Online interactions are based on trust, since there are few definitive ways to certify the identity of the person with whom one is communicating. Naturally, this situation can lead to deception and manipulation, as it has -- to tormenting effect -- for Tegan and Sara, the popular indie rock duo whose lives have been turned upside down by a mysterious bad faith actor who, for more than a decade, has impersonated Tegan with fans, friends, and business partners.
Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara is an investigation into the myriad means by which the internet can be wielded to nefarious ends. More than that, though, it's an anatomy of a crime and the complicated wreckage wrought by it, not just for the famous artists but also for the innocent admirers who were tricked into believing that fiction was reality.
Premiering on Hulu on Oct. 18, following its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Erin Lee Carr's documentary is a chilling snapshot of the unholy marriage of corrosive fandom and online duplicity. At its center are Tegan and Sara, the identical twin songstresses who began making a name for themselves in the early 2000s both for their talent and for being openly gay. This earned them a loyal fanbase of queer women and men who saw themselves reflected in Tegan and Sara, and that bond was strengthened by the siblings' active interest in interacting with fans in person -- Tegan would chat with show attendees in line and at the merch table -- and on LiveJournal and other budding message-board platforms that afforded a previously unavailable degree of contact.
In Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara, Tegan admits that this type of accessibility was very important to her and helped the band grow into a sensation, so it was a great shock when, in 2011, she and her management team (led by Piers Henwood and Kim Persley) learned that there was a fake Tegan, whom they dubbed Fegan, that had developed long-running relationships with various fans. In these communiques, Fegan proved her legitimacy by revealing private information (say, about Tegan's mother's cancer diagnosis) and sharing personal photographs and unreleased demos.
Tegan and company might have never heard about this were it not for a fan named Julie who, having been befriended by Fegan, received images of Tegan and Sara's passports, which struck her as wrong. When she reached out about this to a friend affiliated with the artists, he relayed that Tegan didn't know her. Which, to Julie, meant that "Tegan has a big problem."
That she did, and Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara conveys how, in the aftermath of this bombshell, additional fans came forward, confessing that they thought they had been talking with Tegan for years via email and text.
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Unsurprisingly, Tegan was none too pleased with this situation, especially since the evidence indicated that the perpetrator was in possession of confidential documents, recordings, and other material. She and everyone else initially assumed that the culprit might be someone in her inner circle, thereby stoking paranoia and suspicions that inevitably made her feel like she'd mistakenly opened the figurative door too wide to fans.
There are two questions at the heart of Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara, and neither are easy to answer. The first is who was catfishing Tegan's fans and acquaintances, including a woman named JT who had casually met Tegan years earlier in the Vancouver music scene and who was led to believe she was in a sexual online relationship with the artist.
Despite numerous cease-and-desist letters and the employment of cybersecurity specialists and sleuths, Tegan discovered that it's immensely difficult to track down online fraudsters, particularly when they're as accomplished as Fegan, who was posing as Tegan as well as make-believe fans, those fans' parents, and maybe even their lawyers. In fact, it wasn't (and still isn't) clear if there were multiple Fegans operating at once, alone or collaboratively, to pull the wool over everyone's eyes.
The larger issue raised by Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara is why someone would bother committing this mad ruse, given that there was little to gain in terms of money or closeness to the real Tegan. Social psychologist and cyberterrorism expert Max Kilger offers a potential explanation, contending that such scams provide multiple things to catfishers: connection; the possibility of intimacy; the ability to act confidently; and the psychological reward of having power and control over others, which can be addictive.
Certainly, Fegan was obsessed with pretending to be Tegan, and intent on interfering with (if not ruining) her life, going so far as to message her then-girlfriend with wild accusations, and to spread so much misinformation that even victims of this madness (like JT) didn't totally believe Tegan's claims that she wasn't Fegan.
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Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara strives to end on a definitive note, with director Carr and Tegan digging so deeply into the case that they eventually come up with a legitimate potential suspect: an individual referred to here as "Tara" who requests that her identity remain anonymous. Tara's conduct is strange and shady enough to make her the focus of their efforts, peaking with Carr's trip to Maine to interview Tara, only to have the woman abruptly cancel at the last second. A subsequent phone call between the director, Tara, and Tegan turns quite tense, but frustratingly for Tegan, it leaves her with the impression that Tara isn't Fegan -- meaning, of course, that whoever's been driving her crazy is still out there.
The ramifications of this catfishing con are numerous, and extend to the fact that Tegan and Sara have been forced to cut back on informal interactions with those who love them most -- a byproduct of their new industry stature and drawing power, to be sure, but also of their understandable distrust of fans, whose zeal sometimes leads to insanity, like Tara's incest fan-fiction about the sisters. Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara grants Tegan the ability to reconnect, face-to-face, with some of her most ardent admirers. Yet Carr's film suggests that once such damage is done, it's permanent.
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