Unless your head has been buried in the sand (which raises the question of how you are reading this blog), you've by now heard the story of Manti Te'o, the Notre Dame football player who spent all season talking about his car-crash surviving, cancer-fighting girlfriend who didn't actually exist.
The details continue to emerge, but apparently Te'o either fabricated the whole story, or he was the victim of a cruel online hoax. The hoax story seems far-fetched. Who would be dumb enough to correspond for months with an online love interest who didn't actually exist?
Funny that you ask. A similar thing once happened to me.
When I was in college at the University of Alabama, I got an email from someone who introduced herself as "Courtney." She claimed to be a high school senior and prospective student, and she said she found my email address from the online college email directory. I didn't know UA had an online directory (this was 1997), but the story seemed plausible, and her email address' prefix of "heartbreaker999" (exact details changed to prevent litigation) caught my attention.
I wrote her back. We talked about life at UA, and our respective biographies and pretty soon, our emails took on a flirty tone. I hadn't seen her, but she described herself as a 5'4'' blond tennis player cheerleader, and she was a good online conversationalist. After about a month, her emails were consistently the highlight of my day.
But soon, things started getting weird. I sent her a picture, but she wouldn't reciprocate. Her biography matched up strikingly well with the girl I had intermittently dated throughout high school. In fact, Courtney had been the name of that girl's sister. "Courtney's" alleged middle name was the same as the first name of my pseudo-ex's mom. And "Courtney's" last name was the same as that of our high school tennis coach. Like "Courtney," the recipient of my high school interest had been a cheerleader and tennis player and was a 5'4" blond.
I struck it all up to coincidence at first. But when "Courtney" started asking questions about my high school love life that seemed suspiciously well-tailored to past events, I began to smell something fishy. That suspicion was furthered when I confirmed that Alabama didn't actually have an online student email directory, which was how "Courtney" said she had found me.
While I sensed a hoax, I still wasn't sure who was behind it. I kept emailing "Courtney" in hopes of uncovering details without sucess. But "Courtney's" warmth began to recede when I suggested we talk on the phone. When she finally agreed to talk, she insisted on calling me, wouldn't give me her number, and sounded nervous (and much older than an 18-year-old high school student) on the phone.
The call made me even more sure I was being "catfished." But I didn't recognize the voice, and wasn't sure who was behind it, or why. My initial suspicion turned to the former love interest whose life "Courtney" had transplanted as her own.
But she seemed way too smart for such a transparent duplication of herself, and I couldn't imagine why she would think it necessary. I had generally been the pursuer in our tortured off-and-on dynamic, so she probably would have felt comfortable calling directly if she wanted to reconnect.
I called her just in case. While she seemed happy to hear from me, it was clear from her trademark emotionless and rational manner that she wasn't exactly missing me and had nothing to do with whoever was using her biography.
Whoever was behind the scam, though, was someone who at least had access to someone close to me. She somehow had my newly created email address (which in 1997, was no small detail), and the questions she asked about where things went wrong in my high school experiences betrayed someone with intricate knowledge of my life and relationship history.
I knew only one person weird enough to construct this kind of mirage, but for various reasons, the math didn't add up for her to be behind it. I had no other ideas, so I tried to trick "Courtney" into giving herself away.
I formulated a deliciously elaborate plan to trick Courtney into revealing herself, but it backfired and instead just gave away that I was onto the scam. "Courtney" then disappeared, with a sudden declaration that she had reversed course and decided to go to Southern Mississippi.
Confused and hopeless, I gave up the investigation and moved on with life.
Years later, with the benefit of a law school education, the whole mystery suddenly snapped into place on an idle Tuesday when I was at the gym.
I had dated a girl once or twice in high school. On paper, we seemed reasonably compatible, but the timing of our interaction doomed it from the start. I had lost touch with her after high school, but she had a reasonable path through which she could have gotten my email address. She had a means of knowing enough information about the girl she was impersonating to adopt her biography, and we had enough mutual connections that she might have heard some details over where things went wrong. She even had an older sister I didn't know who might have been the person I spoke to on the phone that night.
I had a suspect in mind who could have performed the scam. But why?
"Courtney's" alter ego was dating someone during the time she was writing me. She used the fake identity, for the sake of asking about the state of my feelings without risking her current relationship if I wasn't interested. She asked so many questions about my former love life in hopes that I might utter her alter ego's name.
It was a weird plan, that seems, in retrospect, highly unlikely to work. But anyone who would invest an online personna to correspond with someone they had dated once or twice years earlier probably wasn't capable of a plan that sounded rational.
And when I didn't appropriately respond, "Courtney" faded away, and eventually married the guy she had been dating.
I didn't put all the dots together until years after the events occurred, so I never got to confront "Courtney" with the revelation of my discovery.
So, "Courtney," if you are reading this (which I assume you are, given your tendency toward online stalking), consider yourself busted. I won't reveal your name here because I don't want to embarrass you (or get sued), but I hope you are happy in your current relationship.
And if you aren't, well, please write someone else this time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment