Nobody knows for certain that people on the internet are actually who they claim they are. And yes, that includes umkay. But I have no reason to doubt any of you here, either. Also including umkay. There is no reason she should have to prove her genuineness any more than any of the rest of you have to. I am not such a hardheaded cynic that my BS detector is pegged by anything she posts.
As for NotOkay, my personal theory is that this was Gezmo. He was banned the other day for trolling, got butthurt, saw an opportunity to stir up some shit, created a sock, and got his jollies.
I don’t know. I was just looking for some kind of contraption that would make it physically possible. Maybe she likes having a trick she can do, even if it isn’t the smartest thing. Maybe she did it only once. Maybe this, maybe that. I just don’t find the idea implausible, is all.
Trust the mods to do their homework. I’m sure they’ve already checked to see whether umkay and NotOkay have been posting from the same IP address.
Assuming umkay doesn’t get banned almost immediately, but posters still have doubts about whether she’s been playing us, it doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot of need to resolve the issue right away. She’ll either settle down and become a frequent poster without any further drama along these lines, or she’ll become a nexus of recurring moments like this. Or she’ll just disappear before too long. Which way things go will pretty much tell the tale.
In the meantime, those who are inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt have no reason not to do so, and those who aren’t, don’t really have to interact with her.
We’re grownups. We don’t have to go apeshit every time one of these controversies comes along.
One last thought: if the SoCal contingent had a Dopefest anytime soon, umkay could easily resolve the question of her existence, if she were so inclined, by showing up with one of her caretakers.
Yeah, and she was paralyzed as a 14 year old and has admitted to doing reckless and stupid things. She didn’t say when she had used her teeth as a beer bottle opener, whether she was 15 or whether it was last week.
I’ve got a spouse whose opened bottles with his teeth. Everything was OK until the time it wasn’t, and since that very expensive trip to the dentist he has used a church key or asked me to do it. Sometimes people have to learn the hard way.
This is exactly the sort of nitpicking that never ends. If she showed up to explain that incident someone would find something else to drag into the spotlight. It’s a craziness that never ends.
If she sticks around and posts on a variety of topics, then the likelihood that she’s a troll drops. On the other hand, if all she wants to do is talk about is her handicap, the likelihood increases. Eventually, the situation will resolve itself.
Personally, I think that it’s Rand Rover that’s a giant hoax. He’s been setting off my bullshit alarms since he first showed up, believe you me.
A pseudo-Randroid libertarian type – here in this den of liberals who will give him all the negative attention he could ever want – and he’s some kind of stereotypically heartless tax attorney? Wow, isn’t that just perfect.
And, sure, every so often he seems to exhibit technical, legal knowledge related to his alleged field, but he could just find that stuff on the internet as needed. Actually, I’ve been working on this, on what I’ve come up with is: **RR **is probably some guy with a tax attorney fetish, which would explain why he knows these things.
And the smoking gun? That poster he clashes with on a regular basis (you know the one), who is so obviously RR’s own sock puppet. Like, so obvious, we can just take it as a given, and anyone who thinks **Rover ***isn’t *a hoax is ignoring this crucial piece of evidence.
Wait! Another thought: that other troll account? Now I’m thinking that **RR **and his antagonist aren’t the same person, but actually two distinct, entirely separate trolls who just happen to be trolling each other! What are the odds!
You know, it saddens me that so many people on this board are naïve enough to have bought Rand Rover’s stick so unquestioningly, and maintain their belief *even *when all the evidence is spelled out for them. I guess this isn’t the clear thinking place we imagine it to be…
[Anyway, snark aside, I expect to eat it hard if it turns out that **umkay **is actually a troll … which I admit is possible, and not a *ridiculous *thing for a person to believe.
But if this thread were a person, that’s what it would sound like.
ETA: And I misspelled “schtick.” Damnit.]
Not sure if you’re being facetious here, but if you go back and look at RR’s early days, there were dozens if not hundreds of posts accusing him of being a fake. He actually got quite a lot more skepticism than umkay has. But he kept posting because people who aren’t trolls* don’t expect other people online to believe their real-life claims. (And a well-off tax attorney who is also a Randian douchebag is not exactly a stretch of the imagination.)
Not that I think Rand Rover isn’t trolling at least half the time.
What if we found out it wasn’t her, wouldn’t the people pointing fingers feel like jerks? I’m not saying they may not be right, but where’s the evidence, (can’t the mods look at the IP address?)
There’s nothing but speculation in implicating her. I would feel like a jerk if I said that it was possibly her, then learn it wasn’t.
I know there were some posts along this line, but, unless I’m misremembering, there wasn’t the partial consensus of people who were *confident *that he *actually *was a fake as there is here. Aside, that is, from the accusation that he was lying about how much money he made – a lot of people said that, but I don’t think a lot of people held out as probably true that he had invented his persona or profession out of whole-cloth (though, yes, there were a few).
I don’t know, I think he kept posting because he gets a charge out of it (or at least doesn’t give a shit) when people he thinks are stupid try to insult him.
Anyway, I would warn against taking it as evidence of trollery if and when **umkay **stops posting. A huge percentage of new posters – even ones who post a lot for a time and receive gratuitous welcomes and explicit compliments on their posting style – simply don’t stick around very long. Further: yeah, some people who aren’t trolls don’t care if people online doubt their professed identity, but I’m sure that’s not universally the case. I honestly don’t know how I would react as a new poster facing such accusations. Maybe I’d stick around, but there’s also a good chance I’d just decide that the well is poisoned and I should go off in search of greener pastures.
Nope. Read this thread. It’s the first one that turned up from a quick search, but it was far from the only one filled with comments about the fakeness of his claimed profession.
Should we start asking for positive ID before we let people register? We have no precedent for this and we let over 134,000 other mofos come in here without requiring them to prove anything, yeah, that’s lax on our part, I’m sure.
We don’t ask anyone else on this board to prove their bona fides. Why is umkay different?
From the registration agreement:
Umkay is still here and NotOkay is not, so that should tell you something right there. We have no evidence to show anything but umkay as the victim of a cruel hoax/practical joke. Not the first time this has happened to someone on the board, and sadly, probably not the last.
People have come in here before and made claims/told stories that were proven to be false. And they were dealt with by management and – sometimes very harshly – by the greater Straight Dope community. Can’t be as open as we are without letting people in the door on basic trust. If someone violates that, well, bad on them – the outcomes certainly are. That should be more than sufficient.
