Title: In Real Life
Author: Nev Schulman
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 246
Rating 3.5/5
If you’ve ever watched MTV’s Catfish then you’ve already heard of Schulman. He’s the guy who presents the show, and in fact he earlier presented a documentary of the same name about his own experience as a victim of catfishing. Oh, and catfishing, for those of you who aren’t in the know, is when people pretend to be someone they’re not on a social networking site.
What was quite cool about this is that you get to know Schulman some more as a person, and it turns out that he wasn’t always the greatest of guys. In fact, it almost feels as though he wrote this book to come to terms with the person he was as a youth, when he got into fights, sold weed and magic mushrooms and was a bit of a womaniser.
But at the same time as telling his own story, Schulman also shares practical advice that’s designed to help other people to stay safe on social networking sites, and that makes it a little similar to one of my own books, Social Paranoia. He did it well though, and even though the book is a couple of years old by now, I think it’s held up well to the passage of time. I’d recommend it to fans of the show, but probably not to general readers. Yeah.
