My pet theory is that NotOk was actually a sock for someone who was suspicious of umkay and wanted to bring things to a head/steal her thunder by announcing her death before she got around to pulling her own death hoax. If umkay intended to keep posting here it would have been pretty dumb to announce her own death with a sock then come back. Not only did this make Dopers more suspicious about her whole spunky quadriplegic routine, it also made it far less likely that anyone here would believe a future announcement of her death. Judging from what I’ve seen/heard about Internet fakers like this, it seems almost inevitable that umkay would eventually have killed off the persona…but who would have believed a second death announcement when she’d “died” and come back once already?
On the other hand, I could buy that umkay was trying to be clever and failed. Perhaps she thought she had a brilliant scheme to set the SDMB up to accept her future “real” death announcement: first post a fishy sounding one, check the response and see what things Dopers felt were most suspicious (she did explicitly ask about this after she returned), and tell us what a “real” death announcement from her brother would look like so we’d be primed to accept one in that style later.
I was fooled initially, what got me suspicious was my wife’s response to my description of her. My wife is very good at reading people, and just hearing her description of umkay set off her BS meter.
If she was who she claimed to be, dont you think the media would be all over it? We had seen a bit about a legless gymnast- dont you think umkay would be news fodder?
That actually got to me a bit, but I figured she was young, and had it rough, so I forgave it.
Actually, it makes her story all the more compelling that this poor plucky kid didn’t even have the sense to come up with a clever name and yet here she is soldiering on just the same, like hopeful children at a lemonade stand with a misspelled sign.
I agree that it’s likely that NotOkay was someone else (the only thing that makes me think otherwise is her *delightedly *indignant response to him) but I kind of have the feeling her plan wasn’t to “die” but to end up sharing with us all in real time about her developing relationship with Mr. Wants-only-to-take-care-of-hot-quad-chick. He’d be the Best Guy Ever and they’d get married and have a baby, just like sezyoo.
No, I don’t think this is the case. After the “Ask the…” thread had been well into it’s millionth page, I went back-more than once-to the “Should I date a devotee” thread to try to get some sort of ‘update’ on the “romance” (I smelled bs at that point) and Umkay didn’t want to discuss it really at all any more. I recall she gave me some reply like, “Well, geez Ambivalid sure is interested in my private life!” and then said some vague shit like “everything was going well.”.
Oh, you could be right. Or maybe she just didn’t want us to see the surprise proposal coming. After all, he was a rich, handsome banker, and we know how she feels about them.
But what would she have done if any of her Doper fans wanted to, say, send a wedding gift? Or meet her in person? Heck, I’m not sure umkay’s act would have held up even over the phone – I have my doubts as to whether she’s really a she. I don’t know how many of these Internet fakers intend all along to end things with a dramatic “death”, but when it becomes difficult to keep up the ruse it seems like most of them would rather kill off the persona than come clean.
We’ll probably never know what, if any, long-term plans umkay had. But if she and NotOk really were two different people then he didn’t know what her plans were either, and I think it’s plausible that he suspected (correctly or not) that she would eventually try to pull a death hoax. Of course it’s also possible that NotOk was just a dumb troll looking to upset people; we’re even less likely to ever learn what his motives were.
I voted “yes” for the reason above (I tend to take people at face value; if that makes me gullible, so be it). I don’t usually lie, and I certainly would not bother to make up a whole big batch of lies that I had to keep straight, just to put on a message board.
I did think that it was interesting and unusual that umkay posted so often, being new and all that. But that didn’t make me suspicious about her.
Suspected her with her very first post asking about devotees. Pervy thread for your first post after allegedly lurking for years? A topic guaranteed to gain attention? Oookiedokie. That was bad enough, but her biography thread and the Cult of Umkay that soon developed turned up the dial exponentially, especially her self-description bordering on Mary Sueism.
I write/edit fiction for a living, and have been in charge of an online community for 13 years. I’d be damn embarrassed if I hadn’t learned enough yet about recognizing thinly drawn fictional personas by this time!
That said, I also understand the power of the written word and how readers can get sucked into the fiction, even when there are flaws in the narrative. People thought web serials The Spot and Lonelygirl15 were real for quite some time; they want to believe in others. Even among Dopers, there’s an element that wants to believe people aren’t scummy enough to lie just to gain internet fame.
That isn’t a bad trait. Just as constant cynicism isn’t always a good one. I think keeping both attributes on hand is the healthiest way to be.
Didn’t really read all that far into anything she wrote. I had the vague idea she was lying about something, but for all I knew it was just about how happy and fulfilled she was – she might have been a genuine quadriplegic who was desperately trying to live in a fantasy land where she wasn’t poor and socially isolated. I have no experience with dictation software, so while that was a hell of a lot of text for someone who can’t bang it out with their fingers, I don’t have any idea of how much you can actually do with dictation software once you’ve practiced a lot and had a chance to customize it.
I was unfortunately gone when she “died”. I didn’t bother to read the announcement, as she’d already “undied” when I got back, which is a pity, as profiling and document analysis are sort of my schtick. I probably could have pointed out if they were the same troll or not, but it hardly seems to matter now. I’ll go do it formally if someone wants another dissection, but I doubt anyone is that interested.
I mostly try to take people at their word, even improbable people, until they give me a reason not to. Aside from that, I pretty much just failed to care.
