Because I Know about Fake Significant Others

I feel compelled to write about Manti Te'o for several reasons: 1) it's just a bizarre case, 2) it's a case that kind of pisses me off, and 3) I know a thing or two about fake significant others.

I'll start in order. I have a hard time believing that this guy didn't know that his girlfriend was fake. She gets in a car accident AND gets leukemia, and he didn't visit her at all? She DIES and he didn't go to her funeral? What a shitty boyfriend. Not only that, even after Te'o said he knew the girl was a hoax, he still perpetuated the story a few more times.

Also, how come Te'o's father told the South Bend Tribune that his girlfriend had visited him in Hawaii and they had met at Stanford if they were only online bf/gf as his statement says. That means that his father either 1) lied to the media a while back or 2) was in on the thing and let his son lie to the world. Neither scenario would qualify someone as father of the year.

Next I get a little pissed off at Notre Dame. The athletic director, Jack Swarbrick, SO believes this ridiculously unbelievable story that they not only hold a press conference, but he CRIES during it. He shed tears over a FAKE woman. Not only that, they hired private investigators and sprung into action.

Yet a few years back a 19 year-old student who had accused a football player at Notre Dame of sexual assault and the athletic department did nothing at first. The girl committed suicide from the harassment she received for making the allegations and only AFTER she died did the university investigate the matter. The Notre Dame athletic director certainly didn't cry for the REAL WOMAN who died.

That pisses me off.

Lastly, I had a fake boyfriend. His name was Toby. I developed him before the advent of a lot of social media. He helped me have an easy out if I got unwanted attention from a guy. I even had a picture of me and my friend Amanda's then boyfriend (now husband) that I could flash as my "Toby." Toby was easy to maintain because I wasn't a nationally recognized football player, there was no Facebook, and checking a background of someone wasn't a few keystrokes away.

I guess what I don't understand is why the hoax was so perpetuated in the first place. The media now is reporting it all over and they could have been the ones to have nipped it in the bud. I know it's hard to want to question someone's hard luck, heartwarming story, but that's what the media is for. Doing a rudimentary Google search to see if there was a Stanford volleyball player who had died is pretty easy. The media is supposed to be skeptical of everything--that's what is supposed to make them our line of defense from BS stories like this.

And with that I say, good luck in the NFL, Manti. May you enjoy your time with the Bengals or Raiders.