MWOP Made Gawker

[deborahlynn1979]

Dum dum dum.

http://gawker.com/5914621/the-long-fake ... x-unravels

[Didi]

that is one CRAZY ass story!

[simplysweet]

I cannot wait until the whole Mckmama things totally unravels........

[mystweaver]

The readers of MckMama Without Pity are among the most fearsomely skeptical on the internet—these are people who dedicate hours to exposing the dark truths behind mommy blog posts such as "What's for Lunch!"

I resent that. Surely we at FJ are the skepticalist of them all.

[mrs]

I resent that. Surely we at FJ are the skepticalist of them all.

I've mention FJ, once over there, and there were many comments about how FJ, puts the fundie bloggers in there place and how they all love reading FJ.

Hi MWOPers

[Angri-la]

I believe everyone on the internet is a cat walking across a keyboard, unless proven otherwise.

[Elle]

11 years, and the hoaxer is only 22?! Well no wonder the lie evolved with social media. She was 11 in the early days of the internet when she started this!

[aubrietta]

11 years, and the hoaxer is only 22?! Well no wonder the lie evolved with social media. She was 11 in the early days of the internet when she started this!

Considering the various places the email with the Spypig code was opened and sent to, and the depth and lenght of the hoax, it I would think that there is more than on hoaxer involved.

[Angri-la]

11 years, and the hoaxer is only 22?! Well no wonder the lie evolved with social media. She was 11 in the early days of the internet when she started this!

Good for the ladies over at MWOP; glad they turned their obvious zeal and intelligence over to something else. The Eli's Warrior thing is on the level of "Catfish" or The sad romance of Jesse James (aka Janna St James), and the woman she duped.

I don't think I will ever understand people, but I wish I could see the anthropological study in a century, one studying the impact of the internet on human evolution. In the case of Janna, she pulled similar stunts pre-internet, so the "pretending to be someone else to strangers" is not entirely an internet phenomena.

The oddest thing is, what did this girl have to gain from it? She wasn't having a fauxmance, she wasn't making money. In fact, she spent money sending out bracelets. Why does anything surprise me anymore?

[Elle]

Considering the various places the email with the Spypig code was opened and sent to, and the depth and lenght of the hoax, it I would think that there is more than on hoaxer involved.

Not necessarily. Maybe, but maybe not. It's not that hard to use free proxy servers. She could have opened an e-mail without using a proxy, set up a proxy for something and then forgotten to take it back down before re-reading, and forwarded it to a different e-mail account of hers that she opened while on another server. I have a lot of experience using proxies since I've had to use them. A downside to free wifi is that there are some sites that are blocked, and sometimes I get a "You're banned" notice when going to forums I know for fact I haven't been banned from only to find out after signing in through a proxy that someone else with the same IP was banned by IP. ISPs can further identify people, but website and forum owners can't usually get further than an IP. I've also forwarded e-mail from my spam or semi-public e-mail accounts to my personal e-mail account, like when a friend mistakenly sends something to my Yahoo account. (The spam account is for when I want to comment on a news site that requires signing up, and you know you're likely to get spammed. It's not to spam people with.)

Now it's possible she had help, but it's also possible that she didn't and was just that involved in what she was doing that it consumed every spare minute she had.

[mockingbird]

This is crazy.

I'm a little surprised the girl got into medical school. After going through that process I don't think medical schools would be too pleased to admit her - even if it may not be a legal crime it shows a history of lack of honesty. There are so many people applying that any one little thing can count against you. And the fact that she wants to be an oncologist makes me a little sick. I would say that pretending to be the parent of a cancer patient shows a decided lack of empathy for what oncology patients and their families go through. If the Warrior Eli story had started AND ENDED when she was a teen, I would say that it was probably a misguided application of sincerely wanting to help, but she should have known better at 22 (when she was finally caught). I know having been a childhood cancer patient myself I would have been just absolutely disgusted if I found out my oncologist had pretended their kid had cancer (or anything else I had) and would have told my parents that I wanted to see another doctor.

