I had a college friend who simply could not keep to the facts--every story became an elaborate exaggeration, even when she was telling it in front of people who were there, but her tellings were so entertaining that no one wanted to set the story straight and ruin the fun. But then she got worse. She Munchausened anorexia by eating tiny amounts in the cafeteria then eating from a stash of food hidden in her room. Her lies also became more hateful--she announced being engaged to some guy at home right after her best friend went through a painful breakup with a long term boyfriend. Oh, but the fiance used to hit her--but just a little bit, no sympathy please! By the time she graduated she had no friends left.

We all caught up years later on facebook and she tried to pull some of this cyber-drama, but we were all on to her. It didn't get very far and she rarely ever posts.

Plot twist: the girl who is called "Kate" in this story turned out to be a faker, as well. Still investigating the details, but the girl we knew actually did not ever have cancer, and was likely not even the girl in the photos we had of her. Sick to a whole new level that the girl behind "Kate" who I had become so close to would take part in something like this, when she was doing the same thing herself. The irony...

AndiPants, is it Ehlers-Danlos or Marfan's the two of you have? My younger sibling and I both have EDS, and in light of our rough family history I find some of these comments downright frightening. They're why I hardly ever discuss my childhood or my family online with those who don't already know me. I am a disability activist, a wheelchair user in my 20s who doesn't look ill much at all if I'm just sitting. That misleads people sometimes. I was beaten up by a stranger a few years ago because he saw me with the walking stick I was then using and decided I couldn't possibly need it & must be faking sick for welfare purposes. I was too scared to leave home for weeks after that - but I refuse to be kept down by anything I can fight.

Anyway, re. family & history, I'm a survivor of emotional & physical abuse, grooming & molestation (as an underage teen), bulimia (again as a teen); my father's a (now recovering) alcoholic & my mother died of lymphoma when I was a teenager. On top of all that, I've lost - on average - one friend or family member for every 3 years of my life.

I'm infertile (though also childfree). I have severe EDS, nearly a hundred full & partial joint dislocations on a daily basis and am on heavy narcotics. I also have 3 mental illnesses (not including M), 2 of which are manageable but can't be cured, & half a dozen secondary complications of EDS. My sibling has EDS, several secondary nasties, and borderline personality disorder. We both have PTSD thanks to all we've lived through.

Would *you* believe me about my life? I just don't talk about it...because too many people wouldn't.

I got caught up by a semi-faker once. Her illness wasn't what she was faking - it was a very nasty rare condition, worse and rarer even than mine, and she eventually died of cancer related to it. Her obituary is easily available in official locations online. But she went through a phase a couple of years before where she talked about her boyfriend, and that she'd become pregnant, and eventually she wrote that her baby had been stillborn. She talked about scattering the ashes of her baby son somewhere where she could someday be buried with him. A few months later she "broke up" with her "boyfriend" after the stress the "stillbirth" had put on their supposed relationship. Throughout all this she communicated with her best friend, who lived across the country & had a different email, phone number, all that. A year later she was fighting the cancer that killed her. After she died her mother emailed me, saying she knew I was a good friend to her daughter (who had been a very good friend to me, in spite of her fantasies), and asking if I knew how to contact her best friend as her number didn't appear to be on my friend's pager or anything. I mentioned something along the lines of "at least she's with [baby's name] now" in my return email and was puzzled to see "sorry, who was [name]? I didn't know she'd had a friend who died". I think Mom must have said that to another mutual friend, because that friend then contacted me and outlined all the reasons she believed our late friend had been lying about some major parts of her life - like her boyfriend and ever getting pregnant at all. The illness she had made accidental pregnancy extremely unlikely, and coupled with the information from her mom and the fact that nobody could find her vest friend and her mom didn't know anyone by the name of her daughter's long-term boyfriend...well.

I decided not to make a big deal of it, because I believed it would only cause pain to the people who had believed her, and she wasn't around to apologise or explain or anything like that, and she had otherwise been an amazing friend, so why shame her memory given the likely result? I miss her still. No matter what she lied about, she WAS a true friend to me, and since she's gone I guess it's a moot point now. But I've been more wary ever since.

