I’m sure many people are aware a poster was recently discovered to have been telling extensive lies about his or her personal life. As often happens, I came in late on this one and, having had no major contact with this poster in the past, it really had no major impact on me except for mild surprise.
This is not the first time something like this has occurred - I can recall at least two previous occasions in which it was discovered that a poster had posted something about themselves that wasn’t true and succeeded in convincing a number of other people.
In all of these cases, the posters have left the board, involuntarily or not. If for that reason alone, I don’t want this thread to be a forum for debating the specifics of any one incident or poster. But I would like to discuss the larger issues involved.
As I said above, the recent incident had no direct effect on me. Neither has any similar incident in the past. But other people obviously took it much more personally. And some of these people have felt that posters should be banned for this type of behavior.
But what exactly is the offense here? Did any of us take an oath before becoming a member?
Personally, I can’t think of any lies I’ve put forward on this board. In fact, I originally signed up using my real name until I decided that may have been too much candor. I’ve met over a hundred other dopers in real life and I assume they could verify I’m pretty much the same person in real life as I present myself to be online. But if I had chosen to create a false persona and present myself as something I’m not, who would I have been hurting? If I had claimed to be a professor or a cab driver or a black man or a teenager or a lesbian or a parent and been able to carry it off, would I have been acting immorally? If I had been doing it for years and was accepted as being something I was not, how would you feel if I chose to admit my lie? Or if I was caught out? Obviously I would be trusted less, and deservedly so, but would I deserve to be banned?
I think it’s a question worth raising and not easy to answer.
My first knee-jerk reaction was to ponder that I’m paying for this service, there’s no rule that says I can’t play the part of a barbershop-singing Nigerian lesbian anime fan with a PhD in aerospace engineering if I please.
But then I pondered that this isn’t purely a socializing BBS. It is also a community based on asking questions and arriving at factual answers, or at least logical conclusions using all information available. We can’t always find the answers, sometimes we can only pool ourselves and our knowledge to arrive at the best composite that we can. If a part of that isn’t true, then it taints both the discovery process and the final result.
Additionally, a great deal of energy can be expended in good faith in the debating process. It is non-edifying if the other party is a false character who lacks either the knowledge or motivation they purportedly possess.
I guess where I finally arrived at this question is that it should be a case by case thing. If someone’s participation is mostly social and mostly well-behaved, I see no reason that they shouldn’t be allowed to be a composite character. On the other hand, if they are a frequent contributor to discussions that depend on facts, or end up as an informal subject-matter expert or rallying point, those types of posters should be authentic. Otherwise there’s a risk of perpetuating and even creating ignorance and misinformation, rather than combatting it as we hope to do.
Does it make a difference if someone is pretending professional credentials or just some personal characteristic. For example, I’m not a lawyer and I’ve never pretended to be, but I do read about the law and I have posted on legal issues. Suppose I knew the subject better and was claiming to be a lawyer when I was not. If my answers on legal subjects were good enough that no one could tell the difference between my answers and those of a real lawyer, would I be harming people? Or, to take the personal issue, suppose I claimed to be the father of six children and posted my opinions on child rearing? If you had always respected my opinions in the past, what would you think if you found out I actually had no children? Would you say “I’ll never trust that person again on any issue” or “I’ll never trust that person again on any issue he lied about” or “I always thought his posts were intelligent in the past and I see no reason to change that opinion even though I now know he’s been lying about his personal life.”
Or to use something you said, suppose I signed on this board and said I was Nigerian. That would be unusual and people would probably notice me more than most new posters are. I’d probably have questions directed at me about my native land and I might even start an “Ask the Nigerian Guy” thread. After a while of course, the initial interest would die out and I’d be just another member of the SDMB community, but once in a while the fact that I’m living in another country would be mentioned. Probably when I posted some unusual perspective on an issue of world affairs and popular culture. People might think, “Wow, it’s amazing how things look from a different perspective” or “Isn’t it great how the internet brings people together from all over the world.”
