Elaborate Internet hoax

[lizziesmom]

I hope this is the right forum to post this and the way that I've included the link is also okay. This story is both shocking and unsurprising, given the explosion of social media. Makes one wonder whose blogs are legit and whose aren't though.

huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/12/remembering-reilly-hoax-cancer-blog_n_3429117.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D328341

[keen23]

You should check out the Warrior Eli Hoax blog. The author over there has done some fantastic work uncovering fake illness bloggers. http://www.warriorelihoax.com/ (not broken because HuffPost didn't break it, and this blog is worthy of positive attention from Free Jinger!)

[OkToBeTakei]

I saw this on GOMI earlier. :pink-shock:

[flyawaystray]

Wish Dede and Greg would be posted, they deserve it.

[rward]

I would say that all blogs are, to a degree, not entirely true. It's just too easy to edit out fear, marriage troubles, doubt, etc.

[Val78]

I would say that all blogs are, to a degree, not entirely true. It's just too easy to edit out fear, marriage troubles, doubt, etc.

Handful maybe area. So much more fun to paint a prettier or more desperate picture.

The hoaxes are fascinating as they're uncovered though. April Rose was a crazy mess!

[martian]

I'd read for myself, but Huffpost turns my computer to molasses. Were they fundraising? I just wonder about motivation. Maybe it's a new kind of Munchausen by proxy. In which case, I guess at least they aren't making some poor kid ill in real life.

Gross. It's just gross playing with people's emotions like that.

[keen23]

I'd read for myself, but Huffpost turns my computer to molasses. Were they fundraising? I just wonder about motivation. Maybe it's a new kind of Munchausen by proxy. In which case, I guess at least they aren't making some poor kid ill in real life.

Gross. It's just gross playing with people's emotions like that.

No fundraising. Just a teenage girl who made up a sick child, stole pictures from some random Facebook account, and befriended people who's real children had real cancer. Sick hobby if you ask me.

[lizziesmom]

The child's picture she was using was not sick and very much alive. She claimed he died from cancer.

[martian]

No fundraising. Just a teenage girl who made up a sick child, stole pictures from some random Facebook account, and befriended people who's real children had real cancer. Sick hobby if you ask me.

The child's picture she was using was not sick and very much alive. She claimed he died from cancer.

A teenager did it? Wow. Sad. There's something incredibly needy in that. How does an idea like that even occur to a kid? "Well, I've seen the last Twilight movie - I think I'll try some emotional vampirism to fill the void."

I have a friend with a little blog where she keeps everybody up to date on her son's progress fighting his cancer. We bonded over discussing our kids' medical issues (not cancer for my daughter, thankfully). It would be so violating to find out someone you shared with like that was basically defrauding you of intimate confidences.

[Jinger Jar]

The Warriorelihoax site said they've seen an uptick in the number of teens who've invented sick kids and blogged about them after Taylor Swift released her song Ronan. One of their red flags with these sick kid FB pages and Twitter accounts is if they're being followed by a lot of teens who attend the same high school or who live in the same community.

It's disgusting, and you'd think a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old would have enough emotional maturity and empathy to understand the pain these hoaxes cause the friends and families of actual children with life threatening diseases. But alas...

[Mela99]

I feel like there was a documentary or something on this. Maybe a daytime spot with Dr.Phil or something... can anybody else remember it?

[nelliebelle1197]

I feel like there was a documentary or something on this. Maybe a daytime spot with Dr.Phil or something... can anybody else remember it?

You may be thinking of Eli. whose fake cancer inspired the WarriorEli blog?

[Mela99]

You may be thinking of Eli. whose fake cancer inspired the WarriorEli blog?

I might be. I'm trying to place it. . . .

[SPHASH]

Too bad this person didn't expose that Notre Dame ball player and his "girlfriend"

[martian]

The Warriorelihoax site said they've seen an uptick in the number of teens who've invented sick kids and blogged about them after Taylor Swift released her song Ronan. One of their red flags with these sick kid FB pages and Twitter accounts is if they're being followed by a lot of teens who attend the same high school or who live in the same community.

It's disgusting, and you'd think a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old would have enough emotional maturity and empathy to understand the pain these hoaxes cause the friends and families of actual children with life threatening diseases. But alas...

So, the other teens know what's up? Is it like some kind of weird bonding event for groups of teens to have a little tragedy mascot? Are they experimenting with adult emotions, sort of trying them on for size? And naturally aiming for the bleachers - what fun would an avatar who was just, say, learning the importance of meeting commitments, or facing issues of procrastination head on be.

I wonder if it's mostly girls or an even distribution amongst the genders? There's an interesting sociology paper in this somewhere or maybe even a linguistic anthropology paper.

[Chasingthedog]

I feel like there was a documentary or something on this. Maybe a daytime spot with Dr.Phil or something... can anybody else remember it?

are you thinking of Catfish? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_(film)

[Talitha Cumi]

Edit: Trigger warning beneath the spoiler

There was a pretty big hoax on Ravelry (knitting/crocheting website) some months back. A woman posted about her friend Aidan, who had been raped, but who hadn't turned the rapist in because he was too traumatized. The rapist was a co-worker, and had been harassing Aidan ever since, sending him threats and other oogy things. Josh, another friend, confirmed the story. Andy was Aidan's best friend since childhood, and was married to... crap, I can't remember who. Not Josh. Another guy. After a while, Aidan came on the site, and talked about how he had been propositioned by another guy, who said all Aidan needed was a good homosexual experience, and who date-raped him. This second rapist kept saying Aidan had misunderstood, and kept begging him to let him try again. Aidan was waffling on whether to let him do it, just to shut him up.

All the commenters (and there were a lot) persuaded Aidan to call the police on the violent rapist, who was arrested, imprisoned, and arraigned. Aidan had to testify in front of the grand jury. During this time, he kept going off his meds, and did stuff like seek out another homosexual experience (with Cheyenne, who put a stop to it when he realized Aidan was traumatized), scream at Andy, Josh, and the woman who'd originally posted, and other self-destructive things. There were so many commenters offering support. This went on for months and months, and the threads had thousands of posts. People prayed for him, offered to knit comfort blankets, stuffed toys, etc. I suggested knitting the toys for charities that helped children who were traumatized. (Which is actually a good idea, and I really should do that.) There was SO MUCH emotional energy expended.

Well, guess what? It was entirely made up. Months of posts by multiple characters, incredible amounts of detail, all written by the OP. I actually started suspecting when Aidan met Cheyenne, because Cheyenne? Really? I felt so bad about doubting, though. How could I suspect this poor traumatized guy of fabrication? It wasn't until the third rape (yes, there was a third, another violent one, described in great detail) that I think people started really doubting, and asked the mods to check into the story. They determined that all the posts were written from the same IP address, even the ones that were ostensibly posted from other states.

Before banning the woman, they allowed her to post on her own profile, where she claimed she was mentally ill. I don't know, man. All I know is that I and many other people expended huge amounts of emotional energy on people who didn't exist. I felt really betrayed. The threads were locked down, but none of us were given a forum to process it, so I'm still kind of upset about it.

tl;dr- Internet hoaxes can bite me.

[martian]

That's really terrible, Talitha. I'm so sorry that happened to you. Were the moderators asked to give people a thread so the community could process the betrayal? It's really unfair that there wasn't space for people to talk out their feelings about what happened.

Jeez, couldn't she just write slash fic like everybody else?