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I've long been fascinated with Internet fakers: the people maintenance who hang around forums and social media sites, vomiting lies out of every orifice like a drunken frat boy who's also possessed maintenance by a demon. A few now-defunct maintenance communities once cataloged these filthy, filthy liars, but apart from that, Internet fakers really don't get the attention they deserve. And that's weird, because over the years, I've noticed that they share a bunch of bizarre similarities. Like ... #4. They Often Aren't After Your Money
You've probably heard a lot about Nigerian princes and romance scammers , who for years now have been kindly separating naive computer users from their money. And you've probably maintenance also heard of "catfishing," where people pretend to be someone else for the purpose of a fake online relationship, which honestly is almost as bad as a fish pretending to be a cat.
Catfishers and Nigerian princes are bad people, it's true, but at least these scammers are clearly after something: your lonely aunt's money, maybe, or a sexy nude chat session with your unsuspecting grandpa. Other fakers maintenance on the Internet have much murkier motives. For a start, there are sickness fakers, people who join online communities devoted to chronic illnesses and chime in with stories of their own fictional sufferings. These fakers can go to extremes: in 2012, a college student maintenance admitted she'd pretended to be a man whose son was suffering from kidney cancer, maintenance a scam she'd been running for 11 years . Cancer fakers in particular are so widespread on the Internet that one woman who started a cancer blog was befriended by three unconnected women who all turned out to be pretending. Three .
At first glance, these fake-sick weirdos seem like the online version of people like this man , who claimed to have terminal cancer to get donation money. maintenance But here's the weird part: a lot of the fake-sick people online aren't maintenance after money. That college student with the nonexistent cancer-son? She did collect thousands of dollars in donations ... and they were all forwarded to a legitimate charity. Many other fakers, like the women who scammed the real cancer victim, never ask for money in the first place. On the surface, at least, these people don't seem to be gaining much at all.
This habit of faking illness for no apparent reason even has a name: Munchausen by Internet . It's thought to be a form of Munchausen Syndrome, maintenance a factitious disorder in which patients deceive doctors and loved ones by feigning symptoms of an illness. What exactly causes Munchausen Syndrome is still unknown, but we can all agree that, if nothing else, it allows a person to get all the attention and sympathy that comes with being sick, minus the sucky "being sick" part. Another thing is ... #3. They Don't Even Try to Make Their Lies Realistic
Personally, if I was going to lie on the Internet, I'd put some effort into it. If I wanted to pretend to be, say, a world-renowned expert in monkeys, I'd buy books on primatology and memorize monkey-related facts and make sure that all the pictures of me holding monkeys in my LinkedIn profile were Photoshopped just right. But apparently I'm in the minority, because most people who decide to start lying on the Internet just don't bother. Take military fakers: guys who pop up on social media claiming past or present military service that only ever happened in their head or on their screen during a particularly devoted Call of Duty session. You'd think they'd take the time to learn some basic military shit, like the thing about how if you're a man in the U.S. military, you usually have to shave your beard before you put on a uniform:
Military fakers also inevitably claim to be elite special forces, even though "claims to be elite special forces" is now listed absolutely maintenance everywhere as one of the most common warning signs of a fake, and if they really wanted to slip under the radar they'd be better off saying they were a cook. Hell, even if your lie about being a cook was exposed, people would probably