Calls for boycotting budding multimedia artist and filmmaker Sam Morales widely emerged online after a transwoman interior designer student from Cebu posted a long thread on Twitter, accusing her of catfishing.
According to Cambridge dictionary, catfishing is “the practice of pretending on social media to be someone different, in order to trick or attract another person.”
Jzan Vern Tero shared on Twitter how Morales did this scheme on her, detailing how the filmmaker allegedly deceived her for almost a year, and how she found out that the guy she had been seeing was actually an accessory to Morales’s scheme of fooling members of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community into fake relationships.
Tero’s Twitter thread—which was shared over 90,000 times and already garnered 240,000 as of this writing—started with how she met and formed a long-distance relationship with a guy named Bill, who claimed to be living in Makati. They dated on and off online for eight months, often with the help of Bill’s friend “Sam Morales.”
The student admitted in her thread that there were times when she suspected Bill, especially when he was engaging much in video and phone calls, and when he told her that he was not active on social media.
Tero eventually found out that Bill’s name was Bilko Argana, and that he was just used by Morales to pretend to be the guy she was seeing. The Cebuana student also found out that it was Morales who she had been talking to all this time.
When she confronted Morales about it, the filmmaker apologized and explained that her action was based on her alleged hatred towards the LGBT community—who she said used to bully her when she was young.
Morales, Tero said, also explained that the catfishing scheme against LGBT community started when her uncle did it to avenge her. It then became her “addiction.”
The filmmaker also admitted that they hired other artists to help Tero with her design plates—pretending that they were all ideas from Bill—because they felt “guilty” towards her.
The modeling agency New Monarq Manila, who represents Morales, said that they are not related or liable to the artist’s action, and that they will “always be in full support of the LGBTQ+ community.”
“We do not tolerate any harmful actions towards a loving community,” it added in its statement.
A number of celebrities and known personalities in the country have expressed their support for Tero, including actress Janine Gutierrez, social media influencer Mimiyuuuh, and photographer BJ Pascual—condemning Morales for her devious “manipulation,” and calling members of her industry to boycott her.
Morales has yet to issue a response regarding the allegation of Tero.
I got catfished: a (really long) thread pic.twitter.com/5BQ2G5kcif
— Jzan Tero (@JzanVern) March 30, 2020
