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

[Meowthkip]

Any old Gaiafags remember Cigarette?

She was a user who claimed to be dying of terminal brain cancer and begged for items. People fell for it, showering her with expensive little pixel items. She even got her hands on a halo, which is the single rarest item on Gaia. To regular users, this was a big honking deal.

People started to get suspicious because she was claiming to post from her laptop in the hospital. I don't know a lot about hospital equipment but basically, she would not have been able to post on the internet from her hospital bed. She got the banhammer. I don't remember if the items were returned.

Unfortunately, I can't really find any detailed accounts. But somebody made a Flash animation about it:

Ah, memories~.

 

[Ariel]

Were you around FJ when "Elle" was identified as an Aria_Star alt? She's another one who is perpetually e-begging for some alleged crisis or health problem, making up sick children, or taking advantage of people's concern for her actual child's safety and well-being.

Aria_Star on ED.
Aria_Star returns to FJ and attempts to run a scam as "LisaM".
Her current identity, fantasy author Alys B. Cohen.
As an aside, I'm interested to note that "Alys" has a sidebar link to "I Was a Foster Kid." That blog's author claims to be an adult who aged out of the foster system, and she uses her alleged tragic life to present herself as a voice of experience on matters pertaining to foster care. Even though "Looneytunes09" hasn't asked for money as far as I know, it's unpleasant to see real people with real problems squander their energy and emotion on such a preposterous prevaricator.

Oh yeah I remember her from Live Journal too.

Another forum I am a member of (its quite dead now) used to have problem with people joining and claiming to have these incredibly aspirational lives. It was like disco sperg ban evaders are here.

It happened so many times that when somebody on the online has a story that seems either terribly sad or impressive I start to check what they are saying for inconsistencies. Unfortunately a lot of the time what they say just doesn't fit together.

 

[melty]

Were you around FJ when "Elle" was identified as an Aria_Star alt? She's another one who is perpetually e-begging for some alleged crisis or health problem, making up sick children, or taking advantage of people's concern for her actual child's safety and well-being.

Aria_Star on ED.
Aria_Star returns to FJ and attempts to run a scam as "LisaM".
Her current identity, fantasy author Alys B. Cohen.
As an aside, I'm interested to note that "Alys" has a sidebar link to "I Was a Foster Kid." That blog's author claims to be an adult who aged out of the foster system, and she uses her alleged tragic life to present herself as a voice of experience on matters pertaining to foster care. Even though "Looneytunes09" hasn't asked for money as far as I know, it's unpleasant to see real people with real problems squander their energy and emotion on such a preposterous prevaricator.

Oh shit, I remember aria_star from sfdrama on LJ. I did not know she was a scammer though, I thought she was just a lolcow and.... shitty mother? It's hard to remember, I think I'm getting her confused with a couple of other disgusting, shitty LJ mothers.

 

[Durable Mike Malloy]

Oh shit, I remember aria_star from sfdrama on LJ. I did not know she was a scammer though, I thought she was just a lolcow and.... shitty mother? It's hard to remember, I think I'm getting her confused with a couple of other disgusting, shitty LJ mothers.

Yeah, Aria_Star, Chris Izer-Bedell et al. seem to join every single online community even remotely relevant to their interests, and then run their swindles as opportunities arise. Until this thread, I don't think I realized the extent to which these scams are simply a numbers game.

I'm honestly impressed by how many of us have encountered the same scammers on different forums or under different guises. Like it's the same handful of people out to bamboozle the entire internet or something.

 

[Mrs Paul]

Were you around FJ when "Elle" was identified as an Aria_Star alt? She's another one who is perpetually e-begging for some alleged crisis or health problem, making up sick children, or taking advantage of people's concern for her actual child's safety and well-being.

Aria_Star on ED.
Aria_Star returns to FJ and attempts to run a scam as "LisaM".
Her current identity, fantasy author Alys B. Cohen.
As an aside, I'm interested to note that "Alys" has a sidebar link to "I Was a Foster Kid." That blog's author claims to be an adult who aged out of the foster system, and she uses her alleged tragic life to present herself as a voice of experience on matters pertaining to foster care. Even though "Looneytunes09" hasn't asked for money as far as I know, it's unpleasant to see real people with real problems squander their energy and emotion on such a preposterous prevaricator.

Oh don't even get me started on Aria. I'm the Guinastasia listed there (that's my usual screen name, I just felt like using something different here), and she's a total psycho. When she went by Misti Celeste, she had her "boyfriend" post that she committed suicide by hanging herself from the IV at her hospital room. Girlfriend's completely batshit.

She scammed I don't know how many people with her "sewing businesses". (Including the one friend I had who got the dress with blood spots)

 

[Durable Mike Malloy]

Oh don't even get me started on Aria. I'm the Guinastasia listed there (that's my usual screen name, I just felt like using something different here), and she's a total psycho. When she went by Misti Celeste, she had her "boyfriend" post that she committed suicide by hanging herself from the IV at her hospital room. Girlfriend's completely batshit.

