March 18, 2009

• Episode 4: Attack

  This is Episode 4 in a multi-part story of how I crossed paths with a Web celebrity. Episode 1 is here. Episode 2 is here. Episode 3 is here. I will be updating this story throughout the week with new episodes. It's a dark, depressing story, but I think it's time to share it in the hope of teaching others. You can read more of how I feel about each Episode in retrospect by perusing the comment section. Minor details may have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.

  The story so far is that I found out that "Kylie", the Internet woman whose profile and blog seemed so attractive, was really a creation of the "Reverend Creep", a married pastor with far too much time on his hands. I found out that the real "Kylie" pictured in the profile had pictures elsewhere. The question was, who was she? And how could I get rid of the "Kylie" profile forever, before perhaps the Reverend Creep would lure some unsuspecting person into a face-to-face meeting or worse?

  Anyway, all I had to go on was "Carly Lee" as possibly being the name of the person in those pictures. And I knew I didn't have enough information to go to the social networking webmaster with any accusation. See, they would only take down a profile for inappropriate content, or for being an imposter. And as I had said, I had lost the proof that "Reverend Creep" and "Kylie" were the same person.

  I googled my little heart out, and after skipping Carly Lee the 5th grader and Carly Lee the adult entertainment star, I finally hit pay dirt by googling "Carly Lee model". It was her!

  I found her modeling work on display. Carly Lee's pictures had been stolen to create "Kylie", there was no doubt about it. I then found her personal web-site based on a link. It wasn't that popular; Kylie/Carly Sue was still a mostly unknown model, which was why none of the people who befriended her had recognized her. (Reverend Creep was sneaky, I guess). But I still had no contact info. So I dug a little deeper and found a link to her site on the same social networking site.

  I created another profile, and sent her the following message (paraphrased)

  "Hi Carly Lee, I noticed this person is pretending to be you, and I don't think it's right that they are getting all these friends by stealing your pictures. I can't get (site name) to stop them unless you complain. Can you write them a note?"

  You'll note that I did not identify myself, and I did not identify Reverend Creep. I felt bad to admit that someone of the Christian faith was so creepy, and I still was not sure to what extent Reverend Creep was a creep. By the way, Carly Lee was a materialistic model, and I found out that yes, it was much more about the person instead of the pics. I wasn't attracted to her, but that also could have been because the fake profile made me so mad.

  She responded by putting a warning on her myspace that Kylie was impersonating her, and sending the info to the web-site folk. I then started to relax. I had launched an anonymous counterattack using a perfect argument. How could the webmaster not shut down Kylie's profile when the very model whose pics Kylie stole was complaining? And this way no one would know about each other. Kylie would never know about Reverend Creep. Reverend Creep would have his profile shut down, but not know who turned him in. He probably had just stolen those pics off a web-site anyway, right? And neither would know about me. Talk about a fool-proof plan! Well...it wasn't.

  Episode 5, Aftermath, concludes the story tomorrow. I'll then also tell you who the Web celebrity is in the story.

  • 1:02 pm
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