Community Munchausen's by Internet (Malingerers, Munchies, Spoonies, etc) - Feigning Illnesses for Attention

  • 🐕 I am attempting to get the site runnning as fast as possible. If you are experiencing slow page load times, please report it.
Are there any who have achieved awareness? I feel like maybe I asked this before but I can’t remember. It seems like something nobody is stopping because to reviver requires admitting a lot of very unpleasant and poor behaviour. I would love to read an interview with someone who genuinely recovered, or maybe repented is a better word.
This Free Press piece (archive) about spoonies has an interview with one, but she was mostly anorexia/psychosomatic GI + internet, rather than a straight up munchie. I've also seen some other pieces about people who recovered from various psychosomatic/conversion related illnesses through buying in to real (physical or emotional) therapy - this is an interesting podcast about a teen girl in a pain rehab program (article here, archive). I don't think I've seen any recovered full blown munchies though - the ones who always have a shit eating grin on their faces and know what they're doing seem to never recover or at least never really gain that insight into it.
 
Last edited:
Are there any who have achieved awareness? I feel like maybe I asked this before but I can’t remember. It seems like something nobody is stopping because to reviver requires admitting a lot of very unpleasant and poor behaviour. I would love to read an interview with someone who genuinely recovered, or maybe repented is a better word.
They’re going to need to bury her in a vat of bleach. I wonder how many people her multi drug resistant bugs have spread to and killed?

I am utterly transfixed by these absolute loonies that our fellow kiwis showcase. Although I can’t think of anyone in particular that’s been discussed in the thread, I am reading a book called “Liar Liar Gown on Fire” by Cindy Buckshon. I have not finished the book yet because life but the first couple chapters alone are a wild ride. It’s interesting to hear what is going through the author’s mind when she’s faking shit.
 
I forgot to quote it, I can only recall one old LC munchie who stopped. Robyn I think her name was? It may have been purely because she was UK based and the nhs were quickly onto her but she did disappear into the sunset after posting a half arsed explanation.
 
I forgot to quote it, I can only recall one old LC munchie who stopped. Robyn I think her name was? It may have been purely because she was UK based and the nhs were quickly onto her but she did disappear into the sunset after posting a half arsed explanation.
Robyn Brown.
Screenshot 2024-04-02 at 06.34.08.png

A lot of them simply give up. I was poking around to see what Aubrey was up to and the answer is she works for a social services group and has completely stopped faking sick as far as I can tell. Jan mostly stopped when she got pregnant and now really only talks about her husband's real illness. Amy Banek/chronically Amy who used to claim she had a disease that was like CF but not and only had 27% lung function but was fine walking around on room air is now an EMT and a firefighter. I could probably find a lot more if I really dug into the brain meat.

It's just not worth talking about them if they give up the act so you don't hear about the "success stories".
 
Robyn Brown.
View attachment 5871272

A lot of them simply give up. I was poking around to see what Aubrey was up to and the answer is she works for a social services group and has completely stopped faking sick as far as I can tell. Jan mostly stopped when she got pregnant and now really only talks about her husband's real illness. Amy Banek/chronically Amy who used to claim she had a disease that was like CF but not and only had 27% lung function but was fine walking around on room air is now an EMT and a firefighter. I could probably find a lot more if I really dug into the brain meat.

It's just not worth talking about them if they give up the act so you don't hear about the "success stories".
That’s the one!
Good for them if they have indeed got their shit sorted. All cows tend to say they’ll be “harassed” forever, but nope- once they start to behave in a more normal way there’s no point. Almost like their actions were the reason why people were suspicious/curious/angry!

Shame there’s a large number that literally do this until they die or actually become chronically ill from it. A truly bizarre and wasteful way to kill yourself.
 
I found Trisha’s timeline so confusing (through no fault of Ms Shills’, but my reading comprehension and Trisha’s storytelling just didn’t cut it). Some questions:

What was the deal with her GI tract when she was a tween? Did she really have some kind of issue, maybe some inflammatory episode?

Why all the anemia? Was she bleeding herself? Basic bitch heavy periods? Lying about the whole thing? I get that she’s anemic now what with all the infections and inflammation, but early on?

Why won’t anyone operate on her? In my eurofag country it would be considered a “vital indication” (necessary in order to have a chance for survival even if no sane surgeon would do it under normal circumstances) to remove the colon if it can potentially limit further, possibly life-threatening infections to do so. Or should I just leave logic at the door when I enter the Munch Municipality and assume she’s lying about tout le monde?

