[wordup] The Life and Death of a False Warrior

[Adam Shand]

False identity on the internet on weblogs.  This particular case is
interesting because it's not a story of malice or greed but rather false
hope.   It's long though, the original article at K5 has lots of links if
you want more info.

URL: http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=print;sid=2001/5/22/11120/1650
Via: http://lists.infoanarchy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/p2pj/

The Life and Death of a False Warrior
By shirobara
Tue May 22nd, 2001 at 02:47:27 PM EST

My intentions were good, but that does not begin to excuse me for what I
have done. - Debbie

On May 14, 2001, a popular weblogger died of an aneurysm related to
treatments for leukemia. She and her mother had been chronicling their
experiences for almost a year in their journals, Living Colours (google
cache) and Journey Towards the Rainbow (google cache). Though both of them
were faced with a painful situation, they pressed on with humor, dignity
and seriousness.

Webloggers mourned the passing of one of their own, writing their thoughts
in their weblogs, flooding her mother with condolences and posting
messages about her on message boards. But a few observers had doubts, and
their questioning sparked a storm of controversy leading to a full
confession:  The writer of the weblog, Kaycee Nicole, was not a real
person.

Note: I have archived a few of Kaycee's weblog entries in my diary since
they are no longer available online. They will help put the article in
context.

I. The Warrior

Her name was not Kaycee and she was not my daughter, but I loved her as if
she had been. And I grieve her loss. - Debbie

She called herself Kaycee and she was seventeen years old. She seemed just
about perfect - she represented herself as intelligent, thoughtful, full
of life, athletic and stunningly beautiful. She had a wonderful mother and
family and many friends. She was a presence in her online community,
CollegeClub.com, where she maintained a website and was involved with the
Love channel. Later, she also became a part of the fledgling online
community, Citizen X, founded by John Styn (Halcyon), someone she had
known from CollegeClub. Through Citizen X, she met Randall Van Der Woning,
(bwg), a writer and "web-mangler" living in Hong Kong. She became close
friends with Halcyon and bwg. Then, after a routine checkup in June 1999,
her doctor informed her that she had leukemia.

II. The Saga

The blog was about the lives of three people who suffered, one with breast
cancer, one with leukemia, and one with Liver cancer. Each were strong,
vibrant, and loving individuals. Each were real. Each died much too soon.
- Debbie

The leukemia went into remission sometime late in the year, and Kaycee
shared the news of its presence and absence with her friends Halcyon and
bwg. But in January the cancer returned. Around August, her friends
decided that it would be good for Kaycee to have a weblog where she could
"get her message out" and have a place to put her feelings. She had kept
an online journal of sorts before on her College Club page, but this new
page would be devoted to her thoughts. After a while, Kaycee announced
that her mother, Debbie, would be keeping her own weblog. Kaycee's weblog
was called Living Colours and Debbie's weblog was called Journey Towards
the Rainbow. Kaycee described the process for updating the weblog in one
of her entries. Most of the time she would write in her journal, her mom
would type it and e-mail it to bwg who would edit it and post it.

Kaycee and her mother wrote in their weblogs almost every day. Kaycee
talked about her experiences and her friends; Debbie talked about her
children and Kaycee's experiences.  Nothing was held back - both of them
posted intimate details about their family life. Kaycee wrote emotionally
about her father, who had abandoned her when she was diagnosed. Debbie
wrote about her family relations and past histories. Yet neither writer
was bitter. At most, Kaycee and her mother were extremely, extremely
reflective and serious. But they were never angry about the cancer that
sapped away Kaycee's life. Kaycee was always high-spirited, vowing to
fight and never give up, while Debbie was infinitely patient and
supportive. Given the circumstances she described and the things she left
unsaid, Kaycee would have had a perfect right to have a weblog consisting
of "why me?"  Yet she didn't. She called herself the Warrior, a nickname
gleaned from one of her favorite songs. No matter how hard her situation
got, she was continually cheerful and she fought hard for her life.

I am to blame for wanting to tell their stories. I am to blame for weaving
the lives of all three together. I chose to share their voices as one
rather than three separately. I wrote their thoughts, their humorous
sides, their struggles, their fears. - Debbie

And so Kaycee's life continued with accounts of treatments and sudden
health problems. Then the entries picked up in tone. Suddenly the nurses
were cheerfully joking with Kaycee, and every word written on both blogs
seemed a little more light-hearted. Kaycee had finally beaten the cancer
and in March she was discharged from the hospital. Her weblog became a joy
to read at this time - no more posts by bwg detailing a crisis, no more
thoughtless doctors or social workers, just charming accounts of a life
led in the sun after all the time in the shade. She was happy and her mom
was happy and everyone who read her page was happy for her.