She scammed I don't know how many people with her "sewing businesses". (Including the one friend I had who got the dress with blood spots)

Aw, how might one go about convincing you to get started on Aria_Star? This sounds wonderful.

 

[krewkat]

Oh god there's a video of Cara Goodman faking a seizure and supposedly pissing herself on her Tumblr.

 

[Feline Darkmage]

The Basics:
Munchausen's Syndrome is a psychiatric disorder listed in the DSM. The disease causes the sufferer to draw attention or reassurance to themselves (whether this effort is conscious or not on the part of the sufferer is still debatable). It is named after the fictional character (who was loosely based n a real person) Baron Munchausen, who would frequently tell tall tales of his own struggles in life.

There are a couple of subcategories. These are "Munchausen's by Proxy" and "Munchausen's by Internet". This thread will focus on communities built by and for people who have this and asspat each other in online circlejerks instead of getting actual mental/medical help for the root of their issues.

Why Are They Also Called "Spoonies"?:
From lolcow.farm, "What Is A "Spoonie"?

People who identify as 'Spoonies' are referencing 'The Spoon Theory,' written by a woman with lupus to explain the chronic illness experience to a healthy friend who asked her what it really feels like to live with her medical problems.

https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/

The 'Spoonie' Community is, in general, a legitimate supportive network for people dealing with chronic illness. In recent years, however, it has become polluted with SJW types and has attracted a new breed of attention-seeking catfish: people who lie about, fake having, and/or exaggerate existing medical problems and crises for no benefit other than to garner attention.

Links:
current /snow/ thread
Wikipedia Page on Munchausen's by Internet
Time Magazine Article
Guardian Article
Reader's Digest Article
the Stranger Article
Website about the Disease (Written by Psychiatrist Dr. Mark Feldman)
http://www.rd.com/health/conditions/munchausen-syndrome-by-internet/
Examples:
Kadeelyn Konstantino, was possibly the most famous lolcow to come from this community. She died early in 2017 from an undisclosed cause, possibly related to her often inaccurate diagnoses.

Belle Gibson is an Australian woman who was covered in a Guardian piece after being caught faking a battle against Cancer.

Robyn Brown (better known as LifeUndiagnosed and HybermobileGeek) is a Munchie case that was once described by a lolcow.farm anon as "Kadeelyn on Steroids". She is a British woman who has been blogging about her supposed illnesses for years upon years, and frequently hops to a new alias once people catch on to her fakery and she loses her sweet asspats. She is likely to deserve her own spinoff thread in the near future.

There is a large group of these people congregated on Instagram and tumblr including:
MyLifeStruggles, JourneyToEmma, Jonzie08, chronicallywellwithkelli, and many, many others.

 

[repentance]

This isn't a new thing, by the way. The first case of MbI I remember coming across was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaycee_Nicole, and that started in 1999. The revelation that it was a hoax nearly tore Metafilter apart.

I've seen many hoaxers exposed since, and almost every time people get more angry at whoever exposes the hoax than the perpetrator.

 

[GS 281]

a new breed of attention-seeking catfish: people who lie about, fake having, and/or exaggerate existing medical problems and crises for no benefit other than to garner attention.

These are the absolute worst people. They will drain your energy just talking to them. It is like the whole emo thing but amped up by 1,000.

Spoon theory is another example of what these people have done by latching onto something relatively legitimate and turning it into a tool. Everything is about victimhood for these people and how they can use it for attention and other benefits.

 

[Barbarella]

Oh there are so many of these and they drive me crazy. Chronic Babe is one of them. She has autoimmune diseases and fibromyalgia,and talks about managing her condition while doing things like traveling around the country giving speeches, making videos and somehow managing to pull in full days. She's got no clue what it's really like to have an illness, much less a serious one. None of them do. But it's the way she makes a living.

They just want asspats because they feel bad, like everybody does. They never get a headache, it's always a migraine. A lump is cancer, being tired is anemia, on and on.

It's always some amorphous disease that is hard to check, like fibromyalgia or a gluten allergy. And of course, none of these ever people post their scans and tests and no doctor can publicly denounce them. Everybody is just supposed to believe them.

It's used to be that your old aunti would corner you at Thanksgiving and tell you all about her aches and pains. Now these people broadcast it online and compete with each other to see who has it worse, and ask for money to continue.

There are some crazy GoFundMes too. I saw one for a woman with fibro who wanted people to buy her a house! Riiiiight....These people have made it much harder for actual people in need to get help. Belle is notorious for her cancer faking and she food a lot of ignorant people and possibly caused some deaths as she was antichemo. She lied and said she cured herself with healthy eating and some who actually had cancer tried it her way. Sickening.

