Salon.com > Catfish

When the Internet was for strangers

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 17:00:00 +0000

The Internet of 2006 was not much different than it is today, mainly less: a bit slower, sparser, less open for business, like your hometown before the strip mall got put in. It was on this Internet that I met my best friend, Austin (not his real name). I was taking some time off from college in Portland, Oregon and had become an active member of a Portland-based online DIY community called Urban Honking. Urban Honking featured a stable of blogs about studiedly eclectic subjects like rap music, vegan cooking, and science fiction, but I spent most of my time on the message board, where a few dozen mostly twenty-somethings traded music recommendations and outlandish project ideas. At the time I was making stupid comedy videos and I’d share them with Urban Honking as I finished them. Austin was also an active Urban Honking poster, and a few months after I joined he sent me an email from his Yahoo! Mail account.

Ronaiah Tuiasosopo “deeply, romantically in love” with Manti Te’o

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:30:00 +0000

The Manti Te'o saga enters its third week today.

After Deadspin first broke the story on Jan. 16 that Notre Dame linebacker and Heisman runner-up Manti Te'o's girlfriend -- who had supposedly died earlier in the season -- wasn't real, the media began chipping away at an elaborate online hoax that left the media wondering whether Te'o was part of the scheme, or whether he really was somehow duped into falling in love with a fake woman.

Last week, Te'o spoke with Katie Couric to tell his side of the story, maintaining that he was the victim of an online hoax perpetrated by a man he believed to have been the fake girlfriend's cousin, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.

This week, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo will speak out in his first televised interview since the story broke. In this preview, released today, Dr. Phil reveals that Tuiasosopo had fallen "deeply, romantically in love" with Te'o. "Are you then therefore gay?" asks Dr. Phil. Tuiasosopo responds, "When you put it that way, yes," adding, "I am confused."

Ronaiah Tuiasosopo’s cousin may have been the voice of Lennay Kekua

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:30:00 +0000

Who was behind the voice of Lennay Kekua?

This question, which is just one of the many surrounding Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o and the discovery that his dead girlfriend was fake, has taken on a life of its own: After Deadspin uncovered the hoax last week, reporting that Manti Te'o's girlfriend never died of leukemia because she had never even existed, a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo came forward as the orchestrator of Kekua's social media account. A teary-eyed Ronaiah Tuiasosopo allegedly admitted to setting up the hoax, and on Wednesday, his lawyer told the Daily News that he was also the man behind the voice of the woman, too. Then Manti Te'o released three voicemails from Kekua, aired Wednesday during an interview with ABC's Katie Couric; voicemails that sounded like they were left by a woman. Incredulous that Te'o could have been talking to a man for so long, he told Couric, “If he somehow made that voice, that’s incredible, that’s an incredible talent to do that. Especially every single day." On the same day, TMZ claimed to have confirmed that the voice was indeed that of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo's.

Manti Te’o to Katie Couric: “What I went through was real”

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0000

Americans were hoping for answers to the many questions raised by the increasingly bizarre "catfish" hoax Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o claims to have been ensnared in, attempting to understand how someone with such high visibility could have gotten into a relationship with a woman who had never even existed. Was Te'o part of the hoax? Was it a publicity stunt to propel him towards the Heisman Award? Did he concoct the story with a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo to hide his sexuality (that he's gay)? Or is Manti Te'o just really, really that gullible?

His first televised interview, hosted by Katie Couric, gave few definitive answers. The explanation Te'o's sticking with is the latter, though: he said that he's a man of faith, and had blinding faith in this woman. Te'o's parents joined him and Couric towards the end of the show to say they were proud of their son for how he treated Lennay Kekua, the girlfriend Deadspin uncovered as fake, whom they all believed to be real and in serious pain (Kekua's tragedies included the death of her father, a diagnosis of leukemia and a coma resulting from a car crash). "What I went through was real," Te'o told Couric. “It was very real, Katie. It was very very real.”

What did Manti Te’o know about Lennay Kekua?

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 17:10:00 +0000

Sports reporters have been in a frenzy trying to determine to what extent, if any, Notre Dame linebacker and Heisman Trophy runner-up Manti Te’o was in on the hoax that's become one of the most confusing scandals in recent memory. The football star will give his first televised interview at 3 p.m. ET today with Katie Couric. This should catch you up on everything known so far about Manti Te'o and the death of his fake girlfriend:

The background:

Manti Te’o's success was one of the biggest college sports stories of 2012. He won eight postseason awards as a linebacker for Notre Dame, becoming one of the most decorated college football players of all time. He was runner-up for this year's Heisman Trophy, the most coveted individual prize in NCAA football and was projected to be a first-round NFL pick.

