Even if you know nothing about sports (ME!), you are now familiar with the name Manti Te’o, linebacker for Notre Dame. Yesterday, Deadspin published a piece exposing Te’o's girlfriend’s death as a hoax. Not just her death, but her existence. Lennay Kekua was never born, never attended Stanford, never got in a serious car wreck, and never died from leukemia. If those last few sentences sounded complicated, that’s because this story is a clusterfuck.
To give the most cursory of summaries, Deadspin discovered what every other mainstream news outlet — like ESPN and Sports Illustrated – should have: that Manti Te’o got “Catfished.” I refer to the 2010 documentary “Catfish” and subsequent MTV series about people who are bamboozled into having relationships with people on the internet who turn out to be fictional. To add another layer of complexity to this story, it’s unclear whether Te’o was “Catfished” without his knowledge or whether he was in on the hoax. And if he was an orchestrator of the hoax, what was his motivation? Was the sob story — that his grandmother and girlfriend died on the same day — concocted to aid in his question for the Heisman? Or did he make up a nearly year-long romantic relationship to cover for the fact that he’s really gay? Of course, there’s always the possibility that he is a serious sociopath.
But for the sake of argument, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for a moment and assume that he was “Catfished” without his knowledge as he claims. This actually happens more than one would think. And there are some simple ways to avoid being a victim of “Catfishing.” Our tips after the jump. Keep reading »