Then one day she posted that she was finally taking that trip to the ocean
she'd always wanted to go on, and that she was doing it because she might
not have another chance soon. She didn't go into a lot of detail, but she
wrote that she had a problem with her liver and it would eventually kill
her. Writing that, she wrote, was the second hardest thing she'd ever had
to do. The hardest thing was telling her mother.

She continued posting to her weblog. She posted about her friends she was
visiting in Florida and the experiences she had at the ocean and driving
with her mother. She arrived home safely, spent some time with her family
and passed away on May 14, 2001. It was quick, and she had her mother by
her side.

III. The Investigation

What I did was wrong and I apologise for it. I regret any pain I caused
but I do not regret putting their thoughts out to be read. - Debbie

Webloggers everywhere paid tribute to one of their own with short posts
and long posts and pictures Kaycee had loved. Metafilter had a discussion
where many people posted empty space - a moment of silence in a medium
given to many words. Blogger posted a note for her on their front page.
Message boards sprouted in places where Kaycee had made an impression, and
hundreds of people had something to say about her life and theirs. There
seemed to be nothing but love for the extraordinary girl and the sweetness
and hope she had left behind.

Yet with some it didn't sit quite right. There had always been a couple of
doubters, but they had, on the whole, been ignored or been informed that
yes, Kaycee was real because several people had talked to her on the
phone, received letters from her and known her before her weblogging days.
But after her death, two webloggers had doubts about the situation. One of
them, Saundra of Headspace, wrote about it in her weblog.  She first wrote
a satirical article about how to fake your life and death online. The next
day, she wrote that she was indeed talking about Kaycee Nicole - that she
would be "horrified and mortified"  if she was wrong but she was fairly
sure she wasn't.  Later on, she revealed that her friend Becky had also
had doubts, but was afraid to voice them publicly.

The idea that perhaps Kaycee wasn't a real person was picked up on
Metafilter, a "community weblog" where people can post stories and comment
on them. At first, people were unshakable in their defense of Kaycee.
Redgie posted "Do I think Kaycee is real? YES. I have read her blogs many
a time, and they are too emotional, too touching, and too compelling NOT
to be real." Others decided that whether or not she was 100% real, she had
still inspired worthwhile feelings of goodwill and love in them - one
poster compared her to Santa Claus. But others gave thought to the
question and tried to find evidence of her existence.

Many noted they had talked to both Kaycee and Debbie on the phone, but no
one had actually met either one of them. People combed the weblogs for
clues, coming up with bizarre and speculative theories. Finally someone
noted that Kaycee had linked to a New York Times article that quoted a
girl called Kaycee Swenson. The facts given in the article fit; Kaycee was
a high school senior from the Kansas area, and she had taken courses at a
local college the year before. She also had many friends online, and she
loved basketball. Now there was a last name to link to the first and
middle names. Someone found another personal page that Kaycee had made
that was hosted on a Geocities N'Sync fan site created by Kelli Swenson
and her friends. The N'Sync fansite had a link to the Swenson family's
homepage. The Swenson's homepage featured a few pictures, a paragraph or
two on the family's situation and a poem written by a woman named Debbie
Swenson - a poem that was on Kaycee's College Club website. There was a
mother, a daughter and brother whose ages seemed to fit with Kaycee's
description of her siblings, and a father. The details about moving seemed
correct. There was even a poem on the page that was mirrored on Kaycee's
page. Yet there was no mention of Kaycee on this family page. Other
searches and leads were quickly becoming fruitless. Everyone had a theory,
but no one had any answers, nor did anyone really expect to have any
thorough answers. For their parts, Kaycee's friends stood by her. Yet
they, too, could not help doubting. Halcyon related his feelings while bwg
did his best to defend his friend.

Finally, Debbie e-mailed her final weblog entry to bwg; her essay was
stunning and her follow-up phone conversation with bwg on May 20th was
even more bizarre. She was not Kaycee's mother. It was she who had written
Kaycee's weblog as well as her own. It was not a full account of the real
Kaycee's life (though she insisted there was a real "Kaycee") , but was
rather a combination of the stories of three people, one with breast
cancer, one with leukemia and one with liver cancer. "My intentions were
good," she wrote, "but that does not begin to excuse me for what I have
done. My only desire was to share their triumphs and tragedies in a way
that showed their strength, the strength of their families. Those were not
false. What they went through was real, I felt a great need to tell the
stories of three courageous people who wanted nothing but to be well and
live happily into their prime."

