I read the initial OPs and while they seemed strange, it didn’t seem impossible or completely implausible to me. I am not acquainted with anybody paraplegic but I have used Dragon Dictation software, so her ability to write lengthy posts with smileys and punctuation and all that being accounted for by that seemed out of tune with my own experience. To explain this she claimed to have helper staff on hand who aided her in entering her posts, which also seemed odd; if I ever were to post details about my dating or sexual history or whatnot it certainly wouldn’t be via a proxy agent. But then again, if the kernel of her story were true she would have little choice in the matter, and could have been doing things by proxy for years, plus have whatever number of customized shortcuts, etc., available to her computer interface.
I couldn’t really fathom why would someone fake something like that? Yes, “for the attention”, but there are other ways to do that. Until clearly outed I would give a poster, especially a reasonably eloquent one, the benefit of the doubt. Sure, she could be exaggerating a lot of the details, but wholesale making all those details up in a “should I date a devoté” thread?
Besides, in my past experience most Internet trollers are in for a quick chain yank, and are not at all subtle. And even the more subtle ones have but a needle or two in their etui, so to speak - they return to the same topics and angles again and again. umkay on the other hand kept it going for quite a while, with a variety of angles. For example, when she told someone their father was receiving terrible care while bedridden - that was a reply that was NOT centered on “herself”. That kind of display of compassionate outrage is not what I would associate with trolls.
I guess this was my first RL (or rather, first-hand VL) enccounter with an Internet troll whose goal is adoration/sympathy rather than outrage. I never participated in the umkay threads because I had a feeling the whole time there was a significant amount of exaggeration therein (though not to the full level of apparent fabrication as eventually exposed), and my first thought on reading umkay’s furious denial of death was “Clearly NotOkay was her sock”.
I’ve been more interested in the reaction threads than anything posted by umkay, so I never questioned her story. I feel for everyone who got emotionally invested and hurt by the deception.
The research was impressive and the smackdown deserved, purely MHO.
You might think that, and it’s understandable, but you’re wrong. You now have syphilis. I know, it doesn’t make sense, but that’s the world we live in.
I read a little of the early parts of umkay’s two threads, but didn’t find them interesting so didn’t follow them and didn’t really think much about them. I didn’t even see the “she’s dead!” thread, I only heard about it from the related Pit thread. So I wasn’t paying enough attention to be suspicious. I’m not sure what I would have thought if I had been paying more attention. But from what I’ve since learned about umkay’s posting history, I like to think I would have noticed the resemblance to the weird Number Six/Kaitlyn hoax we had back in '04/'05.
As others have mentioned, this poster claimed to be a male-to-female transsexual (not to mention an adoptee from North Korea) who taught elementary school in Texas. While the specifics are quite different from umkay’s claims, these hoaxes strike me as thematically similar – the whole “I’m so spunky and adorable despite my hardships, I’m doing much better than most people in my (unusual) situation, I’m surrounded by wonderful people who support me, and I even have a love interest who accepts me! Would you like to hear another detailed anecdote about my strange yet fabulous life? I hope so, because I rarely post about anything else!” thing.
I don’t think I’d ever even heard of this sort of thing before, but what you say here is basically my best guess about umkay’s motives. I think umkay is a man who is sexually obsessed with disabled women, and that the thread about dating a devotee was based on his fantasies of meeting a beautiful quadriplegic who wouldn’t find him totally creepy. The guy described in that thread is probably based on the real umkay.
As someone who’s spent a lot of time in the online fandom, MMO and RP communities… yeah. Smelled that troll a mile away, but didn’t feel the need to say anything because hey, if it’s not hurting anyone, it’s no skin off my nose is it.
The pseudocide made me laugh and shake my head, I’ve seen SO many of those. The sad part was how many people were genuinely upset about it.
I didn’t see a reason to care whether or not she was real. I read her threads every couple days when I was bored. I wasn’t a fan of the “fawning” though.
