He claims he was duped. There's not evidence he faked the death or knew his girlfriend was fake.

Did you read the article? It is pretty obvious he perpetuated the hoax or lied about activities involving her to media. Either he is really naive or a liar. He even continued talking about her as a real person to the media even after he found out it was a "hoax" and reported it to coaches 3 weeks later.

It is a possibility that he was just embarrassed. I would be..

Let's assume that Deadspin didn't trace it back eventually to a close mutual friend of his.

So he's _REALLY_ embarrassed because someone online pulled a pretty hardcore prank on him. Yet he still continues to act as though she was a real person even after he found out about it?

Because if that is true, it makes it seem to the rest of the sports world that he's just trying to garner sympathy to win the Heisman. That kind of makes him even more scummier: the fact that even though he knows that he got pranked, he continues to perpetuate the lie.

Edit: for more context about it, read this: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/college-football/news/20130...

Apparently the guy who it got traced backed to 1) wasn't actually a close friend, just an acquaintance the player met relatively recently (after being contacted by the "fake" woman), and 2) had pulled similar stunts on other people in the past.

So it definitely isn't cut and dry, and I'm leaning towards extreme naivety on Te'o's part at this point (and possibly some embellishment to cover up embarrassment), although it definitely is a bizarre story either way.

He may have been duped initially, but he has claimed to have met the girl on multiple occasions.

The best case scenario for his credibility is that he was fooled, felt like an idiot and kept lying to prevent everyone from finding out.

The ultimate story is of the Anandtech forums, where someone invented a woman, sockpuppeted her on the forums, romanced her on the forums, got married, had a child (or she already had one?) and then killed them both off in a road traffic accident.

(http://web.archive.org/web/20010624115154/http://forums.anan...)

(http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=275172)

(http://oro.open.ac.uk/647/)

Fakery on the Internet is fascinating and very very common. People fake having cancer; people fake their own situation; people fake their friends. The movie Catfish is a nice exploration of one person's fakery. (It would have been easy to say "OMG SHE'S MENTAL LOL" but it's a surprisingly gentle confrontation and you end up somewhat sympathetic to her.)

Here are some other notable fakes:

SEXTORTION AT EISENHOWER HIGH

(http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/200907/wisconsin-...)

> Last year, an awkward high school senior in Wisconsin went online, passed himself off as a flirtatious female student, and conned dozens of his male classmates into e-mailing him sexually explicit images of themselves. What he did next will likely send him to jail for a very long time

DAVE ON WHEELS

(http://betabeat.com/2012/10/meet-hunter-dunn-the-young-man-w...)

> Followers of “Dave” on sites like Twitter and The Chive thought they were reading posts from a deaf young man suffering from cerebral palsy who had worked tirelessly to overcome his obstacles, all the while maintaining a positive outlook and relatably wry sense of humor.

KAYCEE NICOLE / DEBBIE SWENSON

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2001/may/28/internetnew...)

> For two years, a young American girl recounted her brave struggle against leukaemia in a daily online diary. This month she died. Thousands of web-users sent condolences. But [...]

(http://web.archive.org/web/20050115092141/http://www.rootnod...)

(http://www.metafilter.com/7878/The-Kaycee-Nicole-Swensen-Faq)

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaycee_Nicole_Swenson)

THE LYING DISEASE - in which a cancer patient is befriended by another cancer patient, who is faking cancer. (Happens three times.)

(http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-lying-disease/Content...)

WARRIOR ELI - a ten year hoax

(http://gawker.com/5914621/the-long-fake-life-of-js-dirr-a-de...)

Playing devil's advocate here: Ultimately, isn't this like a form of story-telling? A lot of books claim they are based on a true story, faking the story online makes it feel even more real and as long as it isn't abused to extort money or post naked pictures... as long as it was just people's interested they invested in the story.. is that such a bad thing?

Story-telling is story-telling, you know you're reading fiction. This kind of thing is lying, and lies are bad, because they poison the 'great web of causality' and can do lots of damage in completely unpredicatble ways.

The point is, no matter what you read or hear on the web or anywhere else... shouldn't you always be asking yourself how much you let it affect you? The illusion that the web is that one place to figure out more "truth" than in person, well those times are looong gone - see grassroot advertising and fake forum posts paid for by companies and all that.

Every time you give either time and/or money, you absolutely always could possibly get scammed so the only way you can deal with this is asking yourself if you for yourself and your own sake care and want to do something or if you will just quietly follow whatever story is being told and not let it mess with you.

If what you say is true and some forum posts could indeed "do lots of damage" then it is all the more necessary that people wake up and understand that they shouldn't just blindly trust people on the web, just as much as they don't blindly trust strangers on the street.