I had my suspicions. I've been online for 15 years or so now and I've seen my share of hoaxes. I've even seen people I thought I knew as cool people do some crazy things, too.

I didn't read the weblog regularly and now I'm glad. When I first saw it, I was suspicious. But so many people that I "know" online seemed to know her and to have interacted with her on the phone and via email and it seemed, at least from a casual glance, to be real.

What A Mess.

My apologies if the couple of links I posted to the site caused you to be pulled in and caused you any grief. It's the net, you've gotta take everything with a grain of salt.

Anyway.

Bleargh.

There are, of course, many places where this is being discussed. I'm not gonna post a zillion links on the subject, they're out there if you want to find 'em.

What really rather pisses me off is that hoaxes like this diminish the real deaths. And cause people to not believe people who are telling the truth. I couldn't help but think of Leyla, who is really gone, for instance.