Fake Personas on Teh Internetz!

Ah, yes. Within the MyIGN community, there have been two recent “fake” people. One was quickly forgiven, her reasons were easy to understand and she’s still a part of the community. She explained herself and that was pretty much the end of the situation.

With the more recent one, it was a guy who had like 4 different personas. One of them was supposed to be a model (that link is NSFW, beware!) who was a gamer and pretty much the dream girl of most guys that I know. Really. She was fantastic in her role. The thing is, this has been happening for years, and people still get all OMGEXCITE over a pretty girl who plays games. I get quite skeptical. This has happened to me.

Kind of.

I mean, not that I was the girl. I had a boyfriend who was not named Cameron, but we’re going to call him Cameron anyway.

There was a point in my life where I was dating Cameron (and had been for about 8 months) and was in a hospital for a week. Cameron decided that this was a good time to find another girlfriend, despite his assertions that he “loved” me and “wanted to marry me.” He had proposed, too, but the ring he proposed with was big enough that it fell off the next day. Dem bad omens.

Cameron, within 4 days of talking to her, had decided that this girl Amber was the new love of his life. She was gorgeous and caring and sounded like Snow White. Cameron and Amber had started telling each other that they would love each other “forever and always” — Cameron and I would tell each other that we loved each other “always and forever.” He was obviously a really creative guy. His messages to her included pictures of uh… every part of him… and a few poorly written erotic stories.

Anyway, Amber looked like this:

If you notice, she’s really pretty. Amber had stories about how she was a tattoo artist and model. When I found out about about her, I raged a bit (understandably, I think) then asked why. He said that he thought she would kill herself if he didn’t have phone sex with her or start an online relationship with her. My response was that if her entire life was based on the conversations she held with a guy she had “known” for four days, her life was probably not worth living.

Then I broke up with Cameron and talked to Amber, who was trying to convince me to be with him still (lolwat). Her voice did not match how she looked. I mean, can you imagine a girl like that sounding like Snow White? No. She looks like she should have a sort of husky, sexy voice. Snow White sounds like she consumes nothing but poisoned apples and helium.

Eventually (as in, after a month or two) Cameron stopped talking to Amber. I had been telling him that she couldn’t possibly look like that and sound the way she did, it didn’t add up, etc.

After they stopped talking, I became friends with Amber’s new Portland-based boyfriend. We talked every few weeks, then he bought her a ticket to go out to Portland to meet him and stay with him for a couple weeks. Like most online friendships, we started talking less and less until we were only talking once every few months. At some point, we spoke about Amber.

He had bought her plane ticket, yes. She had never departed Illinois, where she lived, though.

Instead, she had messaged the new guy the day before she was scheduled to leave. She had something to tell him.

“I’m not going to look like I do in my pictures.”

He assumed that she meant she had dyed her hair or something. Noooooope. She sent him a picture of herself — her real self. His description was something like, “She has mousey brown hair, her face is covered in piercings. She looks like she was hit by an ugly truck and it backed up to hit her again. And again. I told her not to come.” He then linked me to the real Amber — a Washington-based tattoo artist and model.

I had gotten back with Cameron after we broke up (this happened several times, it was a shitty relationship) and told him. He didn’t believe me until I had him talk to the new guy. I had a few weeks of “toldja so” laughter.

So, I have a bit of experience with fake people using the pictures of others to attract potential companions. Generally, if he or she seems too good to be true, he or she is. There are always exceptions. I mean, I’m engaged to a guy I still consider too good to be true, and our relationship started online.

Anywho.

Good luck with pseudo (and real) people on teh internetz!