Here’s a story that will push a lot of people’s buttons.
Ryan Schultz is a sports blogger who has written for several web sites, including Baseball Prospectus (a prestigious analysis site). Schultz’s behavior was pretty odd and aggressive sometimes. This person would form on-line relationships with women, then (according to several of the women) would get drunk and abusive. Other times, Schultz would threaten to hurt himself if a woman stopped talking to him. Last weekend, Schultz tweeted a joke that offended a lot of women, which led to some of them contacting Baseball Prospectus with stories of harassment. In one case, a woman sent Ryan nude pictures of herself because Ryan threatened to hurt himself if she didn’t.
Now the truth is out. Ryan is a 21-year-old woman named Becca Schultz. She catfished an entire on-line community.
Schultz says she created the Ryan Schultz persona when she was 13, because she thought people would take a man more seriously. Once she created the persona, she didn’t know how to back out of it. A lot of the behavior of the Ryan persona was based on how she thought a man would act.
I can anticipate the arguments: that she was right that a man would be taken more seriously than a 13-year-old girl (or even an adult woman); that the persona she created was based on the worst stereotypes of men; that the persona was an accurate portrayal of how many men behave; that people were fools to allow themselves to be duped; that she’s a creep who enjoyed manipulating people. There’s probably some amount of truth in all of these.
She’s a creep with a warped view of humanity as a whole. Her behavior says nothing about anyone but herself, as her creation is an extension of her own persona.
I for one judge her conduct a bit more gently than friend Derleth. I can see that writing about a male-dominated sport as a 13-year old girl would lead her to think up an ‘alternative’ personality, and a typical male of teenage years (which was probably her model(s) ), can definitely be odd and agresssive, as any middle-school teacher will attest.
That she carried it to far and way to long is of course obvious, and I imagine that she won’t be seeing her articles in print or have much in the way of blogs in the near future, which if she is still a fan will be punishment enough, I think (cut off from all those she’s come to know over the last eight years…).
I agree that once the Ryan character developed a following, Becca was sort of committed to carrying it on for as long as it lasted. At least as long as she wanted to enjoy the fame and fortune, however great or minor that actually was/is.
What Becca was never committed to doing, was having Ryan be a jerk. That’s totally her invention. And since it was originally something Ryan did in secret, there’s no reason Ryan could not have stopped doing it at any moment with no impact to Ryan’s public persona.
My bottom line:
Becca creating an alter ego Ryan for baseball commentating purposes is just another example of a stage name. OK. That kind of thing’s been going on for centuries. Her creating a sexually abusive jerk is indicative of some strange loose wires in Becca’s head. Not in Ryan’s, since he doesn’t have one.
Hard to tell whether Becca hates men, hates women, or is just real confused. But she isn’t healthy.