In early September 2012, Notre Dame linebacker and Heisman nominee Manti Te’o received tragic news regarding not only the death of his grandmother, Annette Santiago, but also of his longtime girlfriend, Lennay Kekua. However, it was recently released by deadspin.com that while it was true that his grandmother had died the “relationship” that he had with Kekua since 2009 was little more than a catfish scheme and the girl, Lennay Kekua, never even existed and was in reality a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. Further convoluting this story is the fact that Te’o lied in many of his interviews to make it seem like they were closer than they were and that he had actually met Kekua in person when in fact their entire relationship was based on online texting and phone calls. Because of Te’o’s deceit, many people no longer view Te’o as simply a victim but as a potential cohort or even mastermind behind the hoax itself, and debate the consequences that this fraud will have on the rest of his football career.
A catfish scheme is a hoax in which a person online creates a fraudulent identity in order to romance gullible people for no other purpose than to manipulate their emotions. More often than not, the people who commit these acts are very lonely and want the attention and pleasure of conversing with people in an anonymous medium such as the internet, and in fact create multiple accounts on various social networks to talk to and deceive hundreds of people at once. Moreover, the people who fall for these schemes often view the internet the same way as the person committing the fraud in that it is an anonymous medium, and while relationships, established online feel limited, they are also seen as safe. This point of view is further propagated by the fact that society still stigmatizes online relationships so people feel embarrassed when they talk about it with friends and family. This dilemma could also explain why Manti Te’o lied to his family and the public about how close he was with this girl when they had never met in person. In an interview Te’o admitted to ESPN, “I knew that — I even knew that it was crazy that I was with somebody that I didn’t meet, and that alone people find out that this girl who died I was so invested in, and I didn’t meet her as well. So I kind of tailored my stories to have people think that, yeah, he met her before she passed away. So people wouldn’t think that I was some crazy dude.”
There are many critics of how this story was handled and the degree to which each party is to blame. Notre Dame president, John Jenkins, naturally defended Te’o and the way the college handled the incident, while others have labeled Te’o as a giant fraud and that the handling of the Te’o incident by Notre Dame officials was not enough. Ryan Serdenes, a student at Elizabethtown College believes that “It’s one thing to lie and get caught, but it’s another thing to not admit wrongdoing when you’re caught and I don’t know why someone would lie unless they were involved in some way, yet Te’o still clams to not be at fault”. Others, like first year Kelly Locke just don’t care about the Manti Te’o issue at all explaining that, “ it’s not like he committed a crime or anything so I don’t see how this is such a big deal.” Personally, I don’t know why this incident has been making headlines at all. While the issue did involve a prominent sports icon, he wasn’t guilty of any crime like Sandusky or Armstrong, or even charged with anything like Johnny Manziel, who actually did win the Heisman award. Even the perpetrator of the fraud, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, didn’t really do anything illegal; people make fake profiles on the internet all the time, the only wrong he did was steal pictures from Diane O’Meara to pose as her and as of yet she hasn’t even legally charged him. While I do understand why people would be upset if they were caught in a catfish scandal, I don’t really blame the people who create the deception either as they are just trying to cope with their own issues; it’s not their fault if other people emotionally invest in someone without really getting to know them in person or doing a little research. As far as I’m concerned, this entire incident contains no victims or criminals; it’s just a gross overreaction to something that happens to everyone at some time or another when they go online: they get deceived.