Until recently, Te'o was also living the life of a media darling. A devout Mormon, he identifies himself as family-oriented and religious. Sports Illustrated’s Pete Thamel, who wrote a cover story on Te’o in October, describes his celebrity appeal: “Te'o graduated from Barack Obama's high school, practices Mitt Romney's religion and has post football career goals similar to Tim Tebow's.”

The coverage of his football heroics was all the more adoring for the tragedies he overcame to achieve them. The story went that his grandmother, Annette Santiago, and his leukemia-stricken girlfriend, Melelengei “Lennay” Kekua, died within six hours of each other in September shortly before he delivered a dominating performance against Michigan State.

Last week the world learned that college sports’ most inspirational story was a fiction: After receiving an anonymous tip, Deadspin broke the news on Jan. 16 that Lennay Kekua did not die, because she had never existed in the first place.

Manti Te’o dated real girlfriend shortly after death of fake girlfriend

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 22:40:00 +0000

Every real, actual girlfriend of disgraced Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o henceforth will be subject to more scrutiny (or at least more interest) after Deadspin exposed that the girlfriend of the linebacker, who died the same day as his grandmother, was not real. The fake woman, 22-year-old Lennay Kekua, had a fake death from fake leukemia in September; Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick implied that Te'o was catfished and fell for an online hoax.

But TMZ is now reporting that the devastated Te'o had a real girfriend just two months after Kekua's death, in November, which was still one month before Te'o allegedly learned that Kekua had never existed. TMZ's tips have been verified by a Twitter photo (although Kekua had a Twitter account, too) posted of the two, and the "dates are consistent with the story Manti is telling friends." The couple met under similar circumstances as Te'o met Kekua -- at a football game.

I had a fake online girlfriend

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:15:00 +0000

A lot of people think Manti Te’o is a liar. His story, after all, is sensational: A Notre Dame football star claims he was the victim of an online hoax, fooled into a relationship by someone pretending to be a woman named Lennay Kekua. How could a person fall for that? Who could believe such a thing? I can't tell you if Manti T’eo is a liar or not, but I know a thing like that could happen – because I was a victim, too.

I had a fake girlfriend. We met online. The relationship lasted for over a year. I lied to friends and family about the nature of our relationship. In fact, I’m still reluctant to tell them the whole truth.

“So, how did you guys meet?”

“Oh, we met on that cruise I took to the Bahamas last year.”

Actually, we met online. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I was always ashamed of that fact. And so I told lies. How else could I justify the fact that I was in a year-long relationship with a woman I never met face to face? That wasn’t normal — not for a relatively good looking, charming and intelligent guy. Online relationships are for shut-ins and the socially inept, right? So I lied to friends, family and casual acquaintances about how I met Jamie (which is not the name she used). Lies had been a part of our relationship since the very beginning. I just didn’t know how big the lies were.

Pope tweets for the first time

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:01:00 +0000

The leader of the Catholic Church has just caught up with the Dalai Lama in the field of social networking. While the Buddhist spiritual leader has been using Twitter to spread his message of peace and love through cyberspace since February 2010, yesterday marked the first time Pope Benedict XVI used the site, signing under the Vatican's account. Surprisingly, his tweet did not include the top trending topic of the moment: #whatmakesablackgirlmad. His message read:

Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI

But in the age of virtual identity theft and Catfishing, how do we know that this tweet was actually written by the papal leader himself? Simple: Time magazine has a video of Pope Benedict poking confusedly at an iPad while an archbishop touches the screen for him.

In defense of film and TV “hoaxes”

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:31:00 +0000

"All stories are fiction." That was the title of a monologue by playwright Mike Daisey. It's worth keeping in mind when you're watching or reading about a work that's drawn from life but that doesn't quite look or feel like a documentary. It's not a difficult concept, and it's certainly not new. But when I read articles about some of the more prominent recent examples -- the feature films "I'm Still Here" and "Catfish," for instance, or MTV's "Jersey Shore," which concluded its second season last night -- I get the impression that not everybody got the memo.

Untangling the “Catfish” hoax rumors

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 11:01:00 +0000

If you've already seen the documentary "Catfish," or encountered any of the fervid media coverage surrounding the film, then you already know how difficult it is to write about it without giving away its so-called secrets. I'm not even going to try. "Catfish," which follows a young, media-savvy New Yorker's Internet romance with a far-away girl through a series of increasingly startling revelations, has been playing around the country for several weeks now. As I see it, the story has become primarily about how people react to the movie's twists and turns, and what that may or may not tell us about honesty and veracity in the new-media age.

So if you haven't caught "Catfish" yet or haven't heard much about it and would like to preserve that innocence, I suggest you go elsewhere. I was in Toronto when the film opened and didn't review it for release, but no critic faced the "Catfish" challenge more imaginatively than Dana Stevens of Slate, whose review features embedded hyperlink revelations you can either read or ignore. Basically, Dana shifted the spoiler onus to the readers, which is pure genius -- but did even one person read her review while avoiding a peek at the pop-ups?