When your "online" friends turn out to be fictitious

A while ago I wrote about the friendships people form on the internet and whether if something happened to one of them, their virtual friends might ever get to find out or whether they would remain oblivious.

But there is another element to internet friendship, which is the fact that you can never really be sure that someone is who they say they are online. After all, it’s easy enough to create an account on your website of choice, with an email set up from any provider, invent a life and a set of circumstances of your choosing and set out to befriend the people you want to befriend.

In principle I suppose there’s nothing wrong with the idea of inventing a persona to be the person you wanted to be, maybe to gain acceptance if one doesn’t have that in real life. A better job, a couple of kids, a rich partner, all things which some people might aspire to but which they perhaps might not have, and so inventing them somehow gives them a sense of fulfilment, or acceptance, even if it’s only on a superficial level. But in truth it can only ever be superficial because you cannot form genuine connections which are based on fiction, and inventing a persona is essentially creating a fictional character. And while I said in principle it isn’t wrong, in truth it’s based on deception.

But there is a far more sinister element to creating an online persona, and that is the type of online persona that is seemingly created in order to prey on other peoples’ sympathies, and who often use their vulnerability to achieve their goal, i.e. attention, and in some instances even money.

These people usually target people who are in specific categories, such as parents who have lost a child, or people who have serious illnesses, and they create their persona to fit with those things so their intended victims can often relate to what they are going through, and will give them the attention they obviously crave.

It is a phenomenon I have seen referred to as Munchausen by internet, and which is common on every web forum I have ever been on.

Usually the types of scenarios people invent are so emotive as to almost make them impossible to challenge. I have known posters invent the death of a child, or the death of twins following premature birth, and I have known of at least three who have killed off their persona through suicide.

And when feelings run high and empathy is strong, it takes the most unfeeling person (in the eyes of others) to suggest that someone might have fabricated the death of their own child, something which is undoubtedly any parent’s worst nightmare, and it’s even harder to claim that someone has faked their own death because, well, they’re dead, so there is no-one left to challenge apart from the fictitious family who, after they have posted the death announcement, might never come back.

But often once one person raises their suspicions there are usually others that were suspicious too but didn’t have the courage to speak out for fear of either being wrong, or lynched by the virtual masses.

But these instances are real and there are really people out there who make up whole lives, seemingly oblivious to the fact that when they die, or when they announce the death of a child, they are hurting their greatest supporters. I imagine any mother who has lost a child knows what someone is feeling when that happens to them, and so will empathize and no doubt have memories of their own situation. Or someone who considers an online person to be a close friend will grieve their loss if they have died, oblivious to the fact that the person has probably moved on elsewhere to create a new character and a new life, with a new set of victims.

I am sure that there are many people out there who will say that someone who goes to these lengths must be seriously mentally ill, and probably deserving of our sympathy on some level. But while I am in no doubt that someone who does this must have serious mental issues, and is probably even in need of professional help, I think the fact that their actions are so calculated and leave so many victims behind, both at the time and once they have been revealed to be fakes, that I find it impossible to have any sympathy for them.

The false sense of anonymity behind the username

Internet forums are an increasing phenomenon. If you want to have a conversation about something, there is invariably a forum to do so. Your favourite hobby/tips on the best shopping websites/discussions of current news events. Then there are the more personal forums which claim to provide mutual support by members for members, pet ownership/parenting/depression/bereavement - the list is endless.

The one thing that all of these forums have in common is that generally in order to sign up, you have to have a username. This username is generally considered to be anonymous – and members are usually discouraged from creating a username that would make them identifiable. For me this creates two issues.

The first is that the perceived anonymity gives people a false sense of confidence in terms of what they are happy to post. It’s a lot easier to voice your actual opinion of a situation/individual after all if you’re A, behind a keyboard and not voicing that opinion to someone’s face, and B, doing it from behind a username and not putting your actual name to your actual opinion. I have seen some truly horrible opinions posted on internet forums and some quite nasty personal attacks on individuals, where the poster seems totally oblivious to the fact that there are also real people on the other end of those comments. I am certain that a lot of people wouldn’t say the things they post online to someone’s face.

The second, and I think more concerning issue is that the perceived anonymity of a username means people will post far more personal and revealing information about themselves that they possibly wouldn’t feel comfortable telling their friends and family, in fact sometimes that personal and revealing information might concern their friends and family, and yet they are comfortable posting it on the internet because they believe they are anonymous behind their username.

I think it’s fair to say that the longer you post on a website, and the more people you get to know there, the more comfortable you will become posting the more intimate and personal details of your life. And yet we can never be sure who is reading what we’re posting on the internet. After all, if you have a username that makes you unidentifiable, your husband/sister/next door neighbour that you are posting about might also have a username that makes them unidentifiable, and if you are posting about them, they could just as easily be reading what you’re writing and even commenting on it without your knowledge. And the more you write, the more you identify yourself, through revealing your location, the number of children you have, the issues you might be having in your life.

In fact, the people you’re posting about might not even post on the same sites as you, they may purely lurk there. After all most internet forums can be read without a member needing to join, so it is very easy to lurk on a website, reading the specific posts of specific individuals without those individuals even knowing who their posts are being read by.

While I think that deep down we do all know that the internet is not anonymous and that anyone can be identified if they post enough identifiable information about themselves, I do think that the fact you can join a site with a username does give many people a false sense of security in terms of what they reveal online, especially if they are a member of that site over a long period of time.

I have regularly seen written that people see a web forum as their only source of support, for many different issues, even to the extent that I have heard people say they can post things on their forum of choice that they couldn’t reveal to their real life family and friends.

And yet once you post something on the internet it is there for ever. If you reveal something personal about yourself you have no idea who might stumble upon it and when. So even if you posted something today, you might have forgotten about it in five, ten, fifteen years time when your partner/sister/even your children might stumble upon it and recognize you, or even themselves in the detail of your posts.

In truth posting on an internet forum is a bit like standing blindfolded in the town square, while people who are also blindfolded walk past, so you can’t see who they are, and they can’t see who you are, but they might recognize you from your voice/the things you have to say. But you won’t know who has heard because you didn’t see them. You wouldn’t do it in the street, and the internet is no different.

In reality one should really stick to the principal of only posting things online you would be happy for anyone in real life to read, on the understanding that anyone in real life might already be reading it. And step away from the idea that a username creates anonymity, because in truth all a username creates is a false sense of security.