Now, whoever WallyM7 is/was his demise (real or imagined) was a bit before my time. However, intrigued by hajaro’s statement, I did a quick search and came up with lots of threads mourning the passing of a prolific and seemingly popular doper.
Yet hajaro isn’t the only poster I’ve seen stating that WallyM7 didn’t really die. In fact, the increasing prevalence of such statements as his coupled with a complete lack of objection from anyone else leads me to believe that this is actually the majority opinion.
WallyM7 was a prolific and fairly popular poster. One day, it was announced that Wally had died. IIRC, his “daughter” came in and reported that he had slipped and fallen in a freak accident and had died. The DopeWorld was stunned. Much virtual wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued, including multi-page memorials here. The Wally icon (“Putz”) was created in his memory.
And then we find out months (years?) later that we’d all been had. WallyM7 wasn’t really dead. Since he never came by to retract the news of his own death, one can only surmise that he was in on the prank. I really don’t know. I do know that the report that his death was faked came more as a shock to me than the news of his death. It’s like finding out that the cute and amusing Latka is, in reality, an off-center, slightly disturbed creep.
Anywho, that’s all I can recall of the “WallyM7” incident. I’m sure others can fill in the blanks.
It was never proven one way or another. However, none of the Dopers in his home town were invited to/notified of the memorial or even heard about the industrial accident. The mods don’t really like discussion of the old wound because many (like Lissa) are rather nostalgic of the old plagerist. My homepage has links to previous discussions.
An added bit to the mystery is that apparently someone logged in as him under his account several months after his death. Now this could have been a family member, or someone with access to his computer who just happened to decide that the logical thing to do with a dead family member’s computer is to visit all the web sites they used to frequent. :dubious:
At one time I had an industry contact in the Canadian government, and I made an inquiry as to whether any workplace accident as was described occured in that month. No such accident had been “officially” reported as happening, which is not proof in that it is not unknown for even fatal industrial accidents to be mis-reported or mis-filed - or not filed at all. At that point I decided I didn’t care enough to check any further, as it would verge on stalking someone.
These things do not prove he was a fake by any means, but they cast serious doubt on his reality. Over the years many people have been suggested as the “real” identity, and many unsavoury rumours have been floated around as to why he suddenly had to leave (if he was a fake), most of them involving sexual escapades with other doper, secret agents in black helicopters, child porn, scientology, and other things much worse. Many bits of info and “evidence” have been floated about, including a well-done but obviously fake chat log where he outs himself as Ed Zotti, and a fake transcript of an e-mail chain with his ISP where they reveal that “Wally” was actually dialing in from the San Francisco Bay Area to a Canadian ISP.
It’s one of those mysteries that will never be answered barring someone presenting more and verifiable evidence.
Which adds another possible explanation for his sudden disappearance. Apart from the obligatory black helicopters, this one would probably involve black kippahs.
Probably because I believe most of the detective work was done on various off-board sites. The PTB kind of declared the whole thing off-limits here for a while.
As noted, it is not a recommended topic on the SDMB. Aside from the reasons given, there is also the fact that several partisans of the “Wally died” vs “Wally was a fake” feud have frequently resorted to abusive posts, some here, many on off-site boards. At this point, the topic always has the potential to descend immediately into personal attacks–an event that we prefer to not encourage.
There is nothing wrong with asking the question, but there is enough history and antagonism among the partisans that many earlier submissions of the question have led to locked threads.
Right. The point I’m making is that it’s a pretty rich piece of “Board Lore” that there’s pretty much no truth or dirty inside information on. The facts are very scarce, and to tell the truth, given how quickly people drop in and out of boards it’s not especially unusual for people to “leave” a board for some reason or another. I gave a couple of examples of crazy stuff that gets passed around, that no one really believes. For example, I don’t think anyone believes that WallyM7 is Ed (although I do know that TubaDiva and Lynn Bodoni are the same person…I mean, when I met TubaDiva last she had a lower back tattoo that said “Lynn”; what else could that imply, really?).
Hmmm, news to me, and I’m not exactly new here. Can’t say I had much invested it either way, but the mystery around the story comes totally out of left field for me.
Not to get too much of a dialogue going on it, but it seems a little weird for such an elaborate ruse that never had any future impact. Why bother if not to exploit it later, and it’s not like Wally was a particularly outlandish poster.
Elaborate ruse? Naw, it was just someone who invested a lot of untruths into a message board and needed an escape. WallyM7, or at least the person behind the online persona never died. I’ll bet my right arm on it.
Well, it’s not as if Wally only posted Rue De Day-esque tales plagerized from other sources. He did alot of typical banter and advice giving. In large part he was just a avid poster with an apparent wit.
Had he cultivated a persona of a larger-than-life individual with grand tales I might agree.
The “death” along with “daughter” sock puppet seems like a lot of extra effort just for someone to step away from a online character. Someone who’d go to those lengths to make a grand exit seems like the type who’d have pooped up again in order to capitalize on such an effective put-on.
We’ve had trolls and plenty of people with phony personas, Wally wasn’t some shortlived person who just decided to move on it seemed. I just have a hard time contriving a motivation for it.
[sub]Incidentally, this is the first I’d heard he was a rampant plagarist. It just sounds weirder and weirder to me.[/sub]