Why the story of a College football player’s fake girlfriend made headline news last week remains a mystery. According to reports, Manti Teo’s girlfriend Lennay Kekua had tragically passed away of cancer complications on the same day that his grandmother passed and hours before he was supposed to play in a game.
It practically blew up the internet with sports and news outlets alike trying to separate the fact from fiction. Was this an elaborate hoax played on an innocent athlete or something Te’o himself had concocted to boost his popularity?
Along the way pop culture experts and today’s best thinkers delivered their two cents on the matter. Authorities on the term ‘Catfishing’ were called on to provide analysis. There was much speculation about the whole matter. Everyone just had to know the truth! But why? There were those that were adamant about his honesty and then those who suspected he was up to something.
Well, we now have what is as close to an answer as we can get thanks to the hard hitting inquisition of Katie Couric. He was in fact ‘Catfished’ but he did give an interview pretending his girlfriend was real even after finding out the truth. You can’t really blame the guy though. Who would want to admit on national TV that they had been fooled into maintaining a long term relationship with a fake girl?
This is what he told Couric,
“Katie, put yourself in my situation. I, my whole world told me that she died on Sept. 12. Everybody knew that. This girl, who I committed myself to, died on Sept. 12. Now I get a phone call on Dec. 6, saying that she’s alive and then I’m going be put on national TV two days later. And to ask me about the same question. You know, what would you do?”
What would you do? Probably the same thing Te’o did. The truth ended up being very predictable. He was duped for a long time and then found out the truth but was too embarrassed to admit it. What was surprising though was that Te’o was duped by a man pretending to be a woman. It turns out an acquaintance of Te’o named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo had been pretending to be Kekua all along. It was later revealed that the woman who’s face the media recognized as Kekua actually belonged to a 23 year old woman named Diane O’Meara who was very much alive and had never even met Te’o.
Perhaps if nothing else, the Notre Dame football star’s shameful Catfishing saga can teach us all a lesson in 21st century long distance dating. A note to online love seekers: be sure to perform a Skype test before committing, or at least do a Google image search.
