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Manti Te'o, star linebacker of American football, is embroiled in a hoax regarding a girlfriend who was said to have died of Leukemia.

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NOTRE Dame linebacker Manti Te'o pauses during an interview with ESPN, which says he maintains he was never involved in creating the dead girlfriend hoax. . Picture: AP Photo/ESPN Images, Ryan JonesSource:AP

IT started out a stunner: The Heisman Trophy runner-up had told heartbreaking stories about a dead girlfriend who didn't exist.

Then it became unreal: The All-American linebacker said he had been duped, and theirs was a relationship that existed only in phone calls and Internet chats.

The reaction was predictable: Unbelievable. Couldn't happen.

People speculated he must be a straight-laced Mormon, naive and unfamiliar with modern-day dating hazards. Or he must be part of an elaborate hoax designed to bolster his image. Because no big-time college football player, beloved on campus and adored by millions, could have a girlfriend he's never ... actually ... met.

Yet even people who really ought to know better say what Notre Dame's Manti Te'o says happened to him has happened to them, and they believe 'catfishing' as it it called, happens far more often than people care to admit.

'If we shake the tree, we would find hundreds of thousands of people falling out of the tree who are experiencing something like this,' said Robert Epstein, a senior research psychologist at the California-based American Institute for Behavioural Research and Technology.

It's just human nature, Epstein said, something known formally by psychologists as 'confirmation bias.' We watch the news that matches our political beliefs. We discount viewpoints we don't like. We ignore good advice and miss red flags, so we can continue believing in something we want to be true.

In Epstein's case, it was believing he'd made a real connection with an attractive Russian woman named Ivana he met online. In fact, she was nothing more than a computer bot someone had set up to respond to queries on an online dating site.

'A lot of people still make fun of me,' he said.

Today's social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, make it easy to 'meet' someone without ever doing more than chatting online or exchanging emails. The same tools that allow for such casual contact also can be used by impostors to create intricate personas that exist only on the Internet.

All of it simply makes it that much easier to delude ourselves.

'After a generation of kids growing up with Facebook and decades of online life, you'd think we wouldn't be so easily duped, but I think these people who do the duping are more inventive than people who use the technology,' said Steve Jones, a communications professor and online expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

It's been happening since people first began mingling in chat rooms more than 20 years ago. In 2006, one mum in Missouri, Lori Drew, created a MySpace page for non-existent teenage boy so she could 'romance' - and strike back at - a girl she thought was spreading rumours about her daughter. Humiliated, the targeted girl later killed herself.

'As far back as the 1980s, men were impersonating women, kids were pretending to be adults, and all kinds of relationships with non-existent or phony people flourished online,' says Paul Levinson, a professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University, who studies social media.

Now, he says, 'the rise of Twitter and Facebook have only made that easier.'

Those behind Te'o's imaginary girlfriend, for instance, created more than one Twitter account for her and appear to have used photos lifted from a California woman's Facebook page to make it look that much more real.

'In retrospect, I obviously should have been much more cautious,' Te'o said in a statement earlier in the week. 'If anything good comes of this, I hope it is that others will be far more guarded when they engage with people online than I was.'

Te'o has company. As Notre Dame rose to No. 1 in the AP Top 25, sport writers nationwide recounted the story of the heroic, grieving athlete who persevered on the field after a girlfriend named Lennay Kekua was diagnosed with leukemia. Te'o and his family provided them with plenty of stories about the relationship, and no one figured out it was fiction until Deadspin.com broke that news this past week.

In his first interview since, Te'o told ESPN he had lied to his father about having met Kekua. To cover that up, he apparently lied to everyone else.

'That goes back to what I did with my dad. I knew that. I even knew that it was crazy that I was with somebody that I didn't meet,' Te'o said during the off-camera interview on Friday. 'So I kind of tailored my stories to have people think that, yeah, he met her before she passed away.'

The fact is that many people don't like to admit that they find love online, let alone that they might be misled by someone they've met that way.

For a young woman in Chicago, it started last February when a potential love interest responded to a personal ad she'd posted in the Craigslist 'W4M' section. They communicated for several months online, first by email, and then instant messaging and then online voice chat.

