More on the "Mikey" Blog Hoax

There's an update at the Outsports Jock Talk Blog about the "Mikey" masquerade -- the blog by someone claiming to be a 17-year-old closeted high school hockey player but turned out to be a man in his 40s. (Here's the link to my previous post about this story.)

Jim Buzinski's article is about as thorough as it can be, considering that Outsports is essentially a two-man operation. There's no team of investigators, nor are there resources to devote to in-depth detective work. Be sure to read the article because my brief summary doesn't do it justice: "Mikey" is around 48 years old, lives in a suburb of Minneapolis, may be (or may have been) married and has profiles on two sex sites, including Manhunt. Even more worrisome, he seems to have created his "Mikey" persona in part based on actual high school players in the Minneapolis area and had pictures of at least one of these kids (and the kid's brother) on the blog server.

The whole thing finally unraveled because he fell for Jimmy, a 23-year-old Canadian, and the two developed an online relationship. It was Jimmy who caught "Mikey" in the lie.
From the Outsports article:

After the blog was closed, Jimmy e-mailed me details of how he discovered Mikey was lying:

"Over the past couple of months we’ve become very, very close. He of course needed an identity. He gave me a name, etc. I busted him on that name after bout three weeks. He gave a sob story bout how scared he was n panicked then told me the ‘truth’. He was this dude’s teammate. So on this went until he was selected to go to DC. I was talking to my mom n she wanted me to send me somethin bout the trip cause it was quite the honour for the kid…

"When I tried looking and found nothing I emailed him askin for something I could send my mom. He was sorta vague but he said he’d send me somethin right away but had to go to a banquet. So while I was waiting, I thought I’d check to see if they’d posted anything new on his baseball team’s site so I could update my parents on that as well. It was then that I discovered Mikey had hit a homer in his game on Saturday, at about the same time I was chatting with him from DC..."

The "Mikey" blog was originally on Blogger, but after Outsports initially wrote about it and it became popular, a server owner donated space to "Mikey" to create a nicer-looking site. That ended up being key, because the server owner was able to dig deep (the article says that "his background includes network and computer-based forensic research and investigation") to find a lot of the information revealed in the article -- emails, IP addresses and other documents, posts to online travel and food sites (in one, he discussed his honeymoon), and so on.

And speaking of IP addresses, here's one more thing I want to highlight from the article:

All of Mikey’s blog posts were sent from IP addresses in and around Plymouth, Minn., a Minneapolis suburb, according to server records. (All of Jimmy’s posts and blog comments came from IP addresses in Manitoba, Canada, where he says he is from).

Some of the conspiracy theorists decided that "Mikey" is actually Jimmy. If so, I'd really like to meet him and learn how he can go back and forth between Minnesota and Manitoba so quickly. Clearly he must have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men -- flight? Super-speed? Or does he just teleport himself instantly back and forth? Or maybe he just blinks, or twitches his nose?

Of course, all of this still leaves the one thing everyone wants to know, whether a fan of the "Mikey" blog or not, no matter which side of the conspiracy theory you fall on: why?

Unless "Mikey" himself finally comes forward, I don't think we'll ever have an answer. Although Outsports has his name and a ton of other information, they're not going to name him publicly because there's no evidence of a crime having been committed and no underage person has claimed that "Mikey" made any kind of sexual advances. Publishing his real name would be such a legal risk, and could wreak havoc on other people's lives -- his wife and family (if he has one), the kids whose info he appropriated, etc.

So where does this leave us? Right where we were the last time I wrote about this tale.  You have to be careful. You can't automatically assume everyone on the Internet is being completely truthful. Hell, even after you meet someone in person you can't automatically assume that. But that doesn't mean all the kids who found each other through the "Mikey" site, kids who thought there was no one like them until finding the site, should give up on online communities. The Internet has done so much good in bringing people together, whether it was to raise money for a charitable cause or to share in the grief and shock after the 9/11 attacks or to get Betty White to host Saturday Night Live. Some idiot once said "Trust, but verify." In cases like this, that's not the worst advice, although I would amend it to: "Trust to an extent and eventually verify."

But this REALLY is a picture of me taken just this morning. I swear!