[Elle]

Good for the ladies over at MWOP; glad they turned their obvious zeal and intelligence over to something else. The Eli's Warrior thing is on the level of "Catfish" or The sad romance of Jesse James (aka Janna St James), and the woman she duped.

I don't think I will ever understand people, but I wish I could see the anthropological study in a century, one studying the impact of the internet on human evolution. In the case of Janna, she pulled similar stunts pre-internet, so the "pretending to be someone else to strangers" is not entirely an internet phenomena.

The oddest thing is, what did this girl have to gain from it? She wasn't having a fauxmance, she wasn't making money. In fact, she spent money sending out bracelets. Why does anything surprise me anymore?

And there's the 9-11 survivor who won awards for her work on behalf of fellow survivors, putting her real name out there and appearing in person, when it turned out she was nowhere near any of the crash sites and hadn't really lost any loved ones.

The "pretending to be someone else" thing has been going on for as long as people have felt the need to escape their misdeeds or have wanted to pretend to be someone else for financial gain. The internet has just made it easier. You don't have to worry about your face being recognized, you don't have to try to learn to alter your handwriting, or to disguise your voice.

Emily's explanation is plausible, a young girl with a bad home life using the early days of the internet to her advantage, back when few people used real names or pictures, and like today, poor grammar and spelling are accepted and even coddled. So an 11-year-old's writing wouldn't have been out of place. It's plausible that she got so sucked in that it was preferable to what her real life was. It doesn't sound like she had any malicious intent. She never asked for anything, and did raise money for a legit charity. She should have faded out before discovery, which would have been one out. I think that what she had to gain out of it was a fantasy world (some people delve too deeply in WoW and other MMORPGs) where she was in control and she thought she could help people. Not all gain is monetary. But she carried it on too long (you can argue that even starting it was wrong, but she apparently did help people along the way, or you can argue that because she did help, that she still should have found a way to fade out so no one was hurt), and real people were hurt. I think it would be hard to argue that she intended any personal financial gain when she turned down money and sent out bracelets, and I think it speaks volumes that she didn't try to defend her little world when she was outed, that she admitted to it right away instead of insisting there were just a bunch of haters. Usually when we hear about hoaxes, they're accompanied by accountings of how much money and personal items and even vacations they received. I think she needs therapy to help her separate from this.

I also think this story should be held up of an example of how easy it is for people to fool you, especially online, and to be careful getting personally involved with people you connect to through people you personally know who knows that person.

[QuiverMeTimbers]

Hi guys, I'm Taryn, the one who started the Eli hoax blog. FreeJinger is my favorite community ever. I was active on it under this name (way back in the heady days of Emily and Dna) at the yuku site but I don't know if I've commented on the new one.

Emily didn't start this when she was 11- she was more like 15. She did have a couple of internet romances but it doesn't look like she made money off of it. She did collect gifts, cards and whatever people might have included in those.

[Angri-la]

Hi guys, I'm Taryn, the one who started the Eli hoax blog. FreeJinger is my favorite community ever. I was active on it under this name (way back in the heady days of Emily and Dna) at the yuku site but I don't know if I've commented on the new one.

Emily didn't start this when she was 11- she was more like 15. She did have a couple of internet romances but it doesn't look like she made money off of it. She did collect gifts, cards and whatever people might have included in those.

Hey! I like your work-- thank you, and I loved your username, reminds me of the Tom Waits song.

I used to work on an LJ group that was devoted to outing this kind of thing. Hell, FJ was hit with at least one major emotional manipulator, so I always appreciate seeing someone outed. I should see if you've updated; you hadn't the last time I looked.

[CanadianHippie]

I believe everyone on the internet is a cat walking across a keyboard, unless proven otherwise.

I prefer thinking of everyone as penguins.

[godlytomatosoup]

I'm sure she did it for the attention, not for money. I hang out in fanfic writing communities, and there have been a lot of really amazing hoaxes there, and usually it wasn't the money, it was the adulation. They thought people wouldn't like them enough if they were just themselves, they had to make up a really good story to be liked enough for their requirements. And also the drama - some people are addicted to that.