Usually when we see these over the top munchies, like Cheyanne, there is at least some grumbling from one or two doctors who are on to their wily ways. Did I miss it in this case or is everyone taking her diagnoses at face value here?

Also, very funny that the steroids made her a dead ringer for my butch high school gym teacher.
I also have many questions, mostly about the trach since I don't know anything about how they work. I have a feeling that they're very stupid questions though, I don't know much about human anatomy.

The unexplained anemia that she completely forgot about once she was sick for real, I'm thinking it was Kelly Ronahan style bloodletting. Or maybe also just lying.

I'm also not sure what is the truth about her childhood/teenage GI issues... There's a lot of possibilities. I don't want to accuse Tricia (or anyone) of being anorexic without proof, even though it's common in munchies and certain athletes, it just seems unfair to armchair diagnose every woman with an eating disorder. Maybe she really did have gastroparesis and intestine problems, but she was never in "total GI failure" if she could take her pills and everything. Maybe she would've been able to recover from GP if she actually tried reintroducing food. instead of draining her stomach 24/7 and taking meds that make it worse.

She said that the colon removal is no longer an option because she would probably die, but also because the colon might not be the only issue. So if she could survive the surgery, what would happen to her if they removed more than just her colon? Is it even possible to remove parts or all of the small and large intestine and still live? Because she's on TPN and drains her stomach nonstop, does she even really use her intestines?

It took a few hours to do the initial sweep of her social media so I had a local copy to work off, a week and a half of maybe an hour a night to discuss with the pros who helped me fact check, about a day to do an extremely thorough scrape of her entire public internet presence, and by March 10 I was previewing my first draft to a group for feedback. March 12 the final copy started going up on the Farms. I wrote this sentence on 29 March because having a local copy means it doesn’t really matter if I’m finished writing when I start posting.
Would you ever consider making an instruction guide for how you make these timelines? I thought about making a timeline of someone, but the sheer amount of her posts to look through and save was kind of intimidating. It's a lot of information to organize and then present in an entertaining way. You're obviously very good at what you do and have had a lot of practice over the years, so any advice would be appreciated even if you do not want to make a full guide.
 
Understood. I'll make my argument/do my best Kate Farms Shill tribute act and you can give me upvotes or tophats as you all see fit.
I look forward to it. It’s something I don’t really know much about. I’d heard about it and assumed it was maybe someone using something like infrasound or something to fuck with the embassy. I know such things are researched and these days nothing surprises me, but I hadn’t even considered munching so I’ll enjoy what you dig up!
I think long Covid needs its own thread too. I had someone contact me over LinkedIn last week and start going on about it and she was clearly fishing for me to give sympathy. I just deflected with a ‘yeah glad that’s over what a weird time that was eh?’ My thoughts on long Covid are that there will be a very small proportion with genuine post viral syndrome (becasue almost all viruses can trigger it) , and the other 96% will be malingering and hysteria
 
Hope it was worth it Tricia! Don't worry, I'm sure Kenny and your yeast colonies will have the cutest little outfits for your funeral.
I wonder what would happen if you just took all the lines out and told her to go home.
I wonder what the last point in time was where that would result in her living? And if she realised it.
 
I think long Covid needs its own thread too. I had someone contact me over LinkedIn last week and start going on about it and she was clearly fishing for me to give sympathy. I just deflected with a ‘yeah glad that’s over what a weird time that was eh?’ My thoughts on long Covid are that there will be a very small proportion with genuine post viral syndrome (becasue almost all viruses can trigger it) , and the other 96% will be malingering and hysteria
Looks like there was an old community watch thread on the zero covid people, with a lot of overlap with long covid, but it's dead. I'd be somewhat interested in a thread on Physics Girl Deanna and similar long covid types, but I do wonder if it'd just get boring and repetitive. They remind me a lot of the old CFS types who just lay in bed and tweet all day about how fatigued they are without much to make them good cows. The tubes and lines and escalation are what makes this thread fun to me - a bunch of middle aged women laying in bed all day doesn't have this level of inherent drama. Borderlines make better cows than simply depressed people.
 
