The Great Fake Facebook Mystery

Several months ago I was the victim of identity theft. Someone started a fake facebook page of me and sent invites to my real friends. The creepy interworkings of social networking took over and soon, the fake me was up and running befriending all sorts of people unbeknownst to the real me. When the real me found out, he wanted revenge against the fake me - because the fake me got the real me on a pretty damn good prank. And thus the mystery began...

The clues/evidence:

1. The initial facebook "friends" were from film school, so it was obvious the fake me knew the real me from USC.

2. The picture on my page was from Robyn's Halloween party. The picture was posted on Robyn's page, so presumably the fake me stole the picture from her page. (or was Robyn herself) But either way, this confirms the fake me was from film school.

3. I presumed the fake me knew the real me well because the fake me knew the real me really hates facebook...thus making the prank funny.

4. The fake me tried to set up some type of forwarding email address to my gmail, which I initially ignored, and then later figured out was the fake me. Why they did this remains a mystery to the real me, but indicates a decent technical proficiency (at least higher than my own).

5. The fake me initially would log onto the facebook page and accept friends and respond to wall postings and other emails "as if" they were the real me.

6. The fake me did not mention anything to the real me...instead the fake me was patient enough to let others inform me of my own facebook.

7. The fake me used gregblackjohnson as the email address, an old nickname from film school.

8. The fake me used my old home address as the email password, indicating they know my old address and are likely an older film school friend as opposed to a newer friend.

Turning Up The Heat/The Investigation

I tried several tactics to unearth the fake me. At first I patiently awaited a trip up indicating the true identity of the prankster. I figured the prankster was eager to be discovered because of the cleverness of the set up and sooner or later would reveal him or herself in a clumsy act of admission and allow the real tit-for-tat pranks to begin. But the fake me did not bite. The fake me sensed (or knew) the real me was on the case and decided to go quiet. Instead of "playing" around, the fake me went quiet and started to only accept new friends.

Depressed by the apparent lack of humor by the fake me, the real me got annoyed. The fake me started to accept friends who the real me would never accept as friends and started accepting friends outside the film school circle, including past and present colleagues. The real me began to worry about the the real me's reputation in the workplace and foresaw more future problems with the fake page the larger it got. The real me decided the prank had gone on long enough and emailed facebook to shut the page down before the fake me permanently damaged the real me's reputation.

The real me wanted to know who did this and narrowed the list of possible suspects and confronted all of them. Figuring the fake me could only be a small group of people and that the prank was clearly over, the fake me would decide to come clean, especially confronted with their crimes. But no one came clean. And I believed everyone who denied their role in starting the fake page.

This means the fake me lied to the real me's face. And probably multiple times and not in the spirit of fun. To this day, the great facebook mystery remains unsolved. The trail has gone dead and until new technology arrives, I don't know how to figure out who the perp is.

Conclusions

I've toyed with several different theories. At first, I figured there was a conspiracy or at least two people involved. I mean, what fun would a prank like this be without a co-conspirator?

But, because the mystery has lasted so long, the conspiracy angle seems less likely as one of the perps likely would have cracked by now and betrayed the other one, as crooks are wont to do. (this is also why I'm pretty sure Lee Harvey acted alone).

This leaves it to one person and I suspect the perp is female. The whole "going silent" and passive once the heat got turned up seems very feminine. A guy would have kept the prank going and eventually made a drunken confession and we'd all enjoy a big laugh. A girl is more likely to feel embarrassment or shame and therefore keep quiet about the whole matter.

I also suspect the perp is not well read and did not take away the lesson of psychological torment from Crime and Punishment. The perp figured the prank would annoy me and cause me grief - which it has. But what the perp did not figure is the psychological torment to oneself of committing a crime. The fear and guilt consumes you. And now, it's been so long, if the perp is ever caught, their actions will not be justifiable - they'll be interpreted as weird and their status in the community lessened.

And if the perp is never caught, they will live the rest of their lives with a small secret they are secretly afraid someone will discover. Had the perp read his/her Dostoyevsky, they'd know this...

There is another outside possibility - that one of my initial clues is wrong and I narrowed the pool of suspects too narrow - and it is someone outside the circle. But then the whole project is closer to stalker behavior and not prank behavior and I've got bigger problems I'm not willing to confront.