For example, you have two accounts on a certain website. On one account, you report that you are female. On another account, you report you are male. On one account, you behave very erratically (always self-contradicting yourself), and on another you behave very consistently. On one account, you say that you like chocolate, and on another account, you say the exact opposite: that you hate chocolate. On one account, your writing style is very relaxed and casual. On another account, it’s very rigid, traditional, and formal. So, has anybody tried this and fooled people in the process?
I have to admit that I have done so two times on two separate forums. It’s kind of fun how I can easily create the most believable but false Internet personas. In real life, it’s not so easy, but in different situations among different groups of people, I can behave very differently. Among some group of people, I can behave very quietly, avoiding to share my opinion. Among another, I can freely express myself, creating a rather complicated personality. Hee-hee-hee.
No, it sounds like work. Coming up with a believable persona seems pointless, lots of real people don’ t have those. What is the “Hee-hee-Hee” about? When does it get fun?
I’ve gone on a married dating site as a man and a woman to see if I could recognize anyone I know. I’ve never interacted with myself though, or anyone else.
Yeah that’s the part I don’t get - I don’t find “tricking” people to be a fun thing to do generally, it seems like a sort of juvenile. If it was tolerated by the admins on a particular board, or a common happening, I’d leave.
On another board I used to be on, someone scammed quite a lot of people out of money and care packages by creating a fake persona who had a ludicrously ongoing tragic life. She also created at least two other sympathetic personas to keep the scam going (this was all fairly obvious to many people, myself included, but plenty fell for it.)
On the old Point Ask I did create a second identity to counter an idiot that was misusing 3-4 to make himself look good. There was another guy like me.
What you are describing sounds harmless enough. What sickens me are the people that use multiple identities to manipulate points and ratings. Virtually every site I have been on where people are rated, most of the highest rated ones got there by cheating. Many of them are know nothings giving terrible advice.
A good example recently appeared at YA in the dog section. There is a box with the top 10 people with best answers. Best answers are chosen 2 ways. The OP can choose. but often doesn’t. Otherwise it is by voting. I have to admit many of my best answers are by one vote since you are allowed vote for yourself. I am often pleased to see 67% of 3 answers. Seldom do you see more than 3-4 votes spread over a half dozen answers. Yet this person was getting 6-8 votes on every answer, answers little different from the others.
I think people that cheat on internet site ratings need to go on Ebay and see if there are any lives up for sale. It is their only chance to get one.
The concept never enters my head. Such a thing would be totally insane. I always want people to know exactly who I am and where I’m coming from so I put all my info out there straight away.
In the early nineties, I helped run a live-action roleplaying game for some folks in Chapel Hill. It was a one-night game, and we created (IIRC) sixty characters for the game; part of the goal was for each character to have some interesting subplot to pursue. It was loosely set in White Wolf’s Vampire/Werewolf/Mage world.
And if you’re still reading, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
Anyway. Two of the characters for the game were Montag and Cabot, teenagers active on a messageboard. Montag was a goth kid who loved vampires the way other kids love unicorns. Cabot was a no-bullshit guy who thought vampires were stupid. The two of them met on this messageboard and fell in love, planning to meet in person on the night of the game. Of course, before the game night, according to their character background pages, Montag was turned into a vampire, and Cabot into a werewolf. Shakespearean hijinks, we hoped, would ensue.
To prep for the game, I registered accounts on a local bulletin board system for each teen and began posting in their voices. Many of the players were active on the same BBS, and we managed to give the two characters to BBS members.
(Tragically, Cabot’s player lamed out on the night of the game and never showed up, so Montag’s player had to moon around uselessly until she gave up on her subplot and joined the game’s main plot.)
On AOL boards I had an entirely different persona that was so unlike me you would never imagine we were the same person. I had a very elaborate and detailed life, with stories from my own past. I hung on to this persona for about eight years because I didn’t want anyone to know anything about the real me.
Eventually toward the end (about three years ago) I had a SN for myself as myself but I never talked to myself on my other persona. Not long after that I came completely clean and I was surprised to find that nobody actually cared.
I’m not proud of it, but I did create someone on a dating site once to see if my then-boyfriend was being truthful about not being on it, didn’t know how to unsubscribe, did not respond to any belated contacts that came to him.
I tweaked only a few of my own facts, like making her a fitness instructor. He responded within minutes of the profile being posted. She corresponded for awhile, then went back to her boyfriend and moved away. I broke up with him.
The funny thing was that ‘she’ used words and phrases that I never use, and he began using the same words and phrases with me! He would even repeat some of the trivia or news that ‘she’ had mentioned.
I pretty much knew he was lying, so it was more an exercise for me to write in a different voice. I think I did that very well.