So this is kinda repeating myself from previous posts in this thread, but I think its worth stating again.
She’s being dosed with every heavy duty antibiotic and antifungal they have available to buy her more time so they can figure out what the shit she’s culturing is actually sensitive to. I hate it.
With someone who has had long term repeated infections like this, the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes will vary over time. They tend to live on plasmids so get swapped around between bacteria, even of different species and genera, all the time. If you give antibiotics to treat the dominant strain, another strain will become dominant, then you have to switch antibiotics to treat that one. With every switch of antibiotics you are giving all the bacteria an opportunity to evolve resistance, which is how multi-resistant bastards arise.

AMR is completely natural, its how bacteria survive against each other. You'd find it in totally uninhabited places, and the first antibiotics were developed by figuring out how bacteria survive in niches with lots of other bacteria. I don't know enough to confidently say, but I would be extremely surprised if the level of AMR in someone like Tricia would ever develop in the wild. These are superbugs fighting for dominance over superbugs in super sterile environments (ICUs). I have been told they don't survive well outside of these environments, which makes sense because they're exploiting a particular niche. But eventually, one of these will figure out how to survive elsewhere, and we're fucked.

I strongly believe that antibiotics of last resort should not be allowed in these people.

.You can blame pharmaceutical company greed all you want. It doesn't change that there is no drug that can fix what you've created.
Completely true. Academics have loads of ideas of how to develop new antibiotics but they aren't being pursued because a drug of last resort won't sell well, by definition. It is now being taken on by international organisations such as the EU and NATO (sorry I can't find the link to the relevant STO activity but can dig it up if anyone wants) .

Aside- I'm a big fan of the One Health approach mentioned in the EU link, it basically acknowledges that human health is intertwined with animal health and our environment. Will resist sperging.
(including the munchie standard of intentionally introducing various bacterial sources eg poop to them)
Yeah, giving a poop bag to a munchie with any kind of IV line is just asking for trouble. Its amazing how those commensal bacteria that are totally cool in the correct place start destroying you the second they're somewhere they shouldn't be.

Questions- Tricia had anaesthetic for the placement of the line in her finger, why couldn't they use that for everything else?

How the fuck do you treat sepsis at home? This is madness. IME suspected sepsis involves checking various vitals at very frequent intervals. They do everything possible to keep your temperature below 40 and hanging out at 39.9 waiting til you're allowed more IV paracetamol (tylenol) is absolutely horrible.

The frequent observations mean they can react quickly if you go downhill. You could do them at home, but obviously you will not get as quick a reaction if you're not already in hospital. It just seems like a recipe for permanent organ damage or death. Is this common in the US or is it just done for munchies? I'm sure Tricia would love the drama of an ambulance etc but its a fast track to her stupid prizes.
 
I thought you were rehabbing?
Did hangover Kate tell you that? Yeah don't believe her, she lies like that all the time. Trying-not-to-drop-her-debit-card-at-the-liquor-store-from-withdrawal-tremors is the one you want to ask about wagons and our current position relative to them.

Would you ever consider making an instruction guide for how you make these timelines?

Alright that was funny but I'll be nice. I actually really struggled with how to organize my next one because she is very prolific and has had a 15+ year head start of erasing her history and starting over. I've started my draft over maybe 5 times trying to make it flow nicely. There's a few people ITT who have been watching the rough cut go up in an archive server and laughing at me all-caps screaming that I just found another fucking account or loose end i need to tie up. She also has a massive following so I wasn't sure if I wanted to write to this audience of people who already know how this works or her audience who might google her name and find my posts. So I get that like, "oh my god how am I even going to get through all this?" shit.

I am a serious data hoarder. I have multiple dedicated hard drives just for shit I've scraped off the internet. Not all of it is munchie content and most of it is not even interesting, but I'm a historian living in a world of very cheap storage and limitless primary source documents about ordinary people so my brain screams "ARCHIVE IT ANYWAY YOU MIGHT NEED IT." So step one, before I've even bothered to see if they're worth a post or not, is scrape the account. I almost always start with Instagram because it's my preferred platform so start at the beginning, tab through posts taking screenshots of everything. Not reading, not really processing what I'm seeing, just making a copy of the account as fast as possible. I know a few people I talk to use Instaloader or the tiktok equivalent to automate the archiving but I've never tried that.