She sent him her photo. He delayed sending his, again and again, and put off meeting in person. He wasn't ready, he told her. It bothered her, but she was so taken with the ease and intimacy of their long, daily conversations - about their lives and their jobs, their family and friends, even sex.

After this went on for eight months, he abruptly deleted his email and Yahoo Messenger accounts, the only means she'd had to reach him. She didn't even know his last name and wouldn't know him if he passed her on the street.

'It all sounds ridiculous when you're not immersed in the situation, but when you are, it's incredibly easy to get sucked in and not want out,' said the 23-year-old, a young professional who shared her story on the condition of anonymity, still hesitant to admit how truly heartbroken she was over a person she'd never met in person.

Te'o offered similar details on Friday, telling ESPN he never met Kekua face-to-face and when he tried to speak with her via Skype and video phone calls, the picture was blocked. Still, he said he didn't figure out the ruse.

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After he was told Kekua had died of leukemia in early September, Te'o admitted he misled the public about the nature of the 'relationship' because he was uncomfortable saying it was purely an electronic romance. Sceptics remain, including some young adults accustomed to making connections on the Internet and by text message.

'Maybe I'd be more inclined to buy it if he was an everyday 'Joe Schmoe,' but with his fame, I can't imagine it happening,' said Jennifer Marcus, a 26-year-old New Yorker who blogs about dating and other topics. 'To me it seems like he did it for sympathy, or maybe has a few screws loose like a ton of people in this world. People go to great lengths to fit in.'

For the 23-year-old Chicagoan, her experience online hasn't led her to swear off using Craigslist and the OkCupid website to find dates. She has, however, started heeding the red flags she once ignored, she says, and cuts off communication with anyone who won't meet with her in person.

'I don't want my time wasted again with someone who isn't willing to give the same amount of transparency and availability that I am,' she said. 'I'm planning a third date with someone who is very much the person he claimed to be.'

Originally published asGridiron player not the only one 'catfished'

Sex & Relationships

Janelle Villapando has been swiping left and right for years and in that time, she's noticed a few patterns among the men she meets

As a transgender woman, my relationship with online dating is complicated to say the least.

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With my accounts on OkCupid, Tinder, Hinge, Coffee Meets Bagel and ChristianMingle, I am subjected to the same kind of messages from Mr. Washboard-Abs-No-Face and unsolicited dick pics that most women, unfortunately, receive. But searching for Mr. Right as a transgender woman (I was born male, but identify and present as female) adds a whole new dimension to digital dating.

Since transitioning in 2014, I haven’t reacted positively to guys who hit on me in person because I haven’t mastered the art of telling them that we have “the same parts.” For the past three years, Tinder has been my gateway into online dating as a transgender woman.

As a 22-year-old grad starting a career in fashion (and hopefully, one day, my own size-inclusive clothing line), I am drawn to guys who are funny and ambitious. There’s no bigger turn-off than someone who does the bare minimum—except maybe body odour. In terms of looks, I prefer taller guys. Being 5’9″, I still like to be able to look up to my man, literally. So, whenever I see 6’2″ or taller on a guy’s profile, it’s almost an automatic right swipe.

(Photo courtesy of Janelle Villapando)

As a trans woman on dating apps, I’ve always made sure that guys are aware that I am transgender. This avoids wasting each other’s time. There have also been many documented cases of trans women being hurt and sometimes even killed when they disclose their status to transphobic men that found them attractive, so being completely transparent is also a way of protecting myself from potentially dangerous situations.

As I click, message and swipe through the world of online dating, I’ve quickly learned that there are at least three different types of guys: those who fetishize trans women, those who are curious but cautious, and those who simply don’t read. Unfortunately, these labels don’t appear on their profiles.

The guy who sees me as a fetish

I usually get very forward messages from guys who just want me for my body. They view me as exotic, a kink, something new to try.

These guys want to chill somewhere less public or exclusively at their place so they won’t be seen with me. I have actually “dated” (if you can even call it that) some of these men, including one guy who checked his apartment’s hallway to make sure his neighbours wouldn’t see me leave his place. Another guy made sure even his social media presence wasn’t linked to mine. He lied about not having an Instagram account, then when I “came across it” and liked one of his pictures in spite, he blocked me.

