I got Catfished Or Sarah Phillips, Too!
By: Dennis Fithian
Interesting story about how ESPN may have hired a writer for their website without ever meeting the person. I read the background on Deadspin.com on how a girl, maybe a guy, made a name for "itself" on Twitter, and then on some gambling site before being hired by ESPN.
Great detailed read on Deadspin.com about this exact type of story where the person may have been getting money from people using a false Internet persona. There was also a recent documentary called Catfish where a person is fooled by somebody's internet persona. Now, this leads me to my story. I love Twitter-@DennisFithian, gives 24 hour access to people who have similar interests to my own. My approach on Twitter has always been the same. You follow me, and I will follow you back. Over a year ago a few attractive female college students started following me on Twitter. One of the co-eds, in particular, named Paige was tough to ignore. She was a huge fan of all things University of Michigan. Paige also rooted big time for former UM quarterback Tate Forcier. I retweeted one of Paige's, "Go Tate!" tweets, once, and it attracted a bunch of my followers to her. It all seemed to be going fine. Paige, her friends and sports. It got to be quite a Twitter clique. It was fun. She was fun. Harmless? Maybe. Like I said, Paige was quite the looker. Naturally, one of my younger single followers forged a big time friendship with Paige. She was young, cool, hot and very friendly. One thing did lead to another and finally there was a meeting between Paige and one of my followers. Horror followed where 'Paige' showed up for the rendezvous but she wasn't the Paige in all of those attractive avatars on Twitter. The report was that Paige was the opposite of young, trim and attractive. The next day Paige and all of her fellow "girlfriends", Devon, Audrey (I don't remember all the names of the crew) had disappeared from Twitter.
'Paige' admitted that she had made up four friends avatars and they were all controlled by her. The entire ruse really sucked for my friend who thought he was going on a date with this sports hottie with the great online personality. I felt a little scammed, as well, with all of the retweets and communication over a six month period. I even gave Paige a shout-out one time on a Michigan basketball broadcast! Luckily, I am not in charge of hiring bloggers for any website, but if I was, I would think I would want to meet somebody face to face. After seeing Catfish this year and reading about Sarah Phillips, I would think everybody would.
