Someone got caught being mentally ill on the internet. Kudos to all the desk top warriors who've rooted her out and shown her to be what she is. I have to say though, it reads like more than a smidgen of backpatting themselves. "Oh, you were smarter than a mentally ill woman, good on ya!"
You're not naive enough to not know that most anyone will and can get 'checked out' by anyone these days. If you list (want an audience) your Twitter, Blog, MySpace, Facebook or whatever...you can bet people will check you out if you make the news or perhaps become uppity and make some noises somewhere.
Point is, if you try to hush (aka hide) one of those accounts (civilian, politician, celebrity etc) after making that noise, that will only attract more attention. The Internet Archive is only one tool. Board Readers, googles and caches of user names, aliases, Facebook friends and other contact lists...on and on and on. There are a lot...a lot of people that read (your stuff) what we make public after we become a focus for some reason. We forget most of what we post over the years anyway and if we leave it up, quel dommage. If on a message board or forum, well...nothing disappears from the internet and everything must go somewhere.
You can bet the acreage that python-man is and has been sussed out already too.
Here's the GOMI piece for those interested:
The internet continues to burn with the story of the mommy blogger
who alleges her son was accosted in a Davenport, FL area Wal-Mart. The story has spread to
MSN, the
Daily Mail, even
Gawker after being posted by the mother herself on
reddit and
Huffington Post.
But almost from the start people
expressed doubts about the veracity of the story. Internet searches revealed background claims by the mother that only confirmed for many that her
previous statement that she used to be a “pathological liar” might apply to this tale as well.
Now removed from her site
claims included having survived 3 failed kidnapping attempts and 1 successful one; claiming to be a stewardess for an airline and quitting just weeks before
the flight crashed twice in three months; that she was “meant to be in NYC on 9/11, but I cancelled last minute”; that she missed catching a train
that later crashed. When called on the truthiness of these claims,
Katie responded:
And yes, much of that list was tongue in cheek to drag out some of my sillier stories into much bigger dramas than they were. When I wrote it more than a year ago, I drew people’s attention to it as a FUNNY (though accurate) representation of some of the stuff I’ve been through in my life.
Other claims include suffering from Celiac disease, diabetes, lactose intolerance,
BPD, manic depression, ADHD, and apparently her breasts are so spectacular they
cause bar fights.
Soon after the internet began questioning why, if it’s a big enough deal to craft what she
no doubt hoped would be
a viral blog post, she didn’t contact the store or the police Katie began claiming she was being harassed. Saying her
milk supply was drying up and that she
was receiving “threats of pizza deliveries to my house”, she closed down her site. 30 minutes later Katie
claimed to be on the phone with the sheriff’s department “waiting for them to show up”. Despite a fatal car crash that
closed down roads for two hours, according to her a deputy arrived, took a report,
and left within an hour of her call.
Debate continues online with some people saying it doesn’t matter if the story is true because it started a discussion about gender issues, and others pointing out that if the story is untrue, using such issues for page views and attention is probably doing a disservice to the LGBT community.
I was unable to reach the Polk County Sheriff’s Department for confirmation or statement and Wal-Mart has yet to publicly respond to Katie’s claim. We await further developments and welcome any tips or information. We will update this post as information becomes available.
UPDATE: Apparently Katie has now been placed under psych observation.
From the Orlando Sentinel:
According to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office report, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office became aware of Carpenter’s blog post detailing the alleged incident at a Four Corners-area Walmart.
Since Polk County was eventually mentioned specifically in the blog as being the responding agency, a Sheriff’s Office lieutenant requested a deputy go meet with Carpenter.
When the Polk deputy met with Carpenter — it’s not clear when that happened — she began making suicidal statements, the Lake County report said.
A deputy added that “possible video of the incident may be obtained and viewed to in fact verify that the incident actually did occur or if it was all made up.”
UPDATE: HuffPo has
removed her post saying “We have also confirmed with investigators that they are in contact with the author.”
