In New York City, Nev Schulman is a young photographer who shares a life with his brother Ariel. One day, Abby Pierce, an 8-year-old prodigy artist from rural Ishpeming, Michigan, sends Nev a painting based on one of his photos, sparking a widening online connection that reaches Abby’s family: Angela, her husband Vince, and Angela’s older half-sister Megan who lives in Gladstone, Michigan. What begins as a simple friendship soon becomes a subject for a documentary, as Ariel and Henry Joost film Nev as he enters an online relationship with Megan. She sends him MP3s of song covers she performs, but Nev quickly discovers that the recordings are taken from performances on YouTube, casting doubt on Megan’s authenticity and casting a wider shadow over Abby’s supposed art career.
As the film unfolds, Nev uncovers a string of deceptions surrounding Abby and Angela. Angela and Abby’s stories don’t hold up under scrutiny, and Ariel urges Nev to press on with the relationship for the sake of the documentary, even as Nev feels increasingly uneasy about the truth behind the online connections. The trio travels to Michigan to confront Megan at the Pierce home, and although Angela appears welcoming at the door, she reveals that she has recently begun chemotherapy for uterine cancer, a claim that adds a complicated layer of emotion to the visit.
Back at the house, a tense moment with Abby and her friend reveals that Abby rarely sees her sister and rarely paints, complicating Nev’s perception of the person behind the online persona. The next morning, Nev receives a text from Megan claiming she has entered rehab for an old alcohol problem and cannot meet him, a message later corroborated by a Facebook friend but increasingly viewed as another fabrication by Angela. After more time with the family, Angela admits that the “Megan” pictures were of a family friend, that Megan herself is in rehab downstate, and that Angela had actually painted the paintings Nev had seen.
In a pivotal confession, Nev realizes that he was communicating with Angela under multiple Facebook profiles and a separate mobile account, while Abby’s artwork and online presence were a crafted facade. Angela explains that these online personas had reconnected her with painting—a passion she had put aside to marry Vince, who cares for two severely disabled children. Vince shares his perspective, recounting how he had believed Nev was supporting Angela’s art and how he encouraged her to lean into the possibility of having a patron.
Vince’s story also introduces a vivid metaphor: live cod were shipped with catfish in the same tanks to keep the cod active and flavorful, a comparison he uses to describe people in everyone’s life who keep them alert and engaged. The implication is that Angela viewed Nev as a catalyst or “patron,” though the reality was far more complicated.
Not long after, Nev receives a package labeled from Angela containing a completed drawing she had labored over, leaving him with mixed feelings about the gesture. The film then reveals through on-screen text that Angela did not have cancer, there was no Megan at a rehab facility, and she did not know the girl in the pictures. Over nine months of correspondence, Angela and Nev exchanged more than 1,500 messages. It is later revealed that the girl in the pictures was Aimee Gonzales, a professional model and photographer from Vancouver, Washington, who lives with her husband and two children. In October 2008, months after the events, Vince’s twin son Ronald dies. Angela deactivates her 15 other profiles and changes her Facebook presence to a single image of herself, while continuing to promote herself as an artist on her own website. Nev remains on Facebook with more than 732 friends, including Angela, leaving him with a complicated and lasting connection to the online world he thought he understood.
