My former best friend is an internet Faker. AMA

[CheepCantFly]

So just that really. It came out a few years ago that a very good friend of mine was one of those people who fakes an whole online existence under a fake name.
She had a whole parallel online life that bore very little resemblance to her actual life. She seemed to hit most of the tropes including a twin pregnancy (always twins!) and then claimed her 'husband' had died suddenly while she was pregnant. It absolutely destroyed her online and offline friendships and she ended up leaving our part of the UK completely to try to get away from it. Anyone have any questions about what it's like to realise your friend has a whole false life?

What The????

I don't even know what that is, but I'm intrigued! What would prompt someone to do that...

Catfish TV Show says this happens a lot. Often people who have experienced trauma create these personas and cannot get out of the life they create online It is very sad all round.
Did she get any empathy at all?

How did you find out?
is she unwell?

She's never indicated any traumatic events happening to her but her sister was anorexic and on recovery around the same time. She got pregnant by a short term boyfriend at 22, he thought it was accidental but she had stopped taking the pill as she wanted a baby. That was unusual amongst our social group, most of us were at Uni or working and she was unemployed even before she had her baby. She then met another man and lived with him and her baby, it would have been about 2002. It was during this period she concocted the online alternative life.

She claimed to be a few years older with a very successful husband and had a daughter and was then pregnant with twins. Her husband then died, I think she claimed it was a car crash and then he died during emergency surgery, leaving her pregnant. This was pre-Go Fund Me but on the forum she used to do all this she needed up with people donating via PayPal and also sending her stuff via Amazon

But how was it discovered by her (idiot) funders that this was pure fiction?

Attention. I was a member of a forum and for some years there was a member who would post these elaborate stories about the mishaps in their life. They were a popular forum member who got a lot of attention. The stories started to get a bit unbelievable (to me) but I don’t think they were discussed between others as they’d got a loyal “following”. Eventually they posted a photograph which someone did a reverse image search on and called them out. As far as I remember they just disappeared without even attempting to defend themselves. The game was up, time to move on.

sometimes people do it for financial gain but it’s often merely fir the attention. People develop entirely fictional personas. The only thing they have in common is that all the people that do this have very low self esteem. 🤷‍♀️

This seems a bit off to me posting about someone who did a stupid thing yrs ago.
Too much detail here and probably a bad idea to expand.

Where was she posting all this stuff - djd she have online friends because of it?

I feel sad that you’re posting this. You’re adding to the drama by sharing even more things about her personal life. I get that what she did was wrong but you’re not coming across well either.

An AMA with no questions answered

People do this. Haven't they done it on here? They did it on handbag (a whole coma thing), they did it on damsels (some sort of wheels for a disabled dog or something)? The one on here was pretty distressing when it came out but I can't remember details now, it was a while back.

I'm guessing the OP is the 'friend' but if she admitted it, she'd get torn apart.

Fucking hell. No I'm not the friend. I just wasn't expecting this thread to pop up again two months later after being scolded for posting it all.

She did it for attention initially and then I suspect cos people sent her stuff.
She did have real life friends and we used to all use a web forum too based around a local music venue. Somehow someone from the other forums she used (it was the era of Bravenet forums and MySpace) found out she was posting a totally different life to us and outed her. It was very weird to discover that when she was too busy to meet for a coffee or whatever she was actually posting prolifically about her unexpected twin pregnancy and setting up wish lists etc. At first I thought people had stolen her MySpace pics but it was her using the same ones. i questioned she'd ever told me after that and wonder every now and then if she is still doing it now we are in our 40s or if she settled down and got a job or if she's some mega influencer who I don't even know about.