Archives for May 2001

this weekend was that people learned that a hoax was perpetrated in the case a Kaycee Nicole, a young women who people thought had died of leukemia. It may still come out that there was some kernel of truth to the whole thing, but still – people who meant nothing but the best in such a (seemingly) sad situation were taken advantage of.

I don’t have much to add to the whole thing, since I didn’t really follow “Kaycee’s” blog at all. The only comment to make, perhaps, is that each new type of community on the web seems to have their very own betrayal/hoax experience. It might even be said to come with the turf. I’ve been involved in similar (roughly) situations in the past on old-school community sites – a couple of them. And from that experience, my only take-away was that in each case there were some who backed away from the communities at hand – and others deepened their links, consciously or not marking the hoax as an anomaly, and nothing to prompt total scepticism.

I hope something like that happens here. I do think there’s a broad community, of sorts, among people who keep weblogs, a certain amount of it focused on Matt’s excellent MetaFilter, where much of the present drama was played out.