Fake profiles on online forums

Some people have these fake profiles as a way to be a social climber. While it may not affect MyLot that much, it's probably easier to develop a certain persona to make more discussions than to type about your own life. Sometimes things in life are too mundane, so there could be times where discussions can be more "gilded" and more exaggerated to where it sounds like people could contribute in the discussion. I have previous experience of finding these type of people. It's quite unfortunate why they do this, but they have their separate reasons.

I can see this happening. I know I have had "friends" make up accounts and then added me to them and I know who they are. They just won't add me to their "real" friends list and I find that sad.

Actually I've encountered such profile in a Love Forum at Postloop. In her first post, she was asking for any advice regarding her brother's behavior towards his ex-wife. Some members gave their advice and she responded back. Those members were totally clueless until another senior member of that said forum announced that she found a similar thread started by this woman. With the exact situation. But this time, the woman was talking about her and her husband. It turned out that this woman was posting bogus situations. The senior member have directly told her to not mess with the forum for there are people who are truly in need of help and advice.

How did the admin know she was fake if only the picture was !? How did she remember all those lie , sound kinda crazy because 3 years out of lying for no reason . Its not like we are breaking world record online are becoming famous I dont know why people just lie about silly things like those unless they are crazy. I remembered sometime ago I made up fake age to join over 18 chatroom lol and they booted me and my friend out a week later. Those were good time because we wanted to be in an adult room .

I have also seen that, at another site I belong to. Once we had a guy who said he was 22 years old. After a year of chatting and posting. He posted one day he was really only 14. i would have banned him for that. But they didnt.

that's people really stable with her commitment about this case, in fact that you dont know for all that time, that's very long time. And i wonder how did you know that it's fake profile/live about her and her husband? I assume that you knew her from mylot too not in real life. applaus to you that you can detect the fake profile in here...great..

that is just weird. I can't imagine the purpose or even keeping u with the lie. She had to have been a very smart person to keep up with the facade. too bad that she did not put that intelligence to better use.

In just one word the answer must be: money ! Especially if the said person had a fake profile here at mylot. If the case happened on another site, where there are no payments, another reason might be the age restriction - some forums have a 13years old minimum age for joining. If there was no money or age restriction, I can't really see why a person would do this, except maybe if he plans on writing novels ? Creating a lot online can help developing a virtual life that he can afterwards write about.

Everyone lies. That is true whether you are online or off. Generally, though, most people tell small, socially-acceptable "white lies." We do that to avoid hurting people's feelings or to try to secure our positions within the community (i.e., making it seem that the hubby is bringing in a bit more income than he really is). We want for things to look a bit better than they really are. However, when someone creates such an extensive, long-running lie, that is an indication that the person is mentally unbalanced. I am who I am, regardless of what user name I use or what site I'm on. I have enough going on in my life that I have neither the inclination nor the energy to be anyone else. I sort of pity those who feel inclined to create such extensive webs of lies. How very empty their lives must be that they must resort to being someone else.

I have no idea how people keep up with so many lies when they do these kind of things. To me it is pointless to lie so much like that. Why not tell the truth about who you really are? I guess their life is so boring and so uninteresting that they feel the need to do this. I don't think its possible to have that boring of a life to do that. My life is not at all glamourous or anything but I don't feel the need to make things up that way. And the sad part is you do end up hurting many people by making things up like that. People help you and give advice from their hearts. When they find out it was all lies of course it hurts them too! Sad.

Well, I can understand it if it's the social networking where people can make more than one accounts (some of them make it to support the games they play.) But in discussion forums? Wow...that was something else. Moreover this person has made up a story for three years! I must say it's amazing. But still I can't believe it, why would she/he do that?

