Internet Munchausen* wasn’t something I’d even heard of until after I’d become a ‘victim’ of it. I’d been introduced online to ‘Mandy’ by a long-time friend who was very careful that I be patient as she did not immediately trust* new internet friends and would need to be coaxed gently into acceptance. I must have played by these rules acceptably as eventually I became one of a small coterie of Mandy’s online friends.
What followed was two years of more and more bizarre lies and deceptions that none of us involved questioned hardly at all. Looking back, I marvel at how gullible we all were, and a residual anger rises up at the thought of this puppet-master who had us all jumping to her tune. Did she sometimes snigger derisively at our submissiveness in her web of deceit? How did she feel when we’d send our love and support to her as she entered the hospital for the umpteenth time for another life-threatening operation?
Anyone reading this will snort in disbelief at the story we swallowed hook, line and sinker: the amputations yet she continued to run marathons and climb mountains, the centre for disadvantaged kids she founded single-handedly in honour of her dead husband, her flawless clarinet playing accompanied by her ‘latest’ foster-child on piano and on, and on.
But, how were we to know someone was capable of this? We were all new to and excited by this new phenomenon the internet. We were all beguiled by this whirlwind woman; this Dr Mandy Smith the eminent psychologist who had all these super-cool super-clever friends (none of whom existed outside of her machinations). We were impelled by our own desire to follow this inspirational lady who overcame any adversity without a whimper (I even wrote two songs for her so much did I want to impress this remarkable individual ‘She Makes Me Want to Live’ and ‘Can’t Help But Shine’. The titles ooze positivity and a willingness to make a mark with her). Also; her main champion was Julie who coincidentally was going through a rough time emotionally and leant heavily on Mandy for the will to go on. This offers up the interesting paradox or juxtaposition that the hoaxer looking for attention was acting as counsellor for one of the hoaxed. “How bad is a lie if it helps?”*
Internet Munchausen is more widespread than folk may realise. In many ways, it is the perfect vehicle for such a condition as Munchausen’s Syndrome. There are no face-to-face doctor’s to fool. No-one can ‘see’ you unless you want them to. Even if they are detected, they can just log off and start again with some other poor dupes. Plus; there is a world of medical information online that can be used to make your claims plausible.
“Our natural lie detectors are muted online, we can’t rely on facial expressions and other physical cues for sensing falsehoods…”(1)
Not one of our little circle of Mandy-fans had ever heard of Munchausen by Internet and even if we had, so enamoured were we that I don’t think it would have made any difference. In fact, in another bizarre twist, it would have been highly qualified Mandy who would likely have explained the condition to us had we raised it thus further separating us from any conclusion that it was precisely the trick being played on us.
Why was she doing it, though? What was her motivation? Did it start of as a wheeze that became compulsive? Had she done it before? Maybe she had multiple scams going on?
Dr Marc Feldman, the author of Playing Sick describes it as “longing for nurturing, sympathy, care and concern that they feel unable to get in appropriate ways”. (2)
When this works, they will find it hard to stop the charade and it will tend to get more and more elaborate. Like a drug user trying to replicate the first hit.
I asked K, one of the others involved, going on 10 years after it ended…
“She never really gave an explanation, well not just one! She said different things at different times. It was a psychology project! A mental health issue!
She also tugged at heart strings saying it was loneliness, needing attention. Also a power trip. If and when we cornered her on issues she would turn the tables, it was our fault, we were trying to tie her words in knots.
I feel even after the event, even though she was caught, there was no remorse, I guess we, as in all of us were feeding the need to be liked, needed and wanted. We all had this full but solitary life and she knew how to trap us into her strange world”
Her ‘Mandy’ claims were either totally ‘factitious’ or else they may have held a grain of truth, an insight into the real person behind the deception.
Yeah the lovely Julie, protected her friendship with her with everything. But even with all the weirdness she helped Julie have a purpose, she helped us all talk quite openly about our lives. In saying all that I’m not excusing her behaviour in any way.
She had wonderful Julie first, then I think it was me, then you, I think she ended up with Ken also. Was a very strange, hmmm exciting, even valued times in all our lives. She has ended up with no-one, but in a strange way she tied Julie, you and myself together.
Scary bit is, who the hell is she doing it to now? After all it took us a few years to crack the code.”
