Fishy.
I’m glad nobody’s dead but my gut feeling is that we’re all getting trolled big-time. I’m not 100% sure, but I’ll put it this way: unless and until there’s some proof that umkay is who she says she is, I’m not buying it. I’d love to be proven wrong, though. But this just feels very bullshitty at this point.
Somethings wrong, but what is it? Is umkay genuine? In a wheelchair? A different person than Notokay? The same? Was this a hoax from the very beginning, or did someone hijack umkay’s computer a la** Hal Briston**?
And Bricker, don’t feel bad. We’re used to more honesty on SDMB than exists in the world.
I’ll admit I was skeptical enough to email a mod, but people do die, and family members do come online to tell us, and the idea of someone who is already (we think) seriously incapacitated dying is easier to believe than someone falling into a vat of chocolate and hardening to death.
Yeah.
She’s gotten a lot of attention in a very short period of time based on a couple of threads. Then we get a dramatic post by someone claiming to be her brother, which gets people all worked up and worried and most importantly, paying more attention. Then she comes back with the bold italics of justice to out the big old mean troll and oh hey also get showered by yet even more attention.
This is classic Munchausen by Internet stuff, here. We’ve all seen it a hundred times by now.
Have any of you people claiming that umkay is not who she says she is even read the threads in question? I’m very sure that such a level of detail and convincing stories is not faked that easily. Where would she have found all the highly specialised knowledge about her condition and the equipment she uses? The threads are full with people in similar conditions (or people who intimately know such people), and a faker would have slipped at some point with some telling detail. I know it’s easy to be cynical about this, but I for one believe umkay is 100% real.
I don’t see any reason to care whether or not you’re feeding the troll. He’s been banned, I assume. We have no reason to bottle up our feelings in hopes that he’ll go away.
And, anyways, if I hadn’t seen this thread, I wouldn’t have known umkay was still alive. Pretty sure this thread serves more good than harm.
I’m not saying she lied about her condition. I have no idea, and I don’t even really care.
I’m saying the whole drama with her not-brother coming into terrify us all into loving her more was fakefakefakefakefake.
All these accusations… let’s not get ahead of ourselves and wrongfully blame people.
I’ve been on the Internet for a long time and have seen many hoaxes. Some have been insanely detailed and accurate. If someone is bored and/or obsessive enough, certainly they can find out enough about a particular topic to fool lots of other people into thinking they’re an expert.
Anyway, I already said that I’m not 100% sure on this. It just has the feel of a hoax to me. Again, I’d love to be proven wrong. (And yes, I did read both of umkay’s threads in their entirety.)
Some of us who are skeptical have absolutely read the threads in question. In their entirety. And the points you’ve made are points in her favor.
But do you really find it shocking that people aren’t quite prepared to jump back in with both feet at this point?
ETA: What MsWhatsit said.
I haven’t read the entire thread. At the gate, I doubted her, so I decided not to participate. And by ‘at the gate’, I mean, I noticed the thread when it was a few pages long and it smelled funny to me, so I didn’t post to it.
That said, my BS meter pings all the time about shit. It is unreliable. Even the Hal Briston sheep thing set it off. So it isn’t something I want to be offering up as evidence of trollery. I don’t think I have ever called anyone on this board a troll. Ever. But I am gonna go ahead and call umkay one, because it is crazy to me to see posters who usually have their skeptical hat on notice that notokay is bullshit and still miss the bigger reality. Let’s accept it folks. It’s starting to get really surreal seeing you all say, “well, that damn notokay sure did fool us! Thank god umkay is ok!”
I could be wrong. I will take my lumps and be seen as a true asshole if I’m wrong.
Thumbs up, etc.
This board prides itself on the discernment and intellect of its posters (lulz) but shit like this proves that this is just a fluffy social message board with pretensions.
That could be it. If you’re signing up for a death announcement that name just doesn’t seem to be appropriate for the circumstances.
Well, now, wait a second.
The person now posting as umkay is obviously the same person who has been umkay all along. Maybe I am being hopelessly naive, but this is a person who writes compellingly well and obviously knows about living with quadriplegia in great detail. I reject the idea that she’s a fake.
I think what happened is some sick fuck saw her extended absence and took the opportunity to sow grief and confusion here. Anything beyond that needs more evidence than general suspicion to convince me.
Horse puckey, as Sherman Potter would say. Discernment and intellect are not magical. There was nothing about the prior set of umkay’s postings that gave rise to any legitimate concerns about fakery.
And there aren’t now. The only thing that has changed is one post by a another user account. How can one user’s single post, which provided no factual information, discredit another’s posts?
I am up for evidence. Give me some.
I still bet that notKay knows umkay in real life and is fucking with him or her. I’d even lay money on it.
You’re actually asking for evidence that someone doesn’t exist? You know better than that.
People who suspected all along that the whole thing is a fake are now coming out of the woodwork is what is going on here. Others are suspecting that the whole thing is a fake because of the timing of NotOK’s announcement.
I am personally agnostic about whether or not the story is real, i.e. it’s not possible to know based on the information that we have as posters.
Ridiculous. If umkay is real, NotOK was almost certainly someone with a history with this message board wanting to screw with us.
All I’m going to say is that this is no evidence. Anyone more than passingly familiar with Internet culture in general will know that if this was a deception, it’s a trivially easy one to pull off as fake Internet drama goes. It’s been done literally thousands of times before.
That would be my guess.
As for whether umkay is sincere or not, we don’t know that any more than any other poster. But someone else’s posts claiming that** umkay **is dead, when umkay clearly is not, should not bear on the veracity of her story. If there’s any real reason to doubt her, that would be another subject altogether.