It did not take long for everyone to note exactly what road was paved with
good intentions. Webloggers who had not updated their pages since Kaycee's
death seemed slightly confused, as they re-evaluated their feelings for a
girl they had loved in the previous entry. People wanted more than the
scant explanation they had been given. bwg and others asked who they had
truly been dealing with - who had they talked to on the phone? Who had
received their gifts? Who was it that they mourned for? Those who had read
the weblog for a long time were faced with the realization that the hope
and inspiration they had drawn from it had been falsified - what then,
many wondered, do the emotions they have mean? Those who had recently been
attracted to the weblog because of the Blogger post or all the public
grieving were fascinated; without any emotional attachment, they were free
to think about it in less idealistic ways.

The main question on everyone's thoughts was a question of motive - why
would a woman come up with such an elaborate fabrication, creating a life
for months and months?  People speculated wildly about a mental illness,
or perhaps a woman simply snapping at the loss of three people close to
her - the three people Debbie confessed to making one story out of. Others
decided that it was all a twisted joke - that someone was getting off on
causing grief and playing on people's naivete and sympathy. Others raised
the possibility that someone was benefiting financially - that there had
been a PayPal account, an Amazon wish list and e-mails circulated to ask
for money. bwg denies all three and though I don't have any way of really
verifying it, I do not recall ever seeing a PayPal account or a wish list.
Other people have, however, reported an e-mail specifically asking for
money. However, the idea that it was one gigantic scam doesn't seem
terribly likely; as my boyfriend noted, if someone wanted to con people
out of money, they really could have done a better job. Others speculated
that it was an experiment of some sort.  Every new detail made the old
details even more confusing.  Most people despaired of ever knowing the
truth. (On a side note, the activity on the site was hard on Metafilter's
server - as a joke, this error message was put up until the problems could
be resolved, confusing many posters.)

IV. The Resolution

I alone bear the shame for what I have done, but it was not done for any
reason other than sharing the love for life they gave to those they loved.
- Debbie

Metafilter members were not about to give up so easily. They formed a
Yahoo club to talk about the case. They got involved in ways besides
combing Google - calling the pastor of a church the Swenson family had
attended, calling newspapers in Kansas for more information, finding the
identity of the girl - who is very much alive - whose pictures Kaycee had
used to establish her own identity on her various pages. Details were
checked and discarded or investigated. A FAQ was put online.

Finally, after days of rumors and research, things seemed to be clearing
up. bwg wrote on the 22nd that "word is spreading like wildfire.
authorities are involved. reporters are involved." Apparently, Kaycee was
a persona made up by Debbie's daughter Kelli and her friends. Kelli used
pictures of a popular and beautiful local student and made up her
personality. At some point, for an as-of-yet unknown reason, Debbie took
over the persona and used her to tell the stories of three cancer victims
she had supposedly known. It was Debbie who was involved with CollegeClub
and CitizenX, and it was she who wrote every entry in Kaycee's weblog, as
well as in her own. There was no daughter named Kaycee; no one has been
able to locate a girl in Kansas who recently died from leukemia. It was
all Debbie's fabrication. But perhaps even this is false, and the real
story is much more complicated.

I have written this as much for me as for anybody else, to make sense of
it in my own mind. I read Kaycee's weblog and Debbie's weblog every day
for six months. When bwg posted that Kaycee had some terrible
complication, I prayed for strength and health for her and her mother.
When I read of Kaycee's passing, I couldn't stop thinking about it for
days. I believed because I could not fathom an alternative; on the night
of the first Metafilter post, I read both Metafilter and Kaycee's site
until 4:00 AM. Even if it was often cloying and sentimental, it just
didn't seem possible for it to be fabricated. Knowing what I know now, her
diary reads like a life too perfectly led and chronicled - but at the time
it was just a life, struggling and hoping.  But even now, it seems
impossible that everything I read over the course of six months was a
falsehood, even though all the evidence screams that it is.

And now I know - there was no Kaycee Nicole who wrote a beautiful diary
and died of leukemia. There wasn't even a Kaycee to start with. In a way
it is comforting - I loved a construct, I gave her a piece of my soul, and
when the construct died I had her memories and she had some of my soul.
But if the memories and words I loved were embellished and falsified, then
whose were they? If the answer is no one's, or Debbie's, then to me they
are invalid. A girl I cared about didn't die because she never existed,
and her death and her nonexistence were not the same.  Her death had some
meaning but, despite Debbie's best efforts, the end result came down to
nothing.