How Was I Fooled?

I know it’s a bit sad that it’s taken someone creating a fake persona for me to write this often on OD, but I’ll admit that I have been unable to shake the whole experience from my head these past few days. It’s probably an oddly good thing that I confirmed this years after most of my interactions with Kate. If it’s driven me this mad now, I can only imagine how I would have felt when I actually believed I was very close to her.

But yes, two questions have constantly circled my brain since discovering the reality of Kate. Why would she do this and how could I have fallen for it?

The question of why is one that I probably can’t ever know. I have dozens of different theories bouncing around my head, but none really make me understand fully. I probably will never understand fully.

The question of how is one that I can figure out a bit easier, even if the process makes me feel incredibly foolish. Oddly enough, the primary reason for how she did it also relates to why she did – the biggest reason that I thought Kate was real is that I couldn’t fathom why someone would maintain a fake persona for years, including having hours and hours of personal interactions with that persona. This is why the media frenzy about similar “catfish” stories made me realize the truth about Kate. Once I became more aware that plenty of people are capable of doing such things, it eliminated the last real rationale I had that Kate was the person she claimed to be.

Over time, my belief was somewhat self-perpetuating as well – I kept believing in Kate because I had believed in her so long. I was too attached to her reality to confront the possibility of her not being real. Kate was very flattering to me and also stepped-up her presence in my life in times when I was particularly vulnerable and in need of a friend to listen to me. This being so, even as I became suspicious of both Kate’s unbelievable life story along with the fact that for years she somehow managed repeatedly to be unable to meet me, I never really confronted her on it. How hard would it have been for me to challenge her the way I have now all those years ago? Kate obviously owned a camera seeing as she sent me pictures, so why couldn’t I ask her to send a personalized one just for my own comfort?

The truth is I didn’t ask her to, because I knew she wouldn’t have. She would have acted offended at my asking such a thing of her and not trusting her. Gullible person that I was, I likely would have continued to believe that she might be genuine even after that. One lesson from the whole experience is this: Normal people don’t have a problem confirming who they are to you. If someone is a private person and would like to keep their anonymity online, that’s one thing. But if a person who plans to meet you and sends pictures of themselves is unable to, say, take a personalized photo for you or skype with you, then they are hiding something.

There are still other reasons why I was pretty easily duped. One is just lack of attention. Although in hindsight I realize that many of Kate’s stories didn’t really add up, I didn’t necessarily spend that much time thinking about it then. I was in college and busy with my own life. Occasionally I noticed that something that Kate said didn’t match something she had said before, but generally I just thought I’d forgotten or misunderstood – after all that does legitimately happen all the time.

Anyway, while this experience will likely make me a bit more guarded in my interactions online going forward, I am hopeful that it does not turn me into a skeptic of every single person I interact with on Open Diary. After all, I have personally met 7 different people from OD and each and every one of them were precisely who they said they were. There are very few people on the website that I have the slightest suspicion of, even now. So, again, my only takeaway really is just that if I ever have doubts about someone, I should be willing to confront them at that time. If they are offended and can’t provide reasonable answers, it’s time to move on.

And move on I shall.