I love how Jman is all reverse-psychology about it. 'I’m the TRUE skeptic, because I await proof before calling a quacking, waddling bird a duck! You skeptics out there should be more skeptical like me and wait for evidence."
ETA: “and, dammit, the quacking, waddling bird was banned before the DNA samples came back, so now, we’ll never really know if it was a duck.”
So do you propose that anyone who wants to post on their private life be required to provide identification and proof lest they be banned?
Should we pit and claim troll for EVERY poster unless they provide references, or only if their stories are unusual?
Come on now.
Only if their stories are unusual. And I’d probably go with asking for them to PM proof to the mods before pitting them and claiming them to be a troll, but well, we saw how the mods responded this time around.
I never said anything about banning anybody.
Since when are those the only two choices? I’ll admit that I didn’t catch on until someone else first mentioned the “T” word, but coming to the conclusion that you’re being lied to doesn’t make you an asshole. Neither does saying out loud hey everyone- we’re totally being lied to!
Here’s my thanks to the skeptics for reminding us that you can’t actually hurt the feelings of a fake person on the internet.
Mostly I just found both of the original threads kind of creepy. Does it make me a bad person that I don’t want to know how a quad has an orgasm? Or that I don’t care even a little bit if that same quad dies a week after posting the gory details? Seriously, who cares that much about a digital person they’ve known for five minutes?
“Don’t you ever, ever call me a bully! I’m so much worse than that.” – Malcolm Tucker, The Thick of It
Sorry. I’ll use any weak excuse to quote TToI. I admit the quote loses in translation when not uttered in a thick Scottish accent by a rail-thin but scary motherfucker hatchet man working for a fictional Prime Minister. Ah, here’s the scene.
I’ve already posted exactly how I would’ve reacted if I were in her shoes, and if I had her apparent personality. We’re not talking about some fragile flower here who (allegedly) hasn’t dealt with adversity on a far, far grander scale than a few people calling her extraordinary claims into question. Her persona was one that would’ve, excuse the expression, rolled with the punches and been more upset about the death hoax having scared the people she cared about and who’d been so welcoming than the thoroughly understandable suspicions that arose as a cause of it. As I’m pretty sure she would say – she survived a nearly fatal accident that left her nearly immobile, and doesn’t need to be coddled. Fuck yeah I’d understand the skepticism and I’d really have no problem sharing info with a trustworthy individual in charge of the board. If I’m entrusting the board with nearly my entire life story, and expecting them to trust I am who I say I am, why wouldn’t I trust the admin of this incredibly warm and welcoming forum with a photo, an address, a real name, a news article, anything?
Personally? No, IMHO, there isn’t. I think your position is very reasonable. I think anyone who’s 100% sure is probably overstating things and frankly not helping their case, because life can be pretty fucking weird.
So hell, I read and did some of that research and I’m still leaving a window open (let’s say 2 - 6%) that she’s legit. I’m marginally less certain that umkay is sezyoo, because of some of the posting differences.
Still, there are coincidences and there are coincidences, and I still would find it vanishingly hard to believe that there are two super-rich quads named similarly in California with C4 SCIs who posted for the first time to a new message board relating to their quadness, then immediately started an “Ask the…” thread, where they revealed they were beautiful with thriving sex lives and even identical orgasm patterns, even “laughed” the same freakin’ annoying way (“hahahahahahahahahahahahaha” – or I suppose that’s how voice-recognition software always translates laughing, like an auto-macro or something), amassed masses of admirers, confined nearly all discussion to their disabilities, and had fake deaths or near-deaths announced by relatives. And then, a matter of weeks after one of them was revealed as a fraud, the second one shows up on a different board repeating the exact same pattern!
I can believe six impossible things before breakfast, but this is… come on.
Edited to add – Oh holy crap it took me so long to compose that (I’m not a quadriplegic, with carers so it takes me longer) that I missed the banning. And also the discover that Jman considers ME one of the flamers/pilers-on. Because I was finding evidence. Which turned out to be true.
Jesus. I really object to that.
Jesus fucking christ, people. Are you that fucking thick skulled?
MY ONLY POINT IS THIS:
I think it’s a dick move to indict someone with very thin circumstantial evidence!
That’s it. And yes, even though the umkay doubters were right, it doesn’t change my base belief.
LOL dude, this is a message board, not a court of law.
I hope the banning was based on something that confirmed it was the same person, such as comparing IP addresses with the mods of the other board and finding out that umkay and sezyoo were using the same IP address. If it was based on what has been presented here, I would have preferred that they had waited to see if umkay would come back and try to explain herself. If she pointedly DIDN’T come back that would be a pretty good confirmation as well.
If their stories are freakin’ crazy-unbelievable, so far-fetched that a retarded goat on LSD would raise an eyebrow and say “Wait–whut?”, then…yeah.