But then after I had been posting here for a year or so, suppose it was discovered that I was not a Nigerian. I was a guy from New York who had never even been to Africa. Everything I knew about Nigeria I got from reading about it online. What would the response be?
Well, I have pretty much made up my mind, therefore your example falls under the latter rubric of my post - someone who has achieved informal status as an expert or reliable resource on a subject where knowledge thereof is derived from one’s identity. You’d have betrayed the community trust as an authentic resource on the subject, so I’d support a banning. This is where I place Kaitlyn or however it’s spelled.
On the flip side, I’d support the same action for someone with a verifiable identity as an authority on a subject who spewed so many falsehoods or inaccuracies on that same subject that it was indistinguishable from malicious disinformation. The latter is a question I’m surprised I haven’t seen yet, as I have seen a number of self-professed experts loudly affirming things proven to be incorrect. Can you ban someone from SDMB for being loudly and repeatedly wrong? I say that’s a valid thing to do, depending on the circumstances.
This board is about combatting ignorance, and deception by definition creates ignorance. That’s what it comes down to for me.
One thing to consider is that Kaitlyn used his false identity in almost every single post she made, and continually used it to derail topics that would have otherwise proceeded as normal by making an issue of it. See the most recent “a poll for straight people” thread, which actually lead to his false identity being outed. This was a near-constant thing for him; come into a thread that had little or nothing to do with gender politics, make a huge issue out of his supposed transgendered status within the context of the thread, and then derail the entire thing through doing so. I always thought this behavior was unacceptable even when we thought his identity was legit; now that it’s not, it’s especially unacceptable. He was falsifying an identity that he then used to cause near-constant havoc on the board - easily a bannable offense .
I’d have thought that creating an entire fictitious persona expressly for the purposes of deceiving others and playing on their good will to attract attention and sympathy pretty much falls under the category of “being a jerk”, and therefore potentially bannable, especially given the scale of the deception: however, as he fell upon his sword and asked to be banned, this wasn’t put to the test. Still, I have a pretty good idea on how the Admins would have voted {do they vote on bannings?}.
I’d call it a rather special case of sock puppetry and take a rather Blunkett-like view on the behaviour; ban them unless there’s some compelling reason not to.
It’s not uncommon for post-transition transsexuals to fabricate histories to cover for their pre-transition life histories. It is also common for pre-transition transsexuals to create entire fantasy realities in which they are who they want to be (rather than who they are). I think the first practice is odious and immoral, and the second practice is dangerous and (when taken too far) harmful, but I’m not going to get overly critical of either of them as I do understand the motivation behind them.
I don’t think either of these things is what happened in the recent incident alluded to in the OP of this thread. I’m mainly posting this as a cautionary measure for the next time someone is caught “lying” in a context involving transgender identity in some way.
Someone is lying on the Internet?!! I’m shocked! SHOCKED I tell you! :eek:
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to board my Gulfstream private jet. I’m on my way to Tailand to defend my Nobel prize for kickboxing.
How would anyone know if a person was lying? I mean, if there’s another “expert” in a particular field that catches someone giving false information, that’s one thing. But if a person merely creates a new persona, invents a family that doesn’t exist, and pretends to be a big game hunter, how would you know? And who does it hurt?
I think some people use the boards as a creative outlet. It could be that fantasy world that keeps them from going over the edge from boredom. It could be a million things.
Fact is, most times we wouldn’t even know. Hell…there are lots of people around here who thought I was an overweight man who lived in the South…just because of my hefty screen name.
If you’re not trying to hurt anyone, and aren’t passing yourself off as a doctor or lawyer (which, true or not, should never be a substitute for consulting those professions in real life anyway), what’s the harm? It would be an unenforcable rule.
I would assume we’re talking about instances where it is soundly established that the individual is lying, either through external (i.e. real-world) verification, or when the individual lets slip or confesses.
I appreciate that everyone, here, is being quite civil in their presentation. Unfortunately, the rules state that the appropriate venue for this sort of topic is The BBQ Pit, so I’m moving it there.
**Note to subsequent posters: this is a discussion about the SDMB rules, not a pitting of any particular poster. Keep to the discussion at hand.