[gustava]

While I cannot condone what she did, I am impressed with her ability to spin such a yarn, over so many years.

[pixydust]

First off, Hi Taryn! So nice to "meet" you, you did a great investigative job with this!

Second, I'm going to admit something that I've never admitted before (and no, I've never done an internet hoax!). When I was a kid, probably starting at 10 or so, I began keeping fake journals. This would have been the late 80's, so pre-internet, they were written in actual journals and notebooks. I invented people, families, friends, complete lives. Eventually I began writing these as if I was myself, as an adult....so in them I went to college, met a man, got married, had kids, and started a business. Hell, I had a kid become an Olympic athlete in this! I had a notebook just for notes of the extended family trees and friends families. I even ripped out pages from magazines and catalogs of room that i liked for my "house". I did this for years. Why? I was a miserable kid and teen and my reality was something that I couldn't face. Living these fantasies was more interesting and a safer place to be then real life. My point in talking about this isn't to make this a "look at me" thread, but to give a perspective about this, a sort-of "I've been there". Honestly, if the internet had been around when I was a kid like now, I probably would have been fake blogging like this woman was, thinking that I wasn't hurting anyone.

BTW, I destroyed those journals as an older teen. I actually burned it all one day when I was home alone. And yes, I can now see just how messed up I was, it makes me pretty sad to look back on it.

[mockingbird]

The thing that bugs me is that she kept it up as an older teen/young adult. I have kept blogs/journals for my characters before (when online making it clear it's a fictional blog - I actually know a few people who do this) and was really obsessed for years as a kid with an imaginary family I created (I would alternate "playing" one of a few characters in the family). I don't think the escapism itself is bad and I can understand it. I just feel like she should not have kept it up as an adult pretending that these were real people. If she had made a story/fiction blog she'd probably be praised for her creativity and I wouldn't see anything wrong with it. Like I said in my earlier post I can see a young teen thinking they are helping or not getting that people will really think these people are real, but I would expect an older teen and especially a 22 year old to get that pretending to be someone online is questionable at best.

HuffPost just posted the story and said her medical school is looking into it. I'm glad.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/0 ... 78914.html

[BravaAmica]

This is crazy.

I'm a little surprised the girl got into medical school. After going through that process I don't think medical schools would be too pleased to admit her - even if it may not be a legal crime it shows a history of lack of honesty. There are so many people applying that any one little thing can count against you. And the fact that she wants to be an oncologist makes me a little sick. I would say that pretending to be the parent of a cancer patient shows a decided lack of empathy for what oncology patients and their families go through. If the Warrior Eli story had started AND ENDED when she was a teen, I would say that it was probably a misguided application of sincerely wanting to help, but she should have known better at 22 (when she was finally caught). I know having been a childhood cancer patient myself I would have been just absolutely disgusted if I found out my oncologist had pretended their kid had cancer (or anything else I had) and would have told my parents that I wanted to see another doctor.

She's going to medical school?!?? who wants a doctor with Munchausen syndrome?!???

That story is some crazy shit.

[QuiverMeTimbers]

The med school thing is what scared the crap out of me. She already posted an IV bag with a label made out for "Eli," so who knows what she'd do if she had access to patients' records and other medical supplies.

Between this and MckMama outing me and 20 others on her Facebook as the cause of people suspecting her of bankruptcy fraud and threatening to sue me, it's been a busy could of weeks!

[AmyP]

I believe everyone on the internet is a cat walking across a keyboard, unless proven otherwise.

yes! absolutely.

[pixydust]

The med school thing is what scared the crap out of me. She already posted an IV bag with a label made out for "Eli," so who knows what she'd do if she had access to patients' records and other medical supplies.

Between this and MckMama outing me and 20 others on her Facebook as the cause of people suspecting her of bankruptcy fraud and threatening to sue me, it's been a busy could of weeks!

Haha, bloggers who fake stuff should be trembling in their little boots! You rock.