I never thought I'd see the day that someone would elaborately impersonate me online. That's honestly a lot of effort to go through for identity theft. I'm not pressing charges however—you see, it was one of my childhood friends that wanted to know what it would be like to be me for a week.
A Gift of Love
For the purposes of this story, we're going to call her M. We used to live in the same neighborhood growing up, and attended the same middle school and highschool together. Sharing many of the same interests, we hung out a lot and still call each other up often to enjoy an afternoon or evening with some shenanigans.
The other night, our crew was hanging out in our group chat assessing where everyone was, and what we were all up to for the evening. She had stopped into a grocery store that sells many international snacks. M asked if I was home, and offered to drive to my house to bring me some. She promptly showed up soon after bearing one of my favorite chocolate brands, and some candy to boot.
Feeling like the most blessed friend on the planet, I began enjoying my new treats at my desk for a quiet and lovely evening. Of course, it wouldn't remain that way for long.
M got home, and asked me how I was enjoying the chocolates. After confirming how delicious they were; she followed up with... "I hope you won't be mad but..."
Identity Stolen
She confessed her recent activities of setting up a dating profile in my name, with all of my preferences and information she knew. Headed to my Facebook page, and grabbed some of my photos, and had been monitoring my inbox for the past 2 days. Another friend that I chat with daily, L—also was in on it, and failed to mention anything to me.
Still eating the chocolates, I was livid and thought that there was no way that they managed to do this. M's next messages to me included my profile link, a login name, and a password. I froze looking down at my phone.
I immediately thought back to last week when I uploaded my new profile photo to Facebook. In the slew of comments, she did mention that I was adorable and she wanted to make me a dating profile. My answer to her was an all-caps "WTF NO"; that she ended up taking as a yes. It was later discovered that her reasoning of my answer was one of humor, giving the green light to have fun.
"Catfish"—Urban Dictionary
Going Fishing
People often do this on Twitter these days when offering ETH or BTC giveaways from famous accounts. They copy the photo and make a similar name to lure out people to scam cryptocurrency. This also happens here on Steemit. Never ever give your password to anyone! In the online dating sphere however, the good-looking guy or girl on the site are sometimes not the person at all—fake photos and names are common to bait out unsuspecting men and women.
As I opened the dating site up on my computer, my mind was racing. What possible reason could M have for pretending to be me? We've been best friends for over half our lives. Shock after shock came to me the more I got to explore around.
One of the reasons M decided to come clean in the first place, was that only after 2 days, she couldn't keep up with how many men wanted to meet me. How's that for an ego boost?
A Skilled Reconstruction
My name is Sherylmmm. Now this is hilarious for two reasons. First of all it makes me sound like some sort of human snack, albeit derrogatory, this is what I first thought. It was actually a shoutout to me personally. I have 3 legal first names, combined with my middle name—my initials spell S.M.M.M.K.
Looking back, if someone was going to be dedicating this much time to a troll project, personal touches would be needed as well. My full name isn't well-known either. If it was a stranger trying to impersonate me, it wouldn't be passable. A best friend is a little different, I sat in astonishment at how many things about me she actually knew, and M's impecable accuracy overall.
I began going through the messages (including the other ones she already opened), and got to the one you see above, where he quoted "me". I instantly went back to my profile that I had just opened, because I hadn't realized that there was much more to it.
M had included an entire section about what I was looking for in a person. SHE WASN'T WRONG. The more I read on, the more I realized that she was genuinely trying to find a person for me. I laughed at what she wrote for my ideal conversation starter:
"What is the most meaningful conversation you've ever had?"
"Shit," I thought. She might know me better than I know myself. I decided to sift through the remaining replies before having her pull the whole thing offline. I wasn't going to like what I was going to read.
What to Convey in a Message
Physical touch... primarily?
How little we are in control with our lives? I'm not here to fill a void.
Interested, because of the way I look.
And then some one who actually recognized me.
The Worst Part of All was Being Judged
Now you may be asking yourself how this entire ordeal could have gotten any worse. I had opened near 80 messages from people that wanted to meet me. There was a trending theme with about one third of them.
Instead of telling me something about themselves, many of them asked;
"Do you even have meaningful conversations?"
In the past month alone, I've covered art, death, quantum mechanics, various aspect in how our thoughts shape our reality and many versed topics. Yet here they were, dumbfounded that someone who looks this way could even have a smart conversation. It was disgusting to be seen as a piece of meat, when it wasn't even me who put myself out there in the first place.
It was almost as though they wanted to know me as a body, more than an actual person.
The Confrontation and Verdict
After I read the final message, I contacted M to talk with her and unplug this. She was remoseful, and hoping that I wasn't mad at her. We've known each other for such a long time, that we've seen each other through every up and down. She's seen guys lie to me, and I found out that her boyfriend of 5+ years had cheated on her.
As one of my best friends, M only wanted to make me happy, and to be taken care of by someone. She wanted to have fun with it too. With how much attention to detail she put into making my profile, I could tell that she wanted only the very best for me.
M was put off by how many people only wanted to hook up and didn't want to get to know me at all. I found out later from L that M was planning to buy me a premium account to find my ideal guy for me. I'm not even mad, I'm more impressed if anything. I'm amazed that my friends care this much about me.
My Lesson on Love
Throughout all of this, I did learn a valuable piece of information that I wanted to share with everyone reading this. As a woman nearing her thirties, the majority of my female friends are married with children.
...But are they happy?
I ask this, because it's been brought to my attention that if I wanted to have a boyfriend, or even get married, it wouldn't be that hard for me. There's a lot of people out there who are with someone, purely to ease their own loneliness. Love isn't a race, and no one has to settle. I don't need another person with me to feel complete, and if I want true love...
Then it's more than worth waiting for.
Thank you @bollutech for this art!
"The best love is the one you give yourself"
Hahaha. I'm glad you had fun with your quasi-fake dating profile.
I'm just guessing "Sherylmmm : Notice Me" had something to do with attracting the wrong crowd... then again, it doesn't matter what your profile looks like, that type only thinks about what they want.
I'm pretty sure you don't need a dating profile, tho! <3
Don't get me wrong, I was hella pissed when I found out this even happened. It did turn into an eye-opening experience though! Yeah, I'm perfectly okay with being just me without another person there.
I definitely don't x'D 💖💖
Okay lets be real. Although the thought of your friends is the sweetest thing she could ever do (because she really wants the best for you) I also would be pissed of.
It is also like a hint 'do something girl!',
And yeah, although there are I guess many also sweet men who really want an honest conversation and are serious about the dating app, there are also truckloads of jackasses who make you question if a monestary wouldnt be a nice next place to live ;)
All in all, a whole experience I guess.!! (Im glad you didnt get genuinly catfished because that stuff is super awkward! Seeing yourself online all of a sudden with a different name or so)
Yeah, in a sense accurate details are a little better. There's only one of me—I don't need self-identity issues too! As far as doing something, I'll get into a relationship when it feels right to me.
It was something strangely ridiculous, thanks for dropping in @karnixxl!~
Im watching catfish marathon at the moment :D hahahaha
not kidding
I know one guy who used his friend's pictures on dating site. When he was meeting girls he was telling them that these pictures were taken several years ago, so he changed rofl. Any way to each it's own, some people are very complete by nature, some people need someone around to feel complete.
Each person is different, you're correct in that. Using someone's photos as your old ones is a pretty great strat—hopefully he kind of resembled his friend lmao
actually he didn't, but he said couple of girls believed him when he met them
I'm sure that cheered him up some. However, there is no love in deception!
100% agree,
I'm pretty sure I had voted for this one. I think my vote didn't go through.
No worries! No one in this life is perfect, and that's what I think makes existence beautiful c:
Mhen! People can be very cruel. They just wana gain whatever they want by Cat-Fish. This is something that have to be eradicated on the internet.
This point got me thinking 😑
...But are they happy?
I wish ladies out there could understand this. The fact is some people fall in love because they saw others falling in love. Some force themselves to fall in love because they are scared of of people will say. The fact is that those of love aren't genuine. They don't really come from the heart because they aren't pleasing themselves, they are pleasing other people which makes them unhappy with their lives and relationships.
Thanks for sharing this lovely diary, I can't wait to read the next part 😁
The love isn't genuine when it plays out like that. I am learning to better accept and cope with my own self love than one from another. I apologize for these short comments. I hope that you can understand.
With love,
@shello
Lol... @shello.. You are not a stranger. I had the intention of messaging you on Discod about your scarcity on Steemit but now you are back I will be hoping to learn more from you 💗
Thank you for your kindness @hardaeborla,
I will do my best :D
You are welcome 💗
Oh Man!!! I'm so glad that you entertained the idea of the profile she made. Definitely did not expect a lot of that.
That Meme off that we had though. I keep finding stuff that I want to add on to it lol. I Actually had some that I made into gif's
http://www.crunchyroll.com/love-chunibyo-other-delusions
Yeah forreal. Sometimes I think my Facebook account is purely for entertainment purposes only. I love these memes though, we had a rather epic battle in that thread~
muy bonita tu historia
aloha hun.... lul
Didn't you recently just go through a break-up? Why would M do that so soon, plus behind your back? And I'm really curious what would happen if she 'forgot to tell you' and that ordeal went on for longer....
This is correct. She did mean well, and luckily we were able to have that cleared up. It would have possibly been a disaster~
Its hard to digest this kind of activities, one of the worst incident that happened in your life , and it caught in red handed
It was difficult to understand the severity of the act first-hand. She knew she was caught, and decided not to deny...
I kid you not this happened to me! Except my boyfriend made me a POF.com account so I could make new friends.
I was flattered but annoyed at the same. I am slightly anti-social and keep a VERY small pool of friends. At the time I had no friends of my own with the same interests so he thought it would be a nice drop-kick out the door so to speak. LOL Live and learn...
I'm glad to hear that I'm not alone in this. Although there are many thoughts that would be nice in theory, actually carrying them out has the potential to irreversibly scar others. Lmao, others really need to tread this with caution x'D