There was another woman in Seattle who faked her way through several bouts of cancer. She raised tens of thousands of dollars, some of which she said was for charity but which she stole. She'd have her sister drop her off at chemo and then just sit there all day. She ended up dying-of cirrhosis of the liver from alcoholism. Never had cancer.

 

[There_is_no_Dana]

I ran into some of these folks while browsing a hashtag on IG and it was crazy. It was like they were trying very hard to out-sick each other. There were legitimate sick people posting hospital bed selfies, then next to that - pictures of fat dangerhair girls bitching about their chronic fatigue and PCOS.

 

[repentance]

I have a real life friend who has a relatively rare (as in most doctors will never see a case) endocrine disorder. She recently joined a Facebook community for the disorder and reading some of the posts is a bit of a mind fuck. There are very clearly posters who have made the disorder a central part of their identity, and parents of kids with the disorder seem to be among the worst.

It also seems to divide along age lines. Those who were diagnosed pre-internet don't seem nearly as "spoony" about it.

 

[RI 360]

You guys might like this blog which is dedicated to outing these kinds of fakers, including women who have faked being mothers and used stolen pictures of other people's children with cancer: http://www.warriorelihoax.com/

 

[guillotine]

Ah, the glorious insanity of the Munchie community. Here's a tip to find good content: Google "fibromyalgia" or "chronic fatigue syndrome" or any other high-medication, low-evidence disease and see a slurry of some possible sufferers with a few issues mixed with absolute lying addicts with 500 other totally improbable comorbidities. And yes, they're mostly pasty, unemployed females.

Here, let's try it with the latest posted in Tumblr tags!

 

[There_is_no_Dana]

And yes, they're mostly pasty, unemployed females.

Interesting, the other day I was reading an article about vitamin D deficiency symptoms and how they're often being misdiagnosed as Fibromyalgia. Or people will claim to be low D plus have Fibro - so it makes sense that a lot of them are overweight females with pasty white skin - they're the most likely people to suffer from low D. That said, the one person I know who complains about her Fibro a lot was just put on a combo of high dose vitamin D supplements and an SNRI - she feels 110% better than before.

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

The first case of MBI I remember was the April Rose baby scam by Beccah Beushausen, which was a humdinger I stumbled upon right at the climax. This crazy bitch started a blog about being pregnant with a holoprosencephaly baby and how (because she loves jesus and is pro-life) was going to carry the brainless baby to term (like the Hartley kids only worse and totally fake). She milked people for free baby gifts, giftcards, money and even got a "free belly/pregnancy photo shoot" donated to her but unlike almost all pregnancy photos that actually show a woman's pregnant belly Becca was always totally covered. But she still did the photo shoot with a pillow stuck down her pants!! She got gifts like baby blankets, booties, clothing, etc... stuff that a non-pregnant woman could never use so her desire for them was extra bizarre.

She kept the con going for 10 months until the questions started to be raised about how far past her due date she was. But our uber-crazy bitch didn't back down, she doubled down and tried via sockpuppet to live blog a "home birth" and bought a fucking reborn doll which she tried to pass that off as "April Rose." The reborn doll who miraculously wasn't hideously deformed at all!! The whole house of cards started to quickly fall after the reborn baby photos circulated. It was astounding and hilarious to watch all these crazy pro-lifers and housewives who rabidly defended her against any criticism or questions suddenly realized they had been so duped. It was truly a 3-ring circus and we discovered all the other crazy shit in her past (fake rape accusations and conning wannabe adoptive parents claiming she was pregnant.)

The story blew up so epically the Chicago Tribune and other big media companies covered it a few weeks afterwards. Hell I was even contacted by several major magazines afterwards, due to some public comments/sluething I helped with to prove the fakery, who wanted to interview me and get more info. for stories they did. The whole thing is still to this day one of the craziest things I've ever personally witness unfold online.

I got think she's out there right now trying some new scam on tumblr or elsewhere.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-06-12/news/0906111114_1_hoax-anti-abortion-miracle-baby

 

[cuddle striker]

View attachment 204202 check out ig tag "spoons" and "invisible illness" for even more.
I found this contradiction in ten seconds.

"I'm not drinking wine all day, I have NO spoons"

"giant glass of Boone farms"

 

[ConSluttant]

This isn't a new thing, by the way. The first case of MbI I remember coming across was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaycee_Nicole, and that started in 1999. The revelation that it was a hoax nearly tore Metafilter apart.

I've seen many hoaxers exposed since, and almost every time people get more angry at whoever exposes the hoax than the perpetrator.

I was on the very fringes of this whole hoax, but I vividly remember how it all went down. It was crazy insane. That people were upset with Randall was the weirdest part for me to see. I mean, dude had been led down a garden path. He was one of those "see the good in everybody, do good for everyone" types of people and the anger people leveled at him was nuts.

 

[cuddle striker]

it's really hard not to a-log about all these people when you work in a field that forces you to deal with them.