I disagree with calling Munchausen's By Internet an illness. It's no more of an illness by it's other names, malignant narcissism, sadism or sociopathy. If your illness means you constantly need to victimize others, you don't need treatment, you need to be put away. I have a serial internet sociopath who has done irreparable damage to my life over twelve years and will never stop. When is the law going to catch up with these perps? The lure of anonymity and no consequences is the very oxygen these sadistic, under-achieving, ego lacking monstrosities need to thrive. Of course the opposite is also frightening. Either you lose safety because of internet anonymity or you lose safety because no one can be anonymous and then all the nutbags can locate you physically. Perhaps we should legalize late term abortions for these wastes of oxygen whose only lives are to be online fucking up vulnerable others for the fun of it.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

Can I say NO one more time?

This is a rape story. Pathological lying is a symptom of childhood sexual abuse, and no where in this article does she actually say that she was raped. That was something that the author just jumped to, and the fact that every comment is congratulatory shows that there really isn't anything insightful or revolutionary about her "research". This is really disappointing, especially considering that the author gave so many details that this victim-turned-perpetrator-turned-victim started with being raped. Why would someone need to fake a major illness on the internet indeed?

Edit: "Nowhere in this article does she actually say that she lied about rape." My anxiety about this piece mixed with blinding anger (since I read it years ago) has clouded my grammar.

The Captain: "MOST of her stories" WTF?!!!

"she said she didn't want to talk about it"

NOT ONE BELL WENT OFF IN YOUR FUCKING HEAD?!

You missed this story completely. Please never write about social justice again.

I actually interviewed with the Stranger, and I pulled my own rape story from the paper because of this story's negligence.

"She was hesitant to even call what happened rape"

Fucking hell. Where is the blog about being a rape victim or the same candid cavalier attitude towards lying? It's not there because that's the true part of this story. Here I've always thought journalists were supposed to pick up on the truth.

Please do the right thing and retract this.

Don't talk to The Stranger.

1)retract this and issue an apology

2) Don't diagnosis people through the internet

3) Don't diagnose people at all. You aren't a fucking therapist.

4) As someone who has had cancer (skin) , been raped, and been tested for leukemia, I can say that OMG what this woman did was wrong but what you did was so much worse.

People are actually using this story in a clinical way: http://kumpulansoalun.com/read/the-lying…

Do you not understand the ramifications of your ignorance?

THE LYING STARTED AT AGE 4!!!!!!

Perpetrators of violence are almost always victims who justified and internalized that behavior instead of fighting back. Please be more careful the next time you deal with rape and lying.

Did you ever stop to ask questions? Questions that matter? It's like when you covered that stupid bikini burka story at Revolution Books. You didn't even bother to interview the people involved. I did better and more responsible work than this in high school. It's almost like you don't think your employer's reputation is even worth a basic level of protection. It seems like incompetent writers hid behind the validation that better writers give this publication.. Your articles are opinion pieces masked as news. You treat rape victims the same way you treat your other sources, with a flippant casual carelessness that is undeserving of serious social justice issues. You didn't even conduct interviews for your piece on the Revolution Books protest but asked a lot of open-ended questions that led to nothing substantial.

It's like you think that crafting a good sentence is the same as having something valuable to say. The fact that your writing gets you heard at all is terrifying.

It's almost like your writing is full of words muddled up by ignorance and apathy/laziness. And where is someone like me, someone who actually knows what they are talking about, supposed to go when this is the standard of journalism today? Your incompetence silences people. You should be in a profession that doesn't have these kinds of consequences, because you clearly do not take them seriously enough to address them in a responsible way. You are not a journalist. You are just a writer who is lost and broken. Try writing fiction or poetry instead. Ask Alex for help.

I cannot believe what I gave up for the idea of a better world only to find this horseshit on the other side.

The people in the comments found her name. You just outed a rape victim and called her a liar at the same time. I didn't writ this before, bc it's really not my job to tell you how to do yours, and I had other shit to do.

But, ya know, now that Ive lost my job (like 50 percent of rape victims),my health, my friends, and my future it really only seems appropriate that I should let you know to go fuck yourselves. You're basically a tabloid if you keep this kind of work up.

