Lies, all lies...

The internet can provide an individual with (perceivably) intimate interactions without the risk of others coming even close to their true selves. Via the internet, you can enter someone else’s world just by reading a blog or talking to a disembodied username on IM. You can feel close to someone. You can picture them, somewhere, sitting at a computer typing back at you.

Equally, you could manufacture this sense of intimacy in others. Here’s an example. There was a blog written by a girl called “Kaycee Nicole” that ran from, according to the Wikipedia page, 1999-2001. In 2001 “Kaycee” died. Or at least that’s what Debbie Swanson, the woman who invented Kaycee and spent three years of her life detailing Kaycee’s many illnesses, posted on the blog.

Here is an article with superior links and anecdotes to those of this blog entry.

Indeed, it was all a hoax, and it got kind of famous, hence the Wikipedia page. In fact, this kind of thing is so common that someone (at least, I think it was him- on the internet, who can tell?) coined a term for it- Munchausen By Internet. Derived from Munchausen by Proxy, where an individual feigns or produces illness in another person, often their child, in order to gain sympathy and attention. Why?

I guess the outpouring of seemingly genuine sympathy, interest, and concern is an appealing thought. If you can invent a persona more desirable, more remarkable than your true self, and have no real consequences, no real dangers of getting found out.*

*provided you lie realistically, and don’t, say, kill off your character, resulting in getting found out because there’s no funeral and your internet devotees- some of whom “you” have even spoken to on the phone- actually want to attend.

You get a sense of intimacy, connection. People care about you.

If you think about it, “internet trolls” work along a similar- if less thoughtful, detailed, or manipulative- line. Take a moment to post something contrived, and reap the attention. Immature, but effective.

Maybe the internet enables people to gain a kind of intimacy, without the risk of proximity, or the potential danger of honesty with another human being.