Who are we on the World Wide Web?

I was sitting on a train headed home, working on a project for University, while listening to a Dlf podcast about technology and communication when they started talking about a topic that got my attention.
That episode should be about so-called "real fakes"¹ on the internet and since I myself had some experiences with that³ I had to turn up the volume immediately.

The podcast² and identical online article¹ starts with how and where Dunja Hayali, a ZDF presenter, was first contacted by the real fake – on Twitter; after her TV report about the bad conditions in old people's homes was broadcasted.
The real fake wrote her that he had also experienced very bad conditions as a caretaker himself and how he shared the viewpoints of Dunja.

I started having flashbacks about my first experience with a real fake, about four years ago, on my vacation to Mexico City and afterwards Columbia to visit a part of my family, in July/August 2014.
Back then, of course, I didn't know that these kinds of people were so-called "real fakes". At that time I only knew that these kinds of people/online profiles existed but back then they were only called fake profiles.

Some background information: At that time I was in the middle of my training (I had just finished my second of three years) in Stuttgart to become a professional graphic designer.
I was around 18 years old, pretty immature and super light-hearted since my training was going so well and I finally knew what I wanted to do with my life.
To sum it up: The vacation was kind of a reward for doing so well in school but also to turn off and return fresh to my final year to graduate.

Okay back to my actual story: At that time the social platform ask.fm was bigger and more active than it is today and so I also had a profile there (little note at the beginning: my profile still exists and I'm still active there but everything having something to do with "her" is deleted). For those that don't know the platform: you basically have a profile where people (anonymously if wanted) could send questions to your profile for you to answer them (if you wanted to answer of course).
Anyway... back then I had around 200 followers there which was pretty okay and so received about one or two, on good days even three or more questions. Most of them were random questions like "What car do you drive?" or "What is your favourite song?" and that kind of stuff.
But at some point around July, I started to receive more personal questions like "How was your day?", "What are you doing right now?" or "What did do at school today?"...
Of course, I answered these questions and after a few days and some more questions it turned out that most of the questions were from the same person.
After some more days, and me – out of curiosity – asking some questions back like "And how was your day?" etc., I got used to receiving the questions from "her" and also looked forward to them every day.
At some point, she even started to "sign" all her questions with an -S at the end... Yes....... I know how this sounds... like... everybody could end their question with an -S at the end... But believe me, it was "her".

Dunja had pretty much the same experience. The real fake texted her, they got into a long conversation and so on. The real fake continued to chat with her for so long that at some point the conversations were about more private things (not what you're thinking duh!) up to a point were Dunja trusted the "person" behind the real fakes username.

Kind of the same continued to happen to me:
After several days of receiving questions from "-S" the rest of my followers of course noticed all the questions from her and started asking as well who she was but also started making little jokes (kind ones, not mean/bullying style jokes) about how I got a secret lover etc.. So I jokingly told her in one of the questions to quit being anonymous and reveal herself.
She responded that she was embarrassed and didn't really want to but that she would think about it (a typical response from a fake of course).
At that point for the first time in this story I got really "slowed down" a became a bit suspicious. But I didn't confront her or anything because there wasn't any harm done to this point. So I decided to let it pass.

Dunjas story just goes parallelly with mine.
After becoming friends and chatting a lot with her real fake, Dunja wanted to meet and get to know him personally. At first, he agreed to, they actually planned everything but in the last second, right before the meeting would take place, the real fake would cancel the meeting for some spontaneous reason (of course).

So another week or so goes by until I received an anonymous question of -S, telling me that she thought about it and that she made a real profile on the platform. In the following sentence, she jokingly asked if I wanted her to reveal herself and as you can guess I got hyped again and told her to do it.
And she actually did! And damn, let me tell you that she chose to steal her pictures from a really beautiful girl (on Instagram, from a friend of a follower of my best girl friend, as I should learn much later).
And that's when -S became really hard-working... a short time later she made an account on Facebook and Instagram where she would regularly post pictures, selfies and statuses of what she was doing/did or would do, just to look authentic.

At this point -S and Dunjas real fake started to make mistakes and be exposed.

Dunjas real fake didn't only talk to her in private but also commented on her posts, works, articles etc; and her fake turned out to be very hard-working as well because as it turns out the real fake had five(!!) other accounts which he used to chat with her. He became exposed after some of her other fans and readers started noticing that specific users would comment in a very patterned way and would always use same language and grammar patterns, even though they seemed to be different users/persons.
The podcast tells that after some really extensive research by a friend, they discovered who the person behind all the fake profiles was. Dunja was of course really pissed because after all that time she had built up a trust to that person and they even exchanged gifts and everything.

At this point I also have to add, that to everything I slowly became more and more suspicious again since I asked her for "proof pictures" and selfies of what she was doing every now and then but never got one to see.
The mistakes of -S were that she (as it turned out) had a crush on me from the beginning and got hyped way too much with all the fake profile thingy.
While being hyped she accidentally posted different pictures from two different persons that looked very alike but weren't identical.
My best friend Amy noticed it and after telling me I confronted -S "publicly" on ask.fm what resulted in her turning hostile against us and a hysterical online fight where she demanded proof that she was fake and everything.
After hours of argumenting and posting our screenshots and everything Amy randomly found the actual person to whom the pictures belonged.
As I told you earlier the poor girl of whom the pics got stolen was a friend of a follower of Amy, that's why she recommended for her on her Instagram feed. She recognized the face immediately checked out the profile.
After telling -S that we found the real person behind the selfies and everything she had a breakdown and told us how much she hated "people like us" (she referred to Amy and me as people who are popular on the internet (which we really are not lol)) and that she only wanted to be a little famous and feel good for once since her life was so miserable.
After we told her that we contacted the owner of the pictures and threatening her that we would report her to the police for identity theft she blocked all of us and went silent. We never heard something from her again and of course, reported all of her accounts to the ask.fm/Facebook/Instagram staff and witnessed how they got deleted.

Moral of the story:
Don't get too hyped for a person on the internet and definitely don't start falling in love with her until you're sure that the person is real and actually exists.

Little side note:
Being a "real fake" on the internet isn't actually a felony as long as you don't harm a person or steal from her or make her lose something (a thing, money, ...). In other words: You can't get legally punished for pretending to be someone else. Except(!) you start stalking or harassing the other person or using the name or pictures of someone else. Then you can be charged for stalking and/or identity theft. Which can be very expensive or even get you into jail.