Here's timestamps of one I was working on earlier. You can see sometimes it's multiple screenshots per second (the 1 after the time stamp). I give it just enough time to load the image before I grab it and move on.
Screenshot 2024-04-02 at 21.28.54.png

Tiktok is the most annoying to archive and takes for fucking ever. I use Snaptik.app to download the videos I want to save but I do not archive the whole account usually because it's too much work and so much of tiktok content is completely inane and useless. When archiving Tiktok I actually take my time to see what I should bother saving and what I can ignore rather than just pillaging everything and seeing what I have later. Youtube, the transcript button is your friend. No one has time to watch these chicks prattle on about nothing so I open the transcript and can it for relevancy then use this to grab the ones I want. Helps to also screenshot when archiving video so you have the date/timestamps/descriptions/comments in case you need to reference them.

(I also enjoy muting dance tiktoks and playing my own music over it. Sometimes the movements line up so perfectly to another song that I have to record it for posterity. It's the little things.)

Now that I've archived no matter what happens between then and when I have time to look into them, I have a copy saved and they can't take that from me. Sometimes I don't get around to posting what I've archived for a while and in the meantime they've wiped a ton of incriminating shit off their accounts like Mel Lucas, Shelby Lynn Logsdon, and MC Preuninger, but it doesn't matter because I already saved it all.

When I'm ready to write I usually open something like 100 images at a time in Preview (on Mac, I've been told the Windows equivalent is Photos or Paint but I haven't used a PC since Windows ME) and just start reading. Open a blank word processor and just start writing. I like to go into it with the mindset that they may be telling the truth about any individual thing rather than go into it thinking that they're lying about everything. Just personal preference. I believe them until there's a big inconsistency or some big proof that can't be chalked up to my own ignorance, like Tricia taking handfuls of pills while saying her intestine had failed so badly she couldn't even drink a sip of water unless she drained it out of her stomach. Other than that I just kind of let them tell me the story as they want it told. "Here's when she gets her service dog. Two months later she's talking about needing salt water for her POTS. After her first salt water infusion she's already talking about how she needs a port."

If there's a lot of loose threads that need tying I'll keep a second document where I'll do strict chronology as things are revealed. Like I said my current girl has had a long history of deleting everything and starting over so I'm trying to figure out what happened before her current profiles were live, and she is a hardcore retconner who constantly changes her own version of her past. So I've made a chronological timeline that just has dates, notes, and some links in it. Like

2010 October: first surgery on her wrist
2010 November: starts using crutches at school
2011 January: asking about wheelchairs on local forum
2011 March: friend defends her on Facebook
>>>>>> wins writing award

Etc etc. Those are made up but you get the point. To keep the timeline organized I had to make an actual timeline of shit she did and whatever else I could find.

If you don't know, then admit you don't know. I have a very limited background in science and it's way easier to just say "I don't really know if this is a lie but it sounds like one to me" than to try to prove it's definitely one when I can't. I can find journal articles that sound like they agree with me but oh boy howdy do I feel like the world's biggest idiot trying to read those things and understand them. It's not worth embarrassing myself over a minor detail I'm not sure on when there's big screaming lies I could be focusing on instead.

On the other hand, when it comes to non-medical shit, it is really, really, really fucking fun to call them on some inconsequential lie or chronology mishap. Like it delighted me to point out that Natalia Rijo's "CPS evidence" photo was bullshit. Beyond the obvious (why do you have evidence photos that were taken by CPS posted on instagram?) she claimed she was held by CPS in Texas but the photo was from a year later in Florida.
Screenshot 2024-04-02 at 22.57.41.png

Usually takes a pretty long while to write the whole thing but since I've archived everything and they're no longer a flight risk, I can work on it as I go along. I had the first two parts of Tricia's post written by like the 10th of March but I didn't start on the last one until maybe the 25th. I just work on them when I'm bored and walk away when it starts feeling too much like work.

And you can always DM me if you have a specific question or want to like, bounce shit off of me. I might not get to it right away but I do eventually read and respond.
 
Last edited:
So I get that like, "oh my god how am I even going to get through all this?" shit.
This single post convinced me to go back and read the entire thread, this is fascinating to see someone put in this much time and effort. You are a shining example of why I love this site.
 
I strongly believe that antibiotics of last resort should not be allowed in these people.
She should have to write a 2,000-word essay on antimicrobial stewardship first.

How the fuck do you treat sepsis at home? This is madness. [...] Is this common in the US or is it just done for munchies?
Baffling and not a USA thing to the best of my knowledge. I suspect either she was exaggerating or misrepresenting something.

