sent me proof when they wrote out a sign I told them to do." Well yeah about that...
Now this one was tougher to find the source but it was faked. The original photo had a sign and fingers even fairly plausibly inserted proclaiming these photos should be exposed. As you can see by flipping the original and adding in the sign then doing some softening and colour manipulation it becomes a passable image that will fool the too keen quite easily.
Ok so that's just a tiny sample of the kind of manipulation that can happen, I've seen a few better but in general most are more in the Joanne Tan style, awful obvious fakes.
So what about genuine photos, what helps you make sure they're genuine? Well for a start they will usually be in a normal format and size, colour will be natural and most tellingly they will look like, well home made selfies. Now most people these days take fairly decent selfies, phone cameras are excellent even in low light and so the photos usually look pretty decent. Another key factor is the background, most subs will be taking photos on their bed, the room, the bed etc will be the same in most photos.
Genuine photos are less posed and better quality, more real and recognizably so.
Here's a good example from Sub A, a simple task to hang some specific items from her nipples. See how all the photo match, she's wearing the same clothes in the same room. Not a bunch of random photos of odd sizes, weird and blurry that just don't look like they were taken at the same time.
Anyone should be able to get photos as good as these, it's not hard, in fact phones now make it easy.
Photos are not something to be assumed or expected, it's a deeply personal choice and for many not supplying them is quite the most sensible choice. But if someone does send you photos, maybe a little too willingly that seem a bit odd, maybe too good to be true, look again and just be sure what you're looking at isn't just what you wanted to see.
