In a March 2023 episode of Catfish, host Nev Schulman traveled to Pennsylvania to help a woman named June finally meet David, her on-again, off-again Internet boyfriend of 20 years.
June, who’s gone by “Motherwolff”online for decades, is a mother of five and grandmother of nine. She’d met David in an AOL chatroom called Virtual Magic in the early 2000s. June and David became close enough that she was sure they could communicate telepathically — “on the wind,” in her words.
Though David faded in and out of her life—sometimes they spoke all the time, sometimes they went months of years without talking—he nonetheless remained important to her. He met her children over the phone; he was in her thoughts constantly, even when she was dating other people. When David was in June’s life, they’d speak for hours and hours on the phone—but they’d never video chatted and they certainly never met.
As the title of the show suggests, it turns out David is a catfish who’d been stelaing photos of “sexyrexy” from the website FUBAR.
In the episode, Nev discovers that “David” was—well, as the title suggests, a catfish, who stole photos a social network called FUBAR of a man who went by “sexyrexy” (and, as I later found out, is also named Dave). When Nev then tries to find David’s real identity using a combination of phone numbers, addresses, and data broker websites, he turns up the name “David Derringer” in Orlando, Florida.
Eventually, June and Nev fly to meet David. While in the driveway of David’s home, a man wearing a long, conspicuous wig emerges from the house and introduces himself as David. It is not, needless to say, the man in sexyrexy’s photos.
David tells June that everything he’d ever said to her had been sincere, but then announces that David “was just someone [he] made up.” His posture and voice then changes and he says, “Actually, I’m Denise. And I just basically role-play David.”
Denise explains that David was a male character she’d created online and that she’s a heterosexual woman who’s not attracted to June. David was, however, really in love with her. June is shocked, but considerably less disturbed than Nev is. She remains hopeful they can preserve some version of the relationship, if not a romantic one.
Nev and June return the following day and Denise appears, this time in a new wig. Denise suggests that maybe David should be retired so June can fully move on. Denise then admits that she has other identities online, not just Dave — and also, Denise is also a character. Nev asks who the person underneath all of these characters actually is, but Denise declines to give a straight answer.
Two months later, Nev checks in with June, and who’s there? Denise, presenting as David. They’d resumed talking as soon as the show ended and were now officially a couple, living together. David shares that he lives primarily as David now. Confused?
So was I—and everyone else who watched it. I reached out to both June and Denise two years ago. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of my conversation with Denise.
