On MTV’s Catfish, Nev Schulman helps uncover the true identities of people who have lied about themselves online.
Now, it seems that with the sensitive, nice guy routine he hides behind on the show, Nev may have been catfishing his audience for years.
Last night, Schulman tweeted the above image of himself along with a caption reading, “This elevator is abuse free,” a reference to NFL player Ray Rice knocking out his fiancee in an elevator.
Some took the tweet as a joke, while others considered it to be Schulman sincerely reaching out to domestic violence victims.
Either way, most considered it to be in poor taste.
Here, Schulman was taking an important issue and using it as an excuse to post a vain selfie. It wasn’t nearly as bad as DiGiorno interrupting the #WhyIStayed conversation for a pizza ad, but it still wasn’t great.
Part of the problem was that it came from Schulman, who has his own history of violence against women:
In his new book – Real Life: Love, Lies and Identity in the Digital Age – Schulman admits that he was expelled from Sarah Lawrence College in his junior year for punching a woman in the face.
Schulman’s (arguably homophobic) explanation is that he was taking photos at a party when the woman tried to smash his camera. Since she was a “short, stocky, crew-cut-styled individual” Schulman claims he didn’t realize she was a woman, so he punched her.
One witness at the party has since come forward to say that the woman repeatedly asked Schulman to stop taking pictures of her while she was kissing her girlfriend, but he refused.
Another says that there’s no way that Schulman didn’t realize the victim was a woman and that the punch left the victim with a “bruised and swollen” eye. He adds that Schulman “pretty much f*cked her up.”
The incident was a long time ago, but Schulman continues to justify his actions rather than apologize for them. Maybe we’d all be better off if he didn’t offer his two cents on the issue of violence against women.