It begins with a photographer from New York City his name is Nev Schulman. He was successful in getting one of his photographs published in a magazine called “The New York sun”. A short time after that, he received a painting of this photograph. The amazing thing about this beautiful painting is that, an 8-year-old girl named “Abby” did it. Or so he was lead to believe. He was so amazed by this that he started making contact with Abby. He started talking to her mother on the phone and on facebook . This escalated into Abby’s sister thanking Nev for being so nice to Abby and that his praise makes her very happy. Abby’s sister (Megan) exchanged facebook information with Nev and over time this became a serious relationship as the picture of Megan were very attractive. At this point, Nev’s friend and his brother began to capture all of this footage on camera as it was the first online relationship that they had witnessed being created.
Over the following few months their Relationship grew. They became closer and closer. Always talking about the day that they will get to be together. Everything was going perfect Abby was getting her own Gallery for her paintings and everyone was happy. The next step in their relationship was that they started exchanging files that they had each created. He sent a picture that he made of the two of them and in return she began to send songs that she had sang to him. Nev never realized how good of a singer that Megan was and over time began to wonder why she never mentioned that she loved and was good at singing. At this point Nev began to get the feeling that something was wrong. He began investigating the situation further by searching the Internet to find out more information about this “Megan” girl and the sings that she was sending him.
As simple as good be after searching for the songs online he came across the exact cover songs that “Megan” sent to him on you-tube. At this point he really began to realize and question what was going on. The songs that she was saying were hers was a complete lie, so he began to question what else could be a lie and wonder exactly who was he talking to for the past 6 months. If that was me I would be extremely confused, and would have to investigate it much further and find out exactly what the story was.
And to my delight that is what they did. After doing some more research online and making a few phone-calls they came to the fact that the gallery that “Megan” told Nev that Abby was giving for her work to be hung was non-existent. The unit was empty and has been for quite some time. Nev was extremely confused (as anybody would be). At this point he three lads decided they were going to get to the bottom of this, so they decided to make the trip across America to Michigan, to the farm that “Megan” lived in.
When the arrived Nev, went up to Angela's house and at this point everything became apparent. He knocked on the door with a bunch of flowers and Angela answered the door, not to my surprise Angela in fact did not look like what she had perceived herself online. He soon found out that Angela was actually Megan, and Megan never existed. Abby, who is Angela's daughter from her second marriage, was not actually a painter, and Angela herself did the paintings. Angela lived in a house with Abby and her husband, and her husband's two severely handicapped teenage boys from his previous marriage. Every bit of Contact that Nev had made with this family was all in fact, with Angela.
They then interview Angela and the reasoning behind it, and after to listening to what Angela had to say and the way that she described her life, it would kind of give you a level of understanding as you realize how sad her life was and the reason that she did it was just the fact that she was happy to live this online life and to escape that realities and real life.
The documentary was really good and thoroughly enjoyed it. As may people in my class said after we discussed it, that you are left to wonder about how you feel. As they leave you with the impression that Angela meant no harm at all and that she has changed by deleting all of the fake stuff/profiles that she had online. The only one that she kept was her own and that she put her real picture as her profile picture. It was very enjoyable and I would recommend to anybody to watch it as it just gives you the awareness of what SNS could do!!!
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