The Worst Internet Faker Of All Time?

[baratron]

So, anyone who's known me for a while will know that I have a "thing" about internet fakers - you know, people who fake their own serious illnesses or deaths on the internet. Thanks to fake_lj_deaths, I've possibly found the most egregious faker of all time.

This girl claimed to have cancer as a result of AIDS - that she'd caught from a rapist, seizures as a result of the cancer, and also deafness. None of this is true.

There are photos of her online with "feeding tubes", "oxygen masks", a "catheter", shaved head because of her "cancer treatment"... Videos of her online "having a seizure". She even faked seizures when friends were visiting.

I can't stop reading this crap. It's ridiculously compelling. And all quite convincing, apart from the times when the silly little cow was showing off tattoos despite allegedly having cancer and AIDS, and having photos taken "while in a coma in the ICU" with a pet cat visiting.

I know from all my research around the topic that people who lie to THIS extent are really quite mentally ill, so need a certain amount of sympathy rather than complete and utter hatred - but it's hard not to hate someone who could make friends with genuine cancer sufferers, and convince all her friends that she was dying.

Comments

[brooksmoses]

Oh, I met someone once who did that (not so quite egregiously). Must have been 15 years ago, or nearly so.

It was really weird, because my only previous encounter with him was selling him something on eBay (and meeting him in person because he was local). And then half a year later I got this email saying that he'd died, apparently emailed to everyone he'd ever had email contact with. And a few days later a reply-to-all alleging that actually he hadn't and was faking it. I never did get any more of the story, and it was a bit odd being on the periphery of it.

(Edit to add: I just looked and found I still had the emails. They're incredibly sketchy. Let me know if you'd like a copy!)

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Rrrgh... just scanning the entries is making me think a lot about That Person I was recently involved with, who I'm pretty sure has never descended to that particular level of madness, but 1. I'm only "pretty sure" and not "absolutely sure" so, you know, there's that 2. the words "not yet, anyway" are hovering around my head like gnats. It really does seem like the differences are of degrees, rather than type, if that makes sense.

[hiddenpaw.livejournal.com]

Never did understand this particular phenomenon. You'd think they would at least want a heroic death or something touchingly Ironic.

If I ever leave LJ the last post will be "from a friend" documenting how I laid down my life to save a number of kittens in heroic and preferably action packed fashion Including a picture of the kittens of course.

[brooksmoses]

The person I was mentioning in the other comment had a quite overblown heroic death: "...his life was taken by another person during a conflict in Southern California. [He] always fought for people who were good and defended them in the process. In a way we are not sad because we feel that the loss of his life was not in vain. He was doing what he enjoyed most."

I approve of the kittens!

[x-mass.livejournal.com]

can i make a suggestion about why you find people faking interesting
could it be a variant of impostor syndrome,
these people are being impostors for real but in impostor syndrome people feel like they are lying about who they are that they will be found out
one of the hardest aspects of disability is recognizing how far you are from 'normality' that what is normal for you is arrrggghhh I going to my bed and only getting up when i feel better for others.
It's hard to actually say life is this hard because in the process it destroys the lies that one derives hope from, the hope that were just like everybody else and we will get back to being like everybody else soon.

Of course the people who are faking would be characterized as malingerers or Münchhausen syndrome but their doing it because that cant admit to themselves about the reality of their psychological disorders, our society is very discriminatory against people with mental health issues especially as any physical issues get relabeled as really mental health issues by shrinks. Thus if someone has internalized the belief that mental health issues aren't "real" then the only way they can resolve the contradiction between what they feel and what they believe is to create a physiological disorder.

Which is why some people with CFS/ME actually have depression but mislabel it to make themselves feel better. The problem of course is that shrinks then assume that everyone with CFS/ME has a psychological issue, which is garbage (correlation is not causation)

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Oh Gods, I just read about the Emily McDonald case. That makes me feel sick to my stomach.

[firecat]

If you are interested in fakers in general, do you know about Frédéric Bourdin?