When I saw the “Umkay is dead” thread, just the OP, my first reaction was “oh, she was a troll.”
So yeah I bought it until I was jarred out of it.
I have enjoyed the wealth of discussion “she” has brought, between her threads and the Pit thread and the ATMB thread. I’m glad nobody lost any money (the Doper who paid for her membership got his money back) and I hope nobody got their feelings too seriously hurt. And I am kind of glad Quasimodem wasn’t here to see any of it.
I take issue with this and all the other posts saying more or less: ‘Oh well, you guys must either be total assholes or just jerks who don’t believe anything, I feel sorry for you’
Fuck That!
It had a lot of signs BEFORE the death post and ANYONE who believed after is freaking sucker of the highest order. I want to sit down at a poker table with everyone in that death thread. I mean it was sooo obvious.
Maybe as a previous poster said, it’s the experience with online gaming and that community in general where so many don’t tell the truth. Personally I have been a LONG time lurker and I feel some of this comes from a banned member. Usually that’s the case when things like this happen.
I read a few posts by her, felt like I was getting lecture by an occupational therapist. I guess I believed, but I did not stick with thread. I missed the bits about being beautiful and wealthy.
Mine has been pinging a lot lately. I tend to just stay out of those threads. Seems like a lot of people are stumbling upon our board just to post something very personal.
I believe that the evidence was actually from the other board. It was proved to my satisfaction (maybe not to the level of a courtroom but this ain’t a courtroom) that umkay was the same troll as the other board. On that board “she” posted pictures of herself. When someone recognized that the pictures were of someone else the whole thing fell apart. And then “she” came here. So the proof that she was a quad fell apart on the other board and she ran away. No pun intended.
I believed her, but I spotted a hole in her story, although I didn’t realize it at the time.
She was talking about the movie Million Dollar Baby and how she hated it because the ending implies that a quad’s life isn’t worth living.
I thought that was sort of a funny point of view for a quad who’d actually seen that movie, because the main character in that movie had a terrible life in comparison to Umkay’s supposed life. Umkay allegedly has a loving, supportive, and wealthy family, and either the family members can and are willing to take care of her, or they can afford to hire someone to do it. When you look at the other fictional character’s life in Million Dollar Baby (See what I did there? Heh), she had an alcoholic welfare mom who hated her and virtually no support. Boxing was the* only *thing she had. Had her coach not gone against his own morals and affection for her and done her a huge-ass favor, who do you think would have turned her every two hours? Her mom? Her abusive ex husband? Her fellow waitresses? Who was going to get up in the night and help her cough and do all the other things that Umkay described so eloquently and (I dunno, is it?) accurately? Hilary Swank’s character would have in no way, shape or form, been able to have the same quality of life that this Umkay character supposedly had.
Yet, Umkay could be somewhat empathetic and understanding about other quads and quad stories she’d heard – she acknowledged that her family had all this money, so she was sitting pretty and enjoyed a lot of advantages and technology that a lesser-income quad would not. The way it looks to me, Hilary Swank’s fictional character really did have no quality of life and that would not be worth living as a quad. It’s not like she was going to go back to waitressing or boxing or training or something. That was the tragedy of that story. She really, really, really, *really didn’t *have anything else. And nobody aside from her trainer to visit her, help her, or take care of her. Ever.
Umkay came off as a spoiled, entitled brat to me, but I’m not going to pretend I saw through her ruse. Just kinda went “hruh?” when she expressed not having any sympathy or empathy for newly-formed quads who are suicidal. Really, you didn’t meet anyone else in physical therapy or OT, or in the hospital who was in the same situation but didn’t have access to all the same resources you do? You really can’t imagine feeling that hopeless? My troll-o-meter was just beginning to ping right there, so I waited to post and just watched. I blew it off though, figuring I just don’t know or understand because I’ve never been a quad.
Yip. Believing or not believing people on the net is a waste of time. Particularly if believing makes you feel better than not. It’s not like I was going to send money to her or anything.
