I remember when I was in college and talking to all sorts of girls online. This is was the late 90s, when chat rooms were huge and the idea of being able to talk to people anywhere in the world still blew folks' minds. Anyone out there remember the Excite Chatrooms? Anyone?
God, I'm old.
Somewhere during that time, I met a girl named Kelly. I won't even bother to change her name. She'll probably never see this, and it probably wasn't her name, anyway. She hung out in the chatrooms like I did, and she became one of the girls I'd look for when I came on. She'd pretend to laugh at my jokes and we had long conversations about whatever that eventually led to us exchanging phone numbers. She would call me and we'd talk for hours. She was an elementary school teacher in Hattiesburg. And she was older than me, so naturally, I was interested.
The first red flag was when I tried to get her to exchange pictures with me. Yeah, this was 1999, and digital cameras and scanners were still rare, but I managed to get a picture of myself scanned so I could show off all this sexy online. It was my graduation picture from three years ago. Still within the acceptable time limits, because I still looked like that. I wasn't trying to pass off a picture from 60 pounds ago.
But for some reason, it took her moving heaven and earth to get me a picture. And when she did, it was small and blurry. But I was a horny 22 year old, so I didn't care as long as she sent it. I didn't even notice all the effort it took to get it.
After I deemed her acceptable (because that's what you do online, even if you're a fat slob poured into a desk chair), I wanted to meet. And this is where it all came clear to me. Now, she lives in Hattiesburg. I was up in Jackson. That's about an hour drive, if you have no regard for life or laws, like me. It's about an hour and a half for regular folk. Also, on this particular weekend, she claimed that she would be in Jackson to go shopping. I suggested we meet up and hang out. Nothing big. Just wanted to see each other in person. She said okay.
That Friday came and went without us seeing each other. She claimed that her friend was holding her up from leaving Hattiesburg, then when they finally did leave, her friend was keeping her from coming to see me, because she didn't want to shop. She wanted to see me. She just couldn't. I dunno, I could be confusing this with one of the other times I tried to meet up, and the universe conspired to keep us apart.
One time, I was in Hattiesburg, on my way home to Biloxi and I stopped to try and meet her. She just so happened to be in Jackson that day. Another time, she was stuck at a birthday party for some kid that wasn't hers. There was always a reason why we couldn't meet; a prior obligation, a
surprise visit, a friend needing a favor. I would get frustrated,
asking why she couldn't just tell these people "no." I would eventually
see what was happening, because it was always something. Eventually, she just up and moved to Memphis. Then, she got married. Then, after I had moved to Atlanta, they moved to Biloxi. Then back to Hattiesburg. Years passed. She had kids. All the while, she continued wanting to talk to me, claiming that she wished that she could see me. By then, I had long since given up on ever meeting; I was just chatting with her out of habit. I had also figured out that she was hiding something.
Was she secretly a man, like that crossdresser who tried to pick me up outside of my dorm? Was she a fat chick who was using someone else's pictures, like that girl from New Jersey who claimed that her cousin had been using her email accounts? And no real person ever had luck so bad that something would always happen on the day that she was going to visit someone she claimed she wanted to see. I've had friends visit from New York and California, on the bus, and she can't get to Jackson from Hattiesburg?
I tell this story because the same stuff pops up in Manti Te'o's story. Every time he tried to arrange a meeting, some freak occurrence just popped up, because Hawaii is so big that people get lost going to the beach. Or whenever he tried to Skype with her, she would go, "Oops, my stupid lady fingers just can't make this stuff work! You're so smart, Manti." When someone doesn't want to meet you, these are the things that always happen. This went on for three years and he claims to have fallen in love with her. Oh, she just happened to have a horrific car accident, go into a coma, and die of leukemia in a matter of months? Please. No one is that stupid. No one.
Look, people do meet and fall in love online. It happens all the time, even when they haven't seen each other. People believe because they want to believe. I get it and it's wonderful. I was once that dude. I even get why someone would lie about an online relationship, because even with Don Knotts shilling for eHarmony, there's always going to be that person who thinks you're an antisocial shut-in because you dated someone you met online.
But no one is going to fall in love with a person they haven't seen whose life is such a mess that they can't even get Skype to work. Or who happens to vanish every single time you show up to meet them. And we live in a world where we know people are pretending online. In 1996, when I started getting online, it was a brand new world. Jokes about how the girl you're talking to could be a fat old man in Wisconsin were still funny. But Manti Te'o grew up in a world where this is all commonplace. It's no longer a secret. There are shows and movies about it. And he's a public figure, so he has to know that people are looking to take advantage of him in some way. Look, I was naive in 1999, the Internet Dark Ages, and I still figured it out. I refuse to believe Manti Te'o, star linebacker in 2013, was more naive than I was.
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