We had e-mail contact in November, I think. Just fannish chat, but he did mention being "in hospital off and on" But being physically fucked myself, I didn't think much of that. Because unlike the real case of Munchausen's I knew about, he didn't claim to be poisting from ICU while receiving brain cancer treatment. I will still miss talking over The Wire with that person, but he did coax emotional vulnerability from me and that's not easy for me to give all the time.

I don't like that coinage because there's no verbal distinction. Dammit!

But it's a purely online term and thus needs no verbal distinction!

In an Internet forum there's always someone who knows someone who can call you on your crap.

Heh. Yeah. In the situation I was involved in, people found an Amazon Wishlist, grabbed the real name, searched the name, found an address, and then Google Earthed the address to discover that it was not, in fact, a rural farm with horses and such.

The uncomfortable side to that situation is that we did actually find an obit for her husband, who she claimed had died (though perhaps not under the circumstances she claimed (and it described her as a "loving wife" even though he had supposedly divorced her and married her best friend)), although there was no record of her son (who also supposedly died) ever existing. So my point is that there may be some element of truth mixed in with the untruth.

Probably so, actually.

.

***I'd like to ask the Stompies to please consider disabling both Gus's password and Kimi's, in some way, so that they can't edit/delete posts. I don't know how everyone else feels about that.***

That's probably a wise precaution any time any poster dies, whether or not they're "real" or not.

I never thought about that. But I suppose it'd be like getting the key back.

I think it extremely unlikely that any of gus’ family members would come across this discussion. If they bothered to read this thread of “administrative discussions”, they would have had to go through several thousand posts about OTHER things to get to this thread. And yes, I suppose that they would be hurt and angry if they came across this, but the needs of actual Buffistas outweigh the slim chance that the family may see this.

That said, I don’t remember Gus very well, so I don’t have an emotional stake in this at all. What I care about is someone manipulating people that I care about. There didn’t have to be a post about him dying, he just didn’t have to post anymore. Or even that he was checking out of the board for whatever reason. Posting a fake death notice is a deliberate attempt at manipulation. If it is fake, I’m sure that “kimi” or “gus” is quite enjoying this discussion. Which is fine, because I don’t care about them, I care about the people who are mourning right now, I care about the people who are confused, who are feeling torn right now, and even Trudy, who I think is overreacting to a reasonable inquiry.

I think that Ginger’s idea

It is a small possibility that he was quite real but wished to continue to remain anonymous and "Guy Straley" is also a pseudonym.

deserves credence. I’m quite real, but if you looked for me, you wouldn’t find me. Of course, many of you have met me in person, and some of you live in my city, have been to my house, etc. But, that’s a testament to my desire to meet people, I could just as easily never have met people.

And this is very important

If there is no physical "Gus" as previously defined, the entity still existed and was loved. It begs redefinition of the term "real".

yes, there is something to mourn, but the fake death was not necessary.

For levity's sake....

While googleing myself (I do come up if you know my real name and the university at which I work) I discovered that the office that I left almost two years ago has me listed as their 2007 United Way campaign volunteer. It is a five person office.

listed as their 2007 United Way campaign volunteer

No one else could be roped into it.

I would just like to note, for the record, that should people go googling for me after I die, to confirm my reality, I am not, in fact, a high-school wrestler.

Also, I find myself suddenly very glad that I've known Aimee and MM for over a decade (I think over two, in MM's case), and they have all kinds of verification of my reality, and can (hopefully) confirm the reality of my (preferably far future distant) death.