I asked another, S, for her views..
“She never apologised to me, Jools said she wanted to know if I would like to continue talking to her, which I didn't. Trust was gone by then. As for why she did it, I'm guessing only she really knows that. In my experience, people who think their lives are boring, tend to colour them in a little. People read blogs etc and think they're missing out, they perceive others lives to be great. I also think it's easy online for people to live the life they would love, rather than the one they have...”
The persona Mandy created was very, very high-powered as were the ‘friends’ she invented. One was an oncologist. They were a tight wee feminist clique often disdainful of social networks (some chose not to participate in the silly, intrusive medium). ‘Tertiary characters’ for corroboration and to allow Mandy’s absences. Adding flesh to the story.
Mandy claimed to have been an orphan in Manchester. Her beginnings, I seem to recall, were quite brutal and involved an amputation and maybe various foster parents.
She had been married to the love of her life but he had died some years previously (they had been married in a castle, I seem to remember. There were photograph’s posted of some glamorous couple dressed in wedding attire). Her strong ambition was to found some social care facility for the young in his honour which was duly achieved (well, obviously it wasn’t, but we were all led to believe it was).
For myself, the very few times I ever had contact with her directly, I become ‘word-tied’ and intimidated in the same way as you might be if introduced to a celebrity hero.
She told us she was called in as a consultant to the Bridgend Facebook suicides (between ops she was back at work part-time). We were all of course enamoured by this. This was ‘our Mandy’.
She (or one of her tertiary characters) would post photographs and videos from a car meant to depict outings. Videos of mountain climbing with a figure leaping gaps in rocks with a soundtrack by Mandy on Clarinet and ‘Joel’ on piano, both playing immaculately.
Little vids would appear of folk having fun in a large garden. These were meant to be her friends, her carer and her foster son ‘Joel’ while Mandy was either the picture-taker or somewhere in the background like a wise Grand-dame allowing us this privileged access to her private world.
She garnered adoration, sympathy and support which she received with gratitude while giving an air of not really needing it. She was there more for our benefit as we were for hers.
After penultimate cancer surgery (I seem to remember being told she ‘died’ a few times during this), we were told that Mandy had lost the last 10 years of her memory and had to be re-told about the death of her husband and her parents (presumably ‘foster’ parents). I remember at one stage questioning this with Julie as Mandy seemed inconsistent in this (she posted ‘favourite’ songs from more recent times than 10 years). Julie was ultra-defensive of Mandy and jumped down my throat at such a suggestion making me feel bad for questioning one so ill. And so the game went on.
There appeared on her page a photo of large and expensive disability buggy with high-tech ‘touch’ controls (as by this time, near the end, she was virtually bed-bound). This buggy was silhouetted on a lawn outside what we took to be Mandy’s large house in North Wales and appeared to have a slight, slouched figure sitting within it.
I’m imagining the person who was Mandy in her home wherever it was thinking up her next manipulation, her next revelation in the drama. She was like the author of her own fiction and the plot could take whatever course she chose while we were her unwitting audience at her back and call. I remember on my rounds as a tax collector in London schlepping the streets of Belsize Park or Kentish Town willing under my breath that she gets through her latest surgical travail ‘C’mon Mandy, you can do it’. I would have just as well been watching Holby City.
In typical Munchausen-type fashion, whenever Mandy was in mortal peril, she’d bounce back courageously…
“Terrible setbacks would be followed by miraculous recoveries” (3)
The more dramatic the better. I suppose it makes sense that if you are going to create fantasies, you may as well make them impressive ones.
The scenario began to unravel for Mandy when, first Julie expressed a desire to make a pilgrimage to North Wales to visit Mandy, then a Canadian baker who had fallen for Mandy said he wanted to make a visit. How long would the charade have gone on for if she hadn’t got scared and ‘died’?
This prompted the ‘tragic’ news which had been relayed to Julie by one of Mandy’s ‘friends’ that Mandy hadn’t made it through her latest cancer surgery. She was just too weakened by her long and courageous battle. I received this news by phone from K and immediately told my mother of the sad loss. I was stunned but I remember my mother, being of an older generation when folk didn’t have online friends, looking rather bewildered by it all.