There's a possibility that her palliative team (she mentioned them a few times but I'm not sure if they're still in play) and Infectious Disease have a plan worked out just for her, trying to keep her at home and in presumable comfort with an acknowledged increase to risk, but that's the kind of thing you'd expect to hear explicitly, especially because it makes her sound special. She still has a couple of antimicrobials to try, so I don't know why she wouldn't present to the ED and get those and fluids going.
 
I really can’t get over how you, Kate Farms Shill, buggest bully of the fragile fake-sick people, are just a super meticulous historian who points out the lies they willingly post for the world to see, which they inevitably make because they aren’t actually sick with what they say they are. I eventually ended up here because I lived under a rock for most of my life, did not use social media, got diagnosed with a condition, and made some accounts to try to get practical advice about managing it. I could not figure out why chronic illness spaces were batshit crazy and full of people who “advocated” for radical deconditioning, shrieked about medical gaslighting when doctors didn’t give them interventions they didn’t need, and kept trying to diagnose everyone with EDS, MALS, and MCAS. (BTW: is MCAS even a real thing? I know Mastocytosis is. But MCAS seems to be a diagnosis people like Afrin made up to make sure people with health anxiety, panic attacks, and somatic issues never get effective help for their problems? I tried to read about it but the information I found was either medical papers I couldn’t understand or from chronic illness influencers I can’t trust.)

Anyway, I’ve heard about you for years in circles that vilify you, and it’s very telling that they scream bullying when all you’re doing is making a timeline that clearly calls them on their lies. I didn’t realize that lying fake-sick people who devour resources they don’t need were so extra special and deserving of protection that it’s evil to scrutinize them. It’s delightful seeing people I assumed had to be exaggerating at the very least popping up as I slowly consume this whole thread.

What you’re doing is so important because I know for a fact that these people are so eager to talk about these illnesses that people who are newly diagnosed and actually have the illnesses and do what I did end up getting so much misinformation and bad advice because of them. Also they get a really warped picture of the condition since the people who love talking about it don’t have it. I feel like if you actually cared about chronically ill people, like the shrieking Kate Farms Shill haters claim to, you’d support an effort to make sure someone who actually has EDS or whatever isn’t being bombarded by bad advice from people who don’t.

I’m pretty skeptical, but I spent an embarrassingly long time engaging with these people in good faith before I realized something was off. I will also admit that for a while, their behavior influenced mine and I started to look for problems that weren’t there because they kept telling me to. I can only imagine how many people get unnecessary scans and tests and shit because they end up in munchie filled social media bubbles.

ETA: sorry for talking about myself here— I couldn’t figure out how to explain what I meant without a little bit of context. I have no intention of mentioning me again.
 
Last edited:
There's a possibility that her palliative team (she mentioned them a few times but I'm not sure if they're still in play) and Infectious Disease have a plan worked out just for her, trying to keep her at home and in presumable comfort

Definitely, but there's also the possibility that she's a big fat lying liar who calls spiking a temperature 'sepsis' every time now. She's so full of fungus and bacterial nasties that I'd absolutely believe she DID have sepsis, but also she's a munchie who likes to lie about her health and idt the hospital would want her 'treating sepsis at home' like that. On balance, I think this one was not her doing a legit sepsis after all
 
I really can’t get over how you, Kate Farms Shill, buggest bully of the fragile fake-sick people, are just a super meticulous historian who points out the lies they willingly post for the world to see
This is basically what led me here as well. Such an evil website full of evil people who dox and harass people without mercy. Oh such terrible people that no one wants to host them. Then I come here and look for myself and it's literally just people cataloguing public information. It's a library of lies.
Even better that the average age of users here seems to be late 20s and above, who not only have hobbies but can actually discuss them without needing trigger warnings and whatever bullshit. And we don't need to dance around with "I'm not trying to be mean but.." honestly I find it really refreshing here. And basic cybersecurity is actually promoted, which is probably another reason why it's so hated by people who think all your public info should be attached to everything you post.

This thread has also made me realize I probably got labelled as a malingerer when I was having random muscle pain that no one could find the source of. One doctor told me it was stress, or 'somatic'. I cut the cause of the stress out of my life and the pain stopped eventually. Even when describing it as pain that just randomly comes and goes like a lightswitch it definitely sounds made up.
 
Back