it basically said she was 13 or 14 when it got started

I don't know that many 13-year-olds who would have the patience or dedication to do that. I guess the point is that not many well-adjusted 13-year-olds would.

Yeah, apparently it's not quite 11 years, but 8--she started in 2004, when she was 14 or so.

I'm always fascinated by this sort of thing, because it's not just a fake person, it's entire faked families: husbands/wives, children, college degrees, photos, blah blah blah, and they always have MORE DRAMA than anyone else. I mean, seriously: look at that business with all the kids.

Taken all in one lump, it's easy to say they should have spotted a fake, but it was clearly incremental over time, and distributed over a bunch of different social networking sites. Hell, Gus pulled a fast one on us that way--he built up the stories slowly, over a couple of years. And even so, a few people suspected him of being not entirely truthful.

Well, people do have unusual stories.

Exactly.

And we certainly do have some unusual stories among ourselves here.

Wow. That's entirely phenomenal.

Imagine being one of the parents of the kids whose pictures were stolen to make up her family album? Especially the sick child? That must feel awful.

And even so, a few people suspected him of being not entirely truthful.

But I don't recall anyone saying anything until after he "died." I think it's a terribly difficult thing to confront someone about unless you're *absolutely* sure you're right, or you don't care about the fallout from being wrong.

I asked a few people about the were-monkey stuff, because that seemed completely absurd to me, but I was late to the board, and by that time he wasn't posting much anymore, iirc.

Yeah, this sort of thing fascinates me too.

Did I mention my high school girlfriend did stuff like this? She had this whole convoluted story about how she had cancer, but she had gone to the doctor herself so her parents didn't know. The doctor was writing off her treatment as research. She would tell me all sorts of stories about how painful spinal taps were and whatnot.

She could be very believable when folks were talking to her, but later on we'd be going, "Wait sec, this doesn't make sense."

I won't go into all the details, but it turns out my xSIL's fiance was a big fat liar who lied about most things in his life. And went so far as to produce fake documents, dress up and pretend to go to meetings and doctor's appointments to fool people.