I think it was Ed the Baker who googled Mandy’s profile picture and found it to be a photograph of a blonde and very attractive Olympic skier. From there it wasn’t long before ‘Mandy’ outed herself as A from the Isle of Man.
A. In her statement of apology, admitted to maybe having ‘psychological difficulties’. She also claimed it was part of some psychological research she was conducting (she claimed she was a student of psychology) although I don’t remember this part of the explanation going any further or deeper. Feldman says that statistics shows that Munchausen by internet affects women predominantly “And many of them have medical or nursing training…Their fascination with medical issues is expressed in their career choices” (4).
On reading an article in The Guardian about the phenomenon of Internet Munchausen I wrote the following letter in response…
“Having been taken in by the fictitious illness and death of an online “friend” (Sick Note, 26 February), it is reassuring to know that we were not the only ones to experience this. Unfortunately, it has left us distrustful of new friends we meet online. Well done, fakers! You may be ruining a potential support network for those who need and those willing to give”
Reading back on that letter I admit I may have been naïve in ‘blaming’ sufferers of Munchausen. It is adjudged a bona fide mental illness and as such they are as much victims as the innocents who are carried along on their emotional need.
The strange and perhaps unexpected denouement to all of this was that the ‘real’ person behind the fake Mandy did actually show herself and visited Julie in London and they kept in touch for a while afterwards. She also kept in touch with K by phone for a little while. Julie, sadly, is no longer around to refresh me on this, but it must have been strange for Julie in particular to be cheated out of the person she so revered only to be left with a lie, although she was gracious enough to accept this flawed woman who visited her without too much fuss.
Quite frankly, I wouldn’t reveal any details about who Mandy ‘actually was’ for fear she somehow reads this and decides to make something of it in a legal sense. I feel that when someone has a power of you – in this case a deceptive one – you have no idea what they may be capable of or to what extent they are imbalanced mentally and emotionally. She could be lurking on my Facebook or Twitter pages for all I know under yet another guise. It is unlikely that we were a one-off experiment, power-trip or mental aberration. Writing this, I feel we should have at least reported her to Multiply admin but I don’t think any of us thought of doing that. Some residual loyalty, perhaps?
“There are 67 million ‘invented’ names on Facebook, many of them clearly living another life, less ordinary, or at any rate less checkable. Nobody knows who they really are..” (5)
67 million is more than the population of the UK.
Having written this, it crosses my mind that there was a strong desire on our part to believe in Mandy at all costs. We didn’t ‘ignore’ any contrary evidence so much as just accept what information she was feeding us without much question. All of us individuals who were fooled were in middle age and would maybe be expected to ‘know better’ than be so gullible. But the whole concept of the internet and social networks was completely new to us and we had no terms of reference for someone pretending to be ill and making up stories for attention.
Perhaps we ‘needed’ Mandy as much as she needed us. As I’ve said, she inspired two songs from me, one of which I am particularly proud of and wouldn’t have written it without her. It brought me a friendship with K which I have valued highly. She may have ‘saved’ my friend Julie from emotional collapse at a time when she was lower than I had ever witnessed.
“People fill in the missing pieces in the picture of others they meet online, not fully aware that the picture they are forming is based partly on their own unconscious desires regarding who they want that person to be and how they want them to act” (6)
We hero-worshipped Mandy and helped put her on the pedestal that she desperately wanted for herself. In this way, were we complicit? But, and it can’t be escaped, we had an emotional connection with a character that didn’t exist outside someone’s maybe troubled imagination. An imagination that didn’t mind lying about having cancer; about dying. She didn’t seem to care about leading innocent victims down a garden path of tragedy and grief.
In her ‘demise’ she fell from this God-like height to a figure of pity perhaps lonelier than before, with no issues resolved, and more than likely behaving in exactly the same way in some other part of the vast online ether.
*‘Factitious Disorder’
*The irony of this is not lost on me
*Famous quote by Limeybean who pretended to die online of tuberculosis in 2005
1. The Lying Disease by Cienna Madrid p9
2. Faking Pain and Suffering in Internet Groups by Denise Grady
3. The Lying Disease by Cienna Madrid p8
4. The Lying Disease by Cienna Madrid p8
5. The Secret Life: Three True Stories” Andrew O’Hagan p2
6. The Lying Disease p9 from a study by Bournemouth University School of Social Care
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