With these kind of guys, I’ve felt like I was their dirty little secret, and at first, I thought this type of interaction was the closest thing to a relationship I was going to have as a trans woman. But I finally reached my limit when one of my dates bumped into someone he knew when we were together. Despite the fact that we were on our third date, he didn’t even acknowledge my existence as I stood there a couple feet from him while he talked to his friend. His silence told me exactly how much I meant to him. After realizing that I deserved so much better and was wasting my time with these guys, I stopped giving them attention.

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The guy who can’t handle that I am trans

After one too many encounters with men who were fetishizing me, I started to spend time on guys who actually wanted to get to know me. These are men who find me attractive, but are initially hesitant because of my trans-ness. With these men, I went on dates in public at the movies, or a chill restaurant, and I was viewed as more than a new sexual experience—but I don’t think I was seen as potential relationship material either. One guy in particular seemed to really like me. We vibed well and there was sexual tension building during our dates. Then poof, he was gone. After a month, he reached out to me saying he couldn’t be with me because I am transgender. He was concerned about how his sexuality would “change.”

I had another similar experience on a first date where a man greeted me, hugged me, then said he left something in his car. After a couple of minutes, I got a text from him while waiting alone at our table that said he had to leave because my transgender status was giving him anxiety. After that, I stopped chasing guys who were too concerned about their feelings to even think about mine. Red flags like continually postponing dates and constantly asking, “When are you getting the surgery?” helped me whittle down the number of guys I talked to by half.

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The guy who ignores the (not-so) fine print

Thanks to Tinder, profile pictures say more than a thousand words—and actual words seem to be irrelevant on our profiles. While most people only consider the profile pic before swiping right or left, for me, the text on my profile is crucial. Even since Tinder introduced more genders to choose from than just the binary male and female, it doesn’t show your gender on the swiping screen. I get plenty of matches on Tinder, but within 24 hours around half of them un-match or block me after reading my profile. Whenever I do start talking to guys who “stick around,” I make sure that they know I am transgender before meeting them.

(Screenshot courtesy of Janelle Villapando)

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However, I recently went on a date with a guy who was tall, handsome, funny and had his shit (relatively) together. We met in the late afternoon and enjoyed our frozen yogurt in perfect patio weather. It was going really well! At the end of the date, our first kiss quickly turned into a handsy makeout session in the backseat of my car. Before it went further, I did my routine check of asking, “You know I’m transgender right?” expecting he was going to say yes and carry on. Instead, he looked at me with a blank face.

He started yelling that I never told him. I responded saying it was all over my OkCupid profile, which it turns out he never read. He said, “I’m bouncing; that’s f-cked up,” and jumped out of the car, spat on the ground, slammed the car door and walked away. I sat in the back seat of my car in complete shock.

In that moment, I was mostly concerned about my safety. I stayed in my back seat for probably five minutes to make sure he was gone. When I got back into the front seat to drive home, I still felt uneasy. What if he’s still around? What if he’s going to try to hurt me?

I touched up my makeup, reapplied my lipstick and put the car in drive. Once I got out of the area I started processing what had happened. I knew that it was all going too well for him to even be interested in me. Until that awkward moment, I thought, “Is this how easy dating could be if I were a cisgender woman?” I had gone from the girl that my date was kissing to someone he found disgusting all because of a single word: transgender.

Relationship status: single, but cautious

Not all guys I’ve talked to fall into these three categories. I’ve gone on dates with guys who seem to be genuinely into me and are accepting of my trans identity, but there’s no magical combination of spark, chemistry and attraction.

I seem to only be attracted to guys who are no good for me—and I know that I’m not the only woman, trans or not, who feels that way. Since that incident with the guy in my car, I’ve slowed down my activity on dating apps. I thought about deleting all my dating apps, but it’s still my main way of meeting guys. Plus, what if the perfect guy slides into my DM, right? I haven’t lost hope, and my friends continue to encourage me. If I had a dime for every time someone said that I’ll find love when I least expect it, I’d be driving a hot pink Bugatti right now (all white interior, please). If that’s truly the case, I hope he’s 6’4″ and messages me with a cheesy pick-up line.

This article was originally published on August 16, 2017.

Related:

The First Time I Had Sex in My Correct Gender
What It’s Really Like to Be Young and Transgender in Canada
Yes, Men Get Paid More than Women…But What About Trans Women?