Friday, May 8, 2015

Would You Be Flattered If Someone Pretended To Be You?


I once read this book, Why Can't I Be You by Allie Larkin, where this woman hated her life so much she pretended to be someone else upon people mistaking her for that person. She was out of town on a business trip when a woman thought she was an old high school friend that had come back in town for their reunion. For some reason the other people in the group thought the same, so she went along with the role. Eventually the truth was revealed in the book