What sort of person...
Feb. 2nd, 2005 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanju...spends six years maintaining at least three distinct on-line identities? Identities who post prolifically (thousands of posts each) on a web-based discussion forum, and play in several and run at least one PbEM Champions game?
There's a tempest in a teapot going on at the Hero Games forum. It appears that two popular (and, as I mentioned, prolific) participants there turn out to be figments of someone's imagination. "Rachel" and "Kara" have been active in the Global Guardians online Champions universe and they've been posting to the Hero Games discussion forums for years--they certainly predate my participation on both sites. "Kara" was even the player advocate for the GGU for some time.
In hindsight, of course, some participants at the Hero Games website claim they always suspected these two weren't real. Some of these folks are even telling the truth, since some pointed questions in a private message apparently caused the people in question to vanish. Others, I suspect, are just jumping on the "I knew it!" bandwagon. It's easy to say now that they were "over the top" or "too good to be true."
How so? "Kara" and "Rachel" were allegedly a pair of lesbians who lived together. They were also allegedly a) young, b) cute, c) gamers, and d) not averse to posting occasional cheesecake pictures of themselves and engaging in juvenile sexual banter with folks on the forum. So now that they seem to have been conclusively unmasked as fictional, it's easy to say they were never anything more than drooling fanboy bait.
And yet... The backstory revealed over thousands of posts was remarkably consistent. Men and women who exchanged emails with one or othe other of them, or via instant messages, agree on that. Some of them, including other women on the forum, discussed pregnancy--one of them was allegedly pregnant at one time--and say that the discussion of that experience rang true. One participant on the forum actually spoke to "Rachel" on the telephone once a few years back.
Additionally, the third identity, "Fred" (posting as Howard T. Duck, but that was admittedly a nom de plume), supposedly "Kara's" cousin, appears to be the only real person involved. And he is indisputably real. People have met him. He's been helping support (financially) the Global Guardians website for quite some time. When the scandal happened, a return call to "Rachel's" telephone number reached a man who knew no "Rachel" or "Kara" (though they supposedly lived together), but who had been Fred's roommate until Fred moved out about a year ago.
So Fred the cousin is the only real, live human being anyone can point to, and presumably the mastermind of this very elaborate charade. "Kara" and "Rachel" are pretty conclusively fraudulent. If you do a Google image search for "Jacqueline Lovell" (a minor porn starlet) with "safe search" turned off, you'll find several of "Kara's" pictures turning up. A search for "amateur redhead" will turn up a website where "Rachel's" photos can be seen. Hard to argue with that.
I'll confess that I never doubted that they existed. But I never gave it much thought anyhow. They predated me in the GGU and on the Hero forums and other people treated them as real, so I had no reason to doubt it. Real or not, they were just names on a bulletin board. (I also didn't fawn over them, real or not. The world is so full of attractive women that you can't hardly swing a dead cat without hitting one. So hooting and hollering at a couple who happen to post on a forum you use is just...unseemly. Predictable in many cases, I suppose, but not something I wanted to participate in.)
Some of the participants feel thoroughly used and abused, having spent years conversing with them and--in some cases--having had fairly deep, serious conversations about kids, child-rearing, pregnancy, childhood issues and other such non-trivial subjects--with "Kara" or "Rachel". I wasn't one of them. I'm just boggled by the sheer amount of work that had to have gone into this deception, and maintained for years.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snippy and I both agree that honesty, in addition to being right is just a hell of a lot easier. You don't have to worry and work to keep your stories straight, and remember what you told who, and whether all the evidence supports you. This kind of long-term effort is unimaginable to me. What would motivate someone to do this?
There's a tempest in a teapot going on at the Hero Games forum. It appears that two popular (and, as I mentioned, prolific) participants there turn out to be figments of someone's imagination. "Rachel" and "Kara" have been active in the Global Guardians online Champions universe and they've been posting to the Hero Games discussion forums for years--they certainly predate my participation on both sites. "Kara" was even the player advocate for the GGU for some time.
In hindsight, of course, some participants at the Hero Games website claim they always suspected these two weren't real. Some of these folks are even telling the truth, since some pointed questions in a private message apparently caused the people in question to vanish. Others, I suspect, are just jumping on the "I knew it!" bandwagon. It's easy to say now that they were "over the top" or "too good to be true."
How so? "Kara" and "Rachel" were allegedly a pair of lesbians who lived together. They were also allegedly a) young, b) cute, c) gamers, and d) not averse to posting occasional cheesecake pictures of themselves and engaging in juvenile sexual banter with folks on the forum. So now that they seem to have been conclusively unmasked as fictional, it's easy to say they were never anything more than drooling fanboy bait.
And yet... The backstory revealed over thousands of posts was remarkably consistent. Men and women who exchanged emails with one or othe other of them, or via instant messages, agree on that. Some of them, including other women on the forum, discussed pregnancy--one of them was allegedly pregnant at one time--and say that the discussion of that experience rang true. One participant on the forum actually spoke to "Rachel" on the telephone once a few years back.
Additionally, the third identity, "Fred" (posting as Howard T. Duck, but that was admittedly a nom de plume), supposedly "Kara's" cousin, appears to be the only real person involved. And he is indisputably real. People have met him. He's been helping support (financially) the Global Guardians website for quite some time. When the scandal happened, a return call to "Rachel's" telephone number reached a man who knew no "Rachel" or "Kara" (though they supposedly lived together), but who had been Fred's roommate until Fred moved out about a year ago.
So Fred the cousin is the only real, live human being anyone can point to, and presumably the mastermind of this very elaborate charade. "Kara" and "Rachel" are pretty conclusively fraudulent. If you do a Google image search for "Jacqueline Lovell" (a minor porn starlet) with "safe search" turned off, you'll find several of "Kara's" pictures turning up. A search for "amateur redhead" will turn up a website where "Rachel's" photos can be seen. Hard to argue with that.
I'll confess that I never doubted that they existed. But I never gave it much thought anyhow. They predated me in the GGU and on the Hero forums and other people treated them as real, so I had no reason to doubt it. Real or not, they were just names on a bulletin board. (I also didn't fawn over them, real or not. The world is so full of attractive women that you can't hardly swing a dead cat without hitting one. So hooting and hollering at a couple who happen to post on a forum you use is just...unseemly. Predictable in many cases, I suppose, but not something I wanted to participate in.)
Some of the participants feel thoroughly used and abused, having spent years conversing with them and--in some cases--having had fairly deep, serious conversations about kids, child-rearing, pregnancy, childhood issues and other such non-trivial subjects--with "Kara" or "Rachel". I wasn't one of them. I'm just boggled by the sheer amount of work that had to have gone into this deception, and maintained for years.
snippy and I both agree that honesty, in addition to being right is just a hell of a lot easier. You don't have to worry and work to keep your stories straight, and remember what you told who, and whether all the evidence supports you. This kind of long-term effort is unimaginable to me. What would motivate someone to do this?