The Art of making you believe in Fictional personalities on-line:
I have recently come across 2 examples, one promoted via weblogg, the other one living mainly through e-mail. There is the story of Kaycee Nicole , a young girl suffering from leukemia, who recently suddenly died of an unexpected aneurism. I actually visited her weblogg page shortly after the supposed death of Kaycee, and fully believed it, even if the page was cheesily sentimental in all ways - and now, I'm left with a feeling of both respect (quite an author, that is) and disgust (how can you play with other people's emotions like this?).
And then, the story of Nowheremom. The handle Dennilfloss (RL male) created Nowheremom, a female single mother and started dating her, when he/she got too many approaches from other men. At last he "killed" in a car accident because things were getting too complicated (marriage ahead and that kind of stuff...)
Both cases obviously reminds me of the first story of this kind, I got to know, the story of the male psychiatrist who posed as a disabled woman. It's related both in Sherry Tuckle's Life on the Screen (she doesn't tell the full story, though) and in R.A. Stone's The War of desire and Technology (she/he tell's the full story, so go for her version, if you haven't read it), both written around 1995. I guess these hoaxes are quite old internet-history wise, since all you need is an e-mail address and a handle (username) to promote your fictional character. However, it's interesting that the Kaycee Nicole story was boosted through the use of fake photographs and the more easily accessible weblogg, i.e. through this kind of media (blogg, homepage) the hoax can move from being inside a closed community (a news-group, forum, community which has access to the e-mails) to being accessible to, in principle, everybody, who passes that page. I'm sure there exist loads of homepages of imaginary people out there, but it requires some nerve (and creative writing skills) to maintain a character day after day in an blogg. No wonder, that after some time (years even!), you'd want to kill your imaginary alter ego...
There are links to more hoaxes here .
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:01