Will all fake jellies please step forward? (See details)
Just kidding. If I had to expose all my alternate identities, there’d hardly be anyone left. Or would there? ;-)
This is really about the Notre Dame football player who either is the victim of a hoax or perpetrated a hoax that he had an online affair with a woman who died of cancer. People seem to wonder how you could be a victim of such a hoax.
How is that possible? How would you not know? Do you have to be dumb as a football player? Could this happen to anyone? And how many fake jellies are there, anyway?
I don’t really think football players are dumb—at least, not until they’ve been hit in the head enough times. That was just a cheap shot. I’m sorry.
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I think it was just a coping mechanism. This online girlfriend got him through a tough time.
Give the fool a break.
I’ll come out and say it.
I’m not really Brian Molko.
I agree with @filmfann, though. It’s a cheap shot indeed to say it was because he was a football player. I’m sure this has happened to other people. As many of us have experienced on Fluther, it can be easier to expose oneself (I meant figuratively, not like Anthony Weiner!!!) online, to become vulnerable. And when you allow yourself to be vulnerable with someone else, that is when you can get attached.
Either that or she was a beard for him…
I’ve never had an alternate account on Fluther. I have used the anonymity of the internet to be deceptive before, though. A harmless example is that I have an alternate account on reddit in order to rant openly about extremely personal, embarrassing details of my disease (I have real life friends who know my main username there, so). Just need an outlet for the really ugly stuff.
The only one I feel kind of bad about comes from when I was 13. My best friend and I blogged on LiveJournal at that age. Well, I started writing a story and I was too embarrassed to share it under my name, but I wanted feedback. So I created a fake LiveJournal to post it, and of course to make it realistic I had to blog about a made-up personal life as well, so I pretty much just created a fake person. The fake me became LiveJournal “friends” with the real me and with my best friend, and I got feedback from my best friend on my story without her knowing it was me, and I also got her emotionally attached to a person who didn’t exist. I even chatted with her on AOL as the fake person a few times. Yeah…...not proud of that one. She still doesn’t know!
About a year ago, I saw the documentary “Catfish.” I recommend everyone sees it. It was produced by the same guy who does the Catfish TV show (which I have never seen). It was mind-boggling how he had this relationship with this girl, spoke on the phone with this girl, knew all about this girl, and this girl was not what she seemed to be (and no, she was not a man).
(jca raises hand as not a fake Jelly)
I am definitely not a fake jelly, nor have I ever seduced anyone online and developed a relationship, with the intention of hurting or making a fool of them.
Everything I say here is true. (Besides obvious joking with ^) I just don’t want my persona to be tied to me in real life.
It seems too easy to be found out online to try to perpetrate a hoax.
As far as fake fluther accounts, occasionally there seems to be an account that shows up just for a specific question, or answer, and we don’t hear from it again.
I can see how someone can be fooled. I was fooled by a match dot com profile for about six weeks, a really intriguing woman who was quite good looking and writing with me “while she was out of the country”. She had me all the way up to “my passport was stolen and they arrested me and now I need bail.”
But this Te’o story goes way beyond plausible. She dies and he doesn’t go to the funeral? He never visits in the hospital? How can you call her your girlfriend if you are not involved in each other’s lives?
@LuckyGuy You mean, we’re NOT going to run away and have wild orgies in Tahiti?
My name is not Yarnlady, but I do receive mail addressed to that name, and I have cashed checks in that name, when I used to sell my needlework.
Determined people can indeed trick others, but I don’t believe a service man in Nigeria put his inheritance in the bank there and now needs my help getting it out.
@WillWorkForChocolate Shhh…. We’re telling them Tahiti. But really it’s Thailand. We’re going to the usual place in Chang Rai.
Hey wait a minute. Do you really even exist, @wundayatta?
OK, I confess. That was just a deception to throw you all off. Truth is, I am not a jellyfish at all. I’m a human impersonating a Jelly. There. It’s all out in the open finally. Now when do I get to tell Oprah?
No. Actually I am a fake of @WillWorkForChocolate‘s . That way I don’t feel guilty for beating myself up all the time.
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