Thursday, January 17, 2013
The Best Promotion for "Catfish" There Could Ever Be
Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o, and all of us, were the victims of a hoax. Te’o evidently believed some hot chick from Stanford he met online was his girlfriend. And we believed the story that she had gotten into a horrible car accident, the doctors discovered she had leukemia, which eventually killed her. And that death happened around the same time Te’o’s grandmother died. Which happened around the same time Te’o lead Notre Dame to a big win over Michigan State using the two deaths as inspiration.
Now we know there is no such person as Lennay Kekua. Someone else was operating a Twitter account in her name. Pictures of her were actually pictures of someone else. The voice he heard on the phone was someone else.
Te’o says he was duped and didn’t find out she never existed until December 6th and didn't tell the University until December 26th. There’s almost no way this could possibly be true, but it seems like Te’o was very careful not to say he ever met her in person, though his father certainly implied it. Deadspin, which did a great job uncovering the story, very neatly lays out all the evidence.
Maybe the biggest villain/dupe in all of this is Pete Thamel who really made this a national story when his piece on Te’o for Sports Illustrated centered on this tragic loss. He never asked for a picture of them together. He thought it odd that he couldn’t find an obituary for her online, but didn’t ask enough questions.
The story is too long and sordid for me to examine every single detail but I will say that my suspicion is that initially Te’o got duped. Eventually he figured it out but was too embarrassed about his phony girlfriend to come clean. So he conspired with the liar to kill off the fake girlfriend and hope it would go away.
Maybe he was duped the entire time, but told lies and omissions to make it seem less creepy that he had an online friend whom he had never met. I doubt that, but it is possible.
It’s also possible Te’o was in on this the entire time, maybe to get publicity, maybe just because he’s young and dumb. But I doubt that too. Here's why: I read where a former Stanford player said Te'o asked the Stanford players if they knew his girl. So that's why I'm going with my suspicion that he was duped at first but got in too deep.
But I may get burned because you can't trust a liar.
I think there is probably still a lot that is going to be coming out on this story. My initial thought is that he is gay. Being a football player, and a player at a Catholic University he was afraid to come out and made up a girlfriend. Things got alittle too hot with people questioning him and he killed her off. If that is the case I think he becomes a sympathetic figure forhaving to hide who he was for fear of being shunned. If he isn't gay he may want to pretend to be for a while...that is the only way I see he coming out looking okay in all this
ReplyDeleteBTW, am I the only one who had to google "catfishing" when this story broke? I never heard of that before
ReplyDeleteJ you should watch Catfish the tv show on MTV. It's interesting and well done, albeit probably not 100% authentic.
ReplyDeleteGood thoughts from you and Paul on this. J my wife had the same initial thought as you re: him being gay and I think it's a good one. I can see that being the case, except that it seems very extreme and kind of ghoulish to play up the leukemia angle when he could've just said they broke up. But then again, if they just broke up his teammates and friends would be pushing him to hook up, whereas death from cancer understandably buys him alot of time away from the action.
My overall sense and best uneducated guess is in line with Paul's thinking. I think he was most likely fooled initially and after learning the truth, due to some combination of embarrassment and/or fame whoring, he lied or embellished the situation and didn't come clean. I don't see any way that he is 100% innocent here, but I also seriously doubt that the entire ordeal was a hoax from the get go.
The gay thing seems a little implausible to me. Yes, in a story that is completely implausible, I think that goes even a little too far. It's just a little too "internet conspiracy theory" for me.
ReplyDeleteRemember, this same fake female identity was supposedly used on other players previously.
I heard about Catfishing when the show on MTV started. I also saw the guy on Dr. Phil with some ladies who had been Catfished. What is so remarkable is that this guy said very frequently the Catfishers make up an ailment or an injury (like a car accident) as the reason they are unable to meet the target. It buys time and builds sympathy.
I still think Te'o was the victim of the hoax. I still think he figured it out before he let on. But I also think he lied during it, to make it seem like he had really met her because how weird would it be for a football star to have an online girlfriend he never met. That's for mommy's basement weirdos not for football stars.
I still think the biggest dupe in all this was Pete Thamel. He admitted he thought it was weird that Stanford had no record of her. His solution? Don't call her a Stanford student. He couldn't find any article about her being hit by a drunk driver. His solution? Say she had been in a car accident.
If a young girl is hit by a drunk driver it'll make the news. If a young girl dies of leukemia, her obituary will be online. If a girl goes to Stanford, the University will have a record of her. If a guy is dating a girl, he will have a picture of the two of them together. All of these should have been major read flags to Thamel and everyone covering this. Thamel could have been the hero for exposing this months ago, instead he's the second-biggest fool on Earth.
yeah, Thamel and all the EDITORS "should have fuckin better known better"
ReplyDeletehe was duped, there's other fishiness here which I think will all come out. seems like the tuiasosopo kid is all at fault. why was everyone in Te'o's family takling but him before Friday night