lukethedrifter wrote:I dunno Lipp. I'm not ready to rule out that he's a dumbass who fell for a chick that didn't exist. Making up stories to fit what you want to believe is something most humans are capable of. OTOH he might be a lousy con man.
I work with a guy that got completely duped by an online "girlfriend". She went so far as to tell him that her mother had died, and later she told him that she had just been in a horrible accident. He believed every single word of it. He even kept a picture of her in his office, even though he had never met her.
So yeah, it's possible that Te'o is the victim here. He may just be guilty of being naive, and not so bright.
lukethedrifter wrote:I dunno Lipp. I'm not ready to rule out that he's a dumbass who fell for a chick that didn't exist. Making up stories to fit what you want to believe is something most humans are capable of. OTOH he might be a lousy con man.
I work with a guy that got completely duped by an online "girlfriend". She went so far as to tell him that her mother had died, and later she told him that she had just been in a horrible accident. He believed every single word of it. He even kept a picture of her in his office, even though he had never met her.
So yeah, it's possible that Te'o is the victim here. He may just be guilty of being naive, and not so bright.
The dealbreaker there, though, is Te'o's claim that he'd met her in person. That looks really bad.
As far as Gene W. at ESPN, bookmarked above, it's one thing to say you took a dude at his word, but not following up after actually looking and failing to find any proof of this girl's existence is not exactly great journalism.
lukethedrifter wrote:I dunno Lipp. I'm not ready to rule out that he's a dumbass who fell for a chick that didn't exist. Making up stories to fit what you want to believe is something most humans are capable of. OTOH he might be a lousy con man.
I work with a guy that got completely duped by an online "girlfriend". She went so far as to tell him that her mother had died, and later she told him that she had just been in a horrible accident. He believed every single word of it. He even kept a picture of her in his office, even though he had never met her.
So yeah, it's possible that Te'o is the victim here. He may just be guilty of being naive, and not so bright.
The dealbreaker there, though, is Te'o's claim that he'd met her in person. That looks really bad.
As far as Gene W. at ESPN, bookmarked above, it's one thing to say you took a dude at his word, but not following up after actually looking and failing to find any proof of this girl's existence is not exactly great journalism.
Yep. Also, Te'o is not exactly some lonely schmuck unlucky in love like soc's coworker.
I don't mean to become a defender of lying athletes all of a sudden, and didn't read the whole story, but is it possible he got duped then began duping to save face in a vicious duping cycle?
lukethedrifter wrote:I dunno Lipp. I'm not ready to rule out that he's a dumbass who fell for a chick that didn't exist. Making up stories to fit what you want to believe is something most humans are capable of. OTOH he might be a lousy con man.
I work with a guy that got completely duped by an online "girlfriend". She went so far as to tell him that her mother had died, and later she told him that she had just been in a horrible accident. He believed every single word of it. He even kept a picture of her in his office, even though he had never met her.
So yeah, it's possible that Te'o is the victim here. He may just be guilty of being naive, and not so bright.
The dealbreaker there, though, is Te'o's claim that he'd met her in person. That looks really bad.
As far as Gene W. at ESPN, bookmarked above, it's one thing to say you took a dude at his word, but not following up after actually looking and failing to find any proof of this girl's existence is not exactly great journalism.
Yeah, he may have made up the part about meeting her in person (if he actually did say that....... I don't know the entire story). Embelishing a story is a little different than creating a hoax, though.
Although Deadspin, Notre Dame, and Manti Te'o himself are saying Lennay Kekua never existed and was a fabrication in an elaborate hoax, one NFL player claims to have met her.
Reagan Maui'a, a fullback for the Arizona Cardinals, told ESPN that he met Kekua doing charity work in American Samoa in 2011. Here's what he said:
"This was before her and Manti. I don't think Manti was even in the picture, but she and I became good friends. We would talk off and on, just checking up on each other kind of thing. I am close to her family. When she was going through the loss of her father, I was -- I offered a comforting shoulder and just someone to bounce her emotions off. That was just from meeting her in Samoa."
Maui'a said it was Ronaiah Tuiasosopo — the person who Deadspin reports invented Kekua on the Internet — who introduced the two. Troy Polamalu of the Pittsburgh Steelers was allegedly there as well.
From ESPN:
He said it is his understanding that Kekua's mother is operating her Twitter account. He said he'd never met her mother. When told by a reporter that she apparently might not have existed, Mauia said: "No, she is real."
Deadspin reports that the evidence is overwhelming that Kekua — at least the person we taught Kekua was — did not exist. There is no death certificate, or record of her having graduating from Stanford.
So perhaps Maui'a's claim is just proof that there is a whole lot that we just don't know right now.
