Most unfortunately for me, I suppose, I am also a social worker. Yes! I am a 'professional bleeding heart', a 'do gooder', a counselor or, if you will, a 'professional friend'.
I am also a very poor liar, I don't like to be cheated, so I try not to cheat anyone, and I also tend toward gullibility, especially when it is extremely difficult for me to verify the truth behind a tale. Multiply these characteristics by whatever number of people go into online chats on a regular or semi-regular basis.
Not everyone online is a social worker, although sometimes it seems that way. Not everyone online is an exact duplicate of my character—again, most unfortunately for me or for anyone else encountering lies, deceit, and tales of woe that could have come from a novel by Dickens or Upton Sinclair.
I am not speaking of a masquerade, we all, to some degree or another, try out new ways of being online. No, dear readers, I am speaking of something more serious and more destructive than that.
I am speaking of news of death, terminal illness and serious accidents, breathlessly announced in a chatroom. I am speaking of those who, instead of dialing the local crisis hotline, go online and tell everyone in their chatroom of choice that they are about to commit suicide, or that a stalker is at their door and about to do them bodily harm, or that they have fallen and broken a limb, or were badly beaten and had a limb broken.
I am speaking to those who have found out later that the suicide was bogus, the stalker was bogus, the accident was staged, the limb was not broken, and the terminal illness has 'miraculously' disappeared or gone into remission. Yea! Even that the dead have been resurrected!
Lately, it would seem that such tales are getting a lot of publicity. Both Yahoo! Internet Life and Wired magazines have featured such chatroom shenanigans, and so has About.com's online chat guide. NOW, it is beyond the scope of this essay to give totally scholarly attention to this phenomenon and we have included links to the articles from Wired and from About.com. PLEASE DO read them!
1) A new chatter entered a room and kept all chatters enthralled with 'her' courage and fortitude in the face of what seemed to be insurmountable difficulties, including an artificial jaw, two artificial limbs and several surgeries on the same cancer;
2) It was announced in another chat room that two of the chatters had been killed in an avalanche, along with the dog belonging to one of the so-called victims. The entire chat room population was thrown into deep mourning and was greatly relieved to find out that both of the women were alive and chatting from the hospital (so it was thought) and furthermore, that the DOG had also miraculously survived!
3) It was announced, in a chatroom, after a particularly vicious series of attacks and counterattacks on one particular chatter, that one of the instigators of these attacks had 'died' of terminal cancer, and furthermore, that the alleged 'insensitivity' of the chatter who was attacked unmercifully, had 'caused' the death. The outpouring of grief for this particular chatter in the chatroom was tremendous! MIRACLE! Approximately 48 hours AFTER the 'death', which was CONFIRMED by a chatter who had 'talked to (the chatter's) cousin on the telephone', the allegedly 'dead' chatter, reappeared, using the same chat name.
4) In the early AM hours of Easter Sunday, 2001, a friend received notice that 'someone' in a chatroom was announcing that a friend of hers had died in a terrible car accident. This caused my friend no small amount of anxiety and grief, until the allegedly dead person was contacted and assured my friend that there had been no accident and that obviously she was still alive and well.
5) In a recent discussion in a chatroom, someone volunteered the information that her child had been in a coma, was not expected to live, and that the decision to either pull the life support or not had been agonizing. When further questions about the condition of the child were asked of this chatter about whether or not the child had survived, TWO separate answers were given. The first was that the child had died, the second was that the child had in fact LIVED, but had had to undergo a kidney transplant! (The question that I asked myself, having been witness to this conversation was: "Who can't remember whether or not their own child survived a coma?")
In the first part of this discussion, I alluded to the fact that I am a social worker. Social workers, particularly those of us who work in the clinical field, are 'had' daily. Some of the deceptions that we encounter are understandable, due to social stigma surrounding psychological problems and/or personal 'quirks' regarding divulging personal information or information that is regarded as being of a sensitive nature.
Time and trust, in other words, the therapeutic relationship, are generally remedies for such reluctance to divulge or otherwise 'edit' personal information. This is also generally true on the Internet, but if reading the articles attached to this page is any indication, the term 'Internet fraud' has acquired a new and somewhat frightening feature.
How DO we find out if any of this is real? What is the test? Who gets hurt? If, like my friend that made several long-distance phone calls to find out the truth behind the rumor of the car wreck, we find out the actual truth, what do we do with it and how do we feel?
If, like some who responded to the "Kaycee Nicole" hoax, we have sent money, flowers, cards, made phone calls to alleged 'relatives', do we, as one victim put it: "Just remember all the love?"
It would seem to me that there are better ways to acquire a lesson in love/concern for one's fellow human beings than to perpetrate a tremendous hoax on several people.
In life and a therapeutic setting, a practitioner CAN terminate the relationship. That's somewhat easy to do. On the Internet, one CAN remove themselves from the chat. That solution is a fairly simple one that I suppose every one of us involved in online chat groups has made at one point or another. However, this does not stop the person who is truly ill from perpetrating yet another, and maybe even more, believable hoax somewhere else or even on the same chat venue (remember the 'resurrection' I related above).
It has been said that one is either part of the solution or part of the problem—there is no middle ground. I am not so much of a bleeding heart as to automatically take the stories of allegedly seriously ill persons at face value or to merely 'remember the love'. The perpetrators of such stories are seriously ill—they need to be in therapy and, if, like some, they are terminally ill, there would seem to me to be more productive ways to spend their time than garnering sympathy from virtual (in all senses of the word) strangers.
1) Does the story 'hang' together or does it get wilder and more unbelievable as time goes by?
2) How often is this person in the chatroom? (If it's more than a couple of hours a day, chances are, this is NOT a real illness)
3) Ask questions about the illness-if it is an illness that you are unfamiliar with-get the information. There are several sites devoted to medical information. The chatter you are questioning took the time to research their illness, it's 'only fair' that you do so too. Ask real doctors, friends, neighbors, anyone who may have or may have had similar experiences.
4) Do NOT in any way volunteer to assist the chatter with medical expenses, living expenses, funeral expenses. Chances are you are going to be out of a LOT of money and mad as heck when you find out the truth.
5) How frequently does the condition go into remission? If it's every other day, chances are, this is NOT a real illness.
6) If you really suspect that you and your fellow chatters are being duped, DO NOT suffer in silence. Confront the person with the truth. Write letters to the chat hosts. BE ANGRY! You've been lied to, tricked, manipulated and taken for a 'jolly ride' emotionally (and hopefully, it is only emotionally).
They Think They Feel Your Pain
Lies On Line
Lies On Line II