Maybe "the lying disease" isn't in the DSM bc psychologists found, ya know, better explanations for compulsive lying. Suicide and needing to be liked are also red flags for sexual abuse.

I literally had panic attacks for a month after reading this article. Just kind of laid In bed terrified and shaking wondering what the fuck this paper would do with my own rape story.

http://healthland.time.com/2012/11/30/mu…

Why do I even try? I ran this article (before your edits) by an award winning crime journalist who said, "It's a rape story."-

Look, I hope you're more responsible, but this story is horrible. I was raped, and people said I lied. I was sick for five years in undergrad before a doctor finally found out that I had a major genetic autoimmune disease, and I was called a liar by roommates who would simply refuse to help me get to a clinic when things got bad. I have been called a liar about my family history, my experiences on a basic level despite the fact that there is proof for all of this. It's pretty impossible for me to believe that the rape part of this is a lie. It's impossible for me to believe that.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree…

Also, why would Muchausen's BY INTERNET be in the DSM? The method is not the disorder. It's not like saying, "Cancer by breast." Also, her lying isn't just relegated to medical issues or internet use.

It's like saying suicide by pills.

WHY DO YOU NEED EVERYTHING TO BE ABOUT THE INTERNET?! This isn't even activism on any level. It's so stupid.

The fact that LOVES your article on rape lies means that you are behind on social justice issues. You are basically telling society what it wants to hear, and, if I were you, I would be terrified to be the parrot of a society that hates rape victims.

I know that these haven't been the best comments, or the ones that always come out well-written. It's hard to make perfect arguments when you're this emotionally attached to a subject. I'm also not a lawyer, a writer, or an editor, so this really isn't my specialty. My specialty is child development.

What I'm saying here is that your negligence (not Tosh's) actively silences me and proves to me that ignorance, carelessness, and hatred of women is not a political affiliation. Bottom line: I'm a liberal and a rape victim, and I don't want people like you fighting for my rights. I don't want my stories told by people like you. I don't want my children to read your contributions. I don't want them to see you as someone to aspire to. I don't want them to think that having an audience is the same as being credible. I don't want them to grow up believing that confidence is accuracy or that it's appropriate to hide from their mistakes without addressing them in a courageous and HONEST way. You haven't done that. Will you? If not, how are you any better than Alex? Would you actually go to a therapist and ask the question, "Why was it so easy FOR ME to just assume that a woman lied about rape when I didn't have that evidence?" Alex is barely not a child. 19 after being in an abusive home for that long? Children are not programed to be sadistic. They are raised that way, and what kind of mother enables a young daughter to destroy her life? Your writing doesn't only lack research and insight but it also lacks empathy. I kept hoping that there were people out there who were not this dumb when I lived in conservative America. If you want to tell people that it's better on the other side, then you have to actually create a better side. Not giving a shit (about your work, your mistakes, your impact) isn't something developmentally sound adult human beings do. And not getting sources from the articles you cover is not caring. Why are you in this industry at all if you don't actually want to do the work required of this industry? It would be one thing if you JUST missed things that a psychologist or teacher could catch, but you almost go out of your way not to investigate. You consistently assume that your assumptions are good enough. Are you an expert on trauma? Development? Psychology? Rape? Disease? Cancer? Social Justice?

Your writing makes it seem like the only thing you understand is the internet.

No rape story is easy, but the ones that go to trial have the aid of lawyers, judges, police officers, and psychologists who do the really hard work for the journalists. Do the 97% not deserve to be heard?

I regret engaging with this. I shouldn't expect a person who writes like this to care about making reparations. I was right not to bother with it. This was a lapse of judgement on my part.

Ugh, turns out making up stories is something kids do. Sounds like she was raped but got stuck in that trauma and then repeated it over and over and over again crying out for help. Seeking "attention". You guys are morons. You literally have the BEST psychology department down the street from you and YOU JUST DO NOT RUN PSYCH STORIES BY THEM. I would. If I were a journalist, I wouldn't assume I understood anything better than anyone else except the media. And this piece, with how you basically outed this woman and called her a liar, doesn't even seem to understand the media.