For example, if I said: “I, Fenris, am really Stephen Hawking. My cover-identity as a handicapped guy is just fiction, and in reality, I’m a world-class gymnast, I am independently wealthy, I clean up the streets of London and New York by fighting crime as a masked avenger in the dead of night with my two super-hot assistants (“Jailbait” and “Knockout”), and that I’m posting here, just to give you an insight into what it’s like to be as fabulous as me”?
Yeah, I’d hope you’d be a little skeptical. And Umkay’s story is just barely more plausible than the one posted above. Could it be true? Sure. And I could be Super-Stephen Hawking. But unless you’re an ultra-maroon, neither’s likely.
PS–If you believe I am Super-Stephen Hawking, I would also love to talk to you about a special, just-for-you business offer involving land in Florida. You’ll make an 300,000,000% profit. You can trust me. I’m Stephen Hawking, Super-Hero.
That’s not the point and you know it. If the skeptics had been WRONG, you certainly can hurt the feelings of a real person on the internet. My whole point is, until you KNOW something to be true, don’t make pointed accusations.
You are being painted into this corner. Wait a minute. Do you really mean to say that if you think a poster posts with an unusual story, we should demand references or we will pit and claim troll? Jman is backing you into a corner that you didn’t sign on to.
I don’t think you mean to say that. I don’t care how many posters post with crazy stories. I may think ‘trolling’ but I would only say it in crazy circumstances like this. Posters I respect were still being rolled by this troll AFTER she had upped the game to ridiculous levels. (Notokay thread). At THAT stage, it is okay to go ahead and call it.
As someone who fell hook, line and sinker, I can’t get too worked up about the whole thing, since it never really affected me IRL – there were no requests or even hints asking people for neither money nor action.
And, fake personna or not, whoever pulled it off knows how to be a witty, personable, upbeat writer; and is clearly extermely intelligent.
Does this make trolling right if done well? No. And I’m certainly grateful to those people more astute than I was who smelled a rat and found the sewer whence it came – I do not understand those people who are still refusing to believe it was all a hoax and berating those who brought the proof (apparently for shattering their dreams or something?)
And yet, it was interesting and entertaining while it lasted. And since the hoaxer clearly does know a thing or three about disabilities, I probably actually learned something, too – Yes, you can learn real stuff from (essentially) a Work of Fiction. 
It’s still a hoax, (s)he’s still a troll and was rightly banned. But I just don’t get the outrage by either the discoverers of the hoax or by those (like me) who had to be spoon-fed the evidence.
Of course! He’s been masquerading as a theoretical astrophysicist for decades. 
That’s why so many people, before the whole NotOkay death thing, including other paralyzed people and spouses of paralyzed people were also taken in by her. Hindsight is always 20/20.
So how do you explain the “very thin circumstantial evidence” being dead on the money? Maybe it wasn’t so thin? Maybe you need to adjust your gullibility meter? Perhaps you need to take a breath and count to 10,000 the next time you decide to call someone an asshole for expressing a view that happens not to coincide with your own?
The evidence gathering, which was carried out on a different board by several people, has to start somewhere. It starts with a hypothesis/accusation and then people set out to prove or disprove it. Are you saying that one person acting alone has to have a fully realized theory complete with citations before they can discuss anything?
I wasn’t around for Wally. He predates me by a short time, but this is the first time I ever remember a situation like this since. Check out my join date. This is a very rare circumstance here, and I think umkay has a serious mental problem or something.
I think this ordeal was handled in about the best way to be expected. Trolls are easy to squash and pinpoint when they’re being douchenozzle imbiciles, as 99% of them turn out to be, but this time we had us a bone fide cult of personality here; no way was it gonna be easy to burst anyone’s bubble on that one.
Which I think is some of the reason that part of the board who had reservations about umkay, kept as quiet as long as they had.
The board will carry on, same as it ever was.
For the 3000th time, this is such a strawman you should be embarrassed to have posted it. I’d say that yeah, we pit and claim troll for all posters who:
You and the others who think those of us who suspected she was a troll and said so here did so without any of the above. But we didn’t. (At least most of us, as far as I know.) So stop acting as if she posted one meek little time and we immediately leapt on her demanding her fingerprints and social security number. That’s a patently ridiculous overstatement and anyone with any measure of rational thought who posts on the STRAIGHT DOPE MESSAGE BOARD for crissakes should know it.
I’m the Pope. Ask me anything.
Maybe you should learn to read. Lots of times gut feelings are right. They were this time. They are also wrong a hell of a lot of times. I wasn’t calling someone an asshole because they had a different opinion. I was calling someone an asshole because they were treating someone as if there WAS locktight evidence, in a case where if they were wrong, would have been turning against someone solely for getting sick at the wrong time.
It is absolutely mindblowing that so many people are completely okay with making pointed accusations publicly with nothing more than “I’ve got a feeling.”