Thursday, April 28, 2011
After reading this story Virtual Death- A real Dillema, I say…wow. So this woman Debbie Swenson, a resident of a small town in Kansas, created a false person, Kaycee Swenson, and led people to believe Kaycee was real. Kaycee was portrayed as a girl with leukemia and on her blog gained friends and as her battle went on the number of people involved in her story grew. What is crazy, and made me say ‘oh my god’ after reading, was that a woman named Debbie Swenson actually made this character up, and didn’t reveal the hoax until after Kaycee’s ‘death’. People felt hurt and angered, and understandably so. Let this be a warning to all of us, a stranger is still a stranger, even more so on the computer. Something we are told growing up is not to talk to strangers. I don’t understand why people think that should go away as adults?
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Hi,
ReplyDeleteGreat post I had that same feeling. It was so stunning to me how someone could do such a thing. Yet it just goes to show the freedom we have online. We can be who we want and create just about anything. Te other thing that was amazing is how many people believed it. So many people will believe anything they see online and it is almost scary. What if someone really needed certain information but believed something completley false. People need to be very carful when online because there are people out there who like to just have fun and enjoy a response no matter what they talk about is true or not.
Nice post,
SOUTHPAW
I enjoyed reading your post. I felt the exact same way. I was shocked to learn that this woman made up a girl with Leukemia. Her reasoning is that she wanted people with diseases to have their voices heard. If anything, she made it harder for their voices to be heard. Now, when someone is reading a blog about a terminal illness, they may be thinking, is this person real? I can absolutely understand why members of the community felt hurt and angry. I know that if I had developed a relationship with this dying girl and then found out that she wasn't real, I would be hurt and confused. I agree that this is a good lesson for all of us that a stranger is still a stranger. At the end of the day, we still don't know who is on the other end of the computer.
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