Wow, 3 years is very long! It's very easy to tell lies but harder to keep up with them and remember everything! I am guessing that without that picture that person would still be there! She probably had a notebook to remember everything! Lol I imagine that this is very possible to happen online, you can never know if what you read is true. If there can be a positive aspect in this, I would say that maybe her discussions were not a complete waste of time because all those answers and the members advice might have been useful for other people who actually had those problems in real life and got some help from those posts! I was wondering, what did she answer about the fake baby pics when the lie was discovered?

She probably had some kind of mental disorder. Her life might have been so empty that she made up things like that in order for people to like her. In real life she was living a lie. It is really sad. In one group on MSN a few years back when it was not closed, we had a girl there that made up the fact she had cancer and even had a friend go along with her to "back it up". Then on another MSN site I saw where she was caught. I didn't mention it cause I didn't wanna be the one to say I saw it first. Plus there were other things to consider...But it turns out she did it so people would make her more "gifts" of the kind we made there.

too bad! I never thought someone you've shared will do something like that just to win the crowd and get attention. I haven't encounter such people yet but that's true you can be what you want to be when online since dominant participants are strangers but that will be so annoying and waste of time to entertain someone fake.

I remember people talking about something like this years ago in the MySpace forums Apparently this man had shared detailed events and things that were going on in his life, made friends with people and became really close with them. Then it all came to light that he was an author writing a new book and supposedly he was acting out as one of his characters for the sake of research.

I guess I know this person and I also posted a comment on that "cute twin photo". I also saw the photo (of those twins) on the net and uhmn- now my doubts is cleared. (lols) Well, that is why I do not trust most people who doesn't use their own profile. Thu, people can use other people's photo too. But still posting real photo can tell who is fake and who are real.

As I am responding your interesting post, let's first focus on mylot as a social discussion forum. I receive daily digest in my e-mail in box. From each one, I chose one that would appeal to me. Sometimes I chose not to respond to any if I think there is nothing interesting. The discussion that I tend to avoid or not interesting to me is the same old discussion like how do u make money online (never cease to exist and will continue to exist), do you make friends around here, and what kind of music do you listen to. Other discussions that I tend to avoid is variable posts concerning life issues. I would sometime respond to someone experiencing health issue (I would not somehow think that a post like this as a fake post if it sounds sincere, although I may never know.) or experiencing a crisis situation. I may not be sensitive to some people's personal issues, but I prefer to look at posts that are though provoking, like significance of bible verses, a medical term, or something scientific. Somehow, it's understandable that many of us don't have scientific mind, adventurous or out of the box thoughts, but the quality of mylot and many social forums suffer to certain degree. Going back to fake profiles, it's just happen that part of lives are sad. Some people act childishly like they need some attention. Online forum, no matter how supportive people, still do not solve people's problems. Tips, advice, suggestions may have significant contribution. I could be wrong about negative attention seeking or merely attention seeking.

It does take a lot of time and effort to come up with a life that doesn't exist but when you get people into believing it and becoming long time friends with something that isn't there it sure changes a lot when it gets discovered. The least they could have done was use a picture of other family members lol

I have seen this case for many times and I find it really boring.They just want to earn the concerns and the CTR.But honestly,they do the most meaningless things.Can describing a fake story really make them joyful or amused?I don't think so.I just realize that the more a person parades something,the more he/she wants it.Flaunt is just a display which enlarges something boundlessly to gloss over the void in his/her heart.

I frequent a pregnancy forum where people would start fake posts regarding their pregnancy or baby. Many times it would be a tragic loss and a lot of the women would devote emotions and offer help to the person. On the forum I frequent many people would shut the posts down as fakes almost immediately. I think some people are disappointed with their lives and decide to make up a new one. They seem to have plenty of time to do such things and probably track all the detail. I'm sure if you went back and read her posts, compare them closely, there would be some differences. She probably put some of her life in it, no one is that good at making everything up and keeping it straight. I have heard about people posting fake lives and asking for help, people would give them money or items out of the goodness of thir own heart just to find out that they were duped! No wonder our society has become hard and cynical.