Fake lives and multiple personalities

[aretood2]

Just to add a little humor to a serious thread, I Have many personalities on here...however they are all under the same name, and I'm honest about it It's fun to play around like that and distracts me from the pains of RL. And the best thing is, that everyone is aware of this. There's Darth Tood, Romantic Tood, and even a female tood (I'm a guy btw).

However the difference here is that you know this, and people are able to know about the real me, the plain old tood...well...I'm not old. I Personally think that those who do have multiple accounts or pose fake lives have a much more "perverted" version of this. It's not only creepy, but also sad if you ask me. It's also wrong to deceive people like that. Unless it's just a prank you're pulling on someone, but even that can get...complicated.

[RogueRanger]

It makes for interesting reading. I showed this to my friends here in class and after the laughter faded the serious side came. One of the guys here in class got involved on a forum with who he thought was a girl, and in serious trouble as well. He ended up sending money her way and guess what "she" disappeared. Ok he was foolish, but he was also only 17 at the time. The only thing was this person made the mistake of using the same name elsewhere and tried the same thing on someone else. Long story short, "he" was found out because he made the big mistake of bragging about it to someone else who happened to know about my friend's troubles and the police were called in. It was so weird because the scammer lived in the same area as well.

[xxxevilgrinxxx]

there are times when the dramatic death is just plain hilarious, especially when the person keeps managing to come back from the dead, or when it's just all the people around them that drop dead.

in any case, it's always good to remember that unless you know the person as a flesh and blood individual, you really don;t know them at all.

take everything with a grain of salt

[Egle01]

Wow, I've never even heard of such thing before.

[Petra]

Wow, I've never even heard of such thing before.

Me either. Well ok, I heard about people pretending to be someone else to commit a crime (like a pedophile pretending to be a kid in order to gain other kids' trust), but to do it for fun? Creating a whole new life (or lives) for a forum such as GW, where we all come to talk about Stargate and science-fiction anyway, seems like a huge waste of energy to me. Honestly, I don't see the point. If someone feels their life is bland and uninteresting, well, why talk about it at all? Also, I can't imagine what's so satisfying about creating different personalities just to agree with yourself. I mean, for me the point of a discussion forum is discussion, exchanging different opinions and ideas, learning to present and defend my own and to tolerate others. And that feeling when someone from the other side of the world agrees with you is just priceless. Agreeing with myself would give me no satisfaction whatsoever.

I admit I haven't run across anything like that yet - knocking on wood here - and I hope I won't. I like to trust people and I know I'd feel betrayed if something like that happened to me. That's why IMO cheating should have some serious consequences.

[Pharaoh Atem]

Wow, I've never even heard of such thing before.

you have learned the truth of the internet. you may have a donut

[SeaBee]

Me either. Well ok, I heard about people pretending to be someone else to commit a crime (like a pedophile pretending to be a kid in order to gain other kids' trust), but to do it for fun? Creating a whole new life (or lives) for a forum such as GW, where we all come to talk about Stargate and science-fiction anyway, seems like a huge waste of energy to me. Honestly, I don't see the point. If someone feels their life is bland and uninteresting, well, why talk about it at all? Also, I can't imagine what's so satisfying about creating different personalities just to agree with yourself. I mean, for me the point of a discussion forum is discussion, exchanging different opinions and ideas, learning to present and defend my own and to tolerate others. And that feeling when someone from the other side of the world agrees with you is just priceless. Agreeing with myself would give me no satisfaction whatsoever.

I admit I haven't run across anything like that yet - knocking on wood here - and I hope I won't. I like to trust people and I know I'd feel betrayed if something like that happened to me. That's why IMO cheating should have some serious consequences.

I think you would be surprised how many sock puppets there are out there. Even now.
The trouble is that without solid proof it is very difficult for forum owners and mods to do anything about them.

[Girlbot]

I think you would be surprised how many sock puppets there are out there. Even now.

Agreed. Sometimes I think I'm talking to 6 different people, when I'm probably only talking to one

[aretood2]

I think you would be surprised how many sock puppets there are out there. Even now.
The trouble is that without solid proof it is very difficult for forum owners and mods to do anything about them.

Agreed. Sometimes I think I'm talking to 6 different people, when I'm probably only talking to one

Well, there's the issue of tracking cookies and IP addresses. If Darren wants to he can find out where we live...it wont be quick but he can. And yes, sometimes I feel that way too...

[Girlbot]

There was a post somewhere months ago, telling Socks to register themselves or they would get ousted from the forum, but you know there are always dirty socks around

[aretood2]

There was a post somewhere months ago, telling Socks to register themselves or they would get ousted from the forum, but you know there are always dirty socks around

Yes...dirty socks....

[Jper]

Sock puppets aren't always bad. There are lots of good reasons to have different accounts. It changes when you start abusing, though.

Also, IP addresses. I don't know about you, but I am sure I must have at least 30ish different IP addresses linked to my account. I've logged in, from computers all over. Even from outside my home country. Also, one gets different IP addresses even if one is using the same computer on the same internet connection. It's dynamic IP address switching. Not to mention the fact that if one, like me, is using a collective internet shared network (uni-sponsored internet), our IP addresses don't refer to the locations we are at and all that. It's way way difficult. That's why it's so hard to get rid of spam(mers).

Add to that, that multiple different persons can be logging on/in from the same shared computer/network. So how would you know? I have this problem often on the uni-shared-internet. On lots of sites I cannot register because "they blocked my IP". While I have never visited the sites before...

More, tracking cookies aren't really the way you want to go with a website, it's not really all the "nice" to your users. Not to mention, people can set their browsers so to disable them, or use the privacy mode and such things...

It's a lot of trouble for what is worth. And it's far from easy.

[Janus]

@Jper: And don't forget that computers simply wear out. I've replaced my PC twice since joining the forum.

[SeaBee]

To be honest, most puppeteers tend to give themselves away in the end. An observant person will see patterns in the posting styles, such as the mis-spelling of a word or repeated use of certain phrases, or inconsistencies in the stories.

Harder to spot are the fake lifers, who only have one story to remember. How do you know that the beautiful asian girl in Indonesia you have been talking to isn't actually a spotty teen boy living in his parents basement in Boston?

[xxxevilgrinxxx]

I think it's also possible to get really paranoid about it. You're just never going to know if you're dealing with a sock or not and you could make yourself nuts trying to find out. At the end of the day, you can only be yourself, or as much of yourself as you're willing to share online, and take others as you find them, with a grain of salt.

I tend to take others at face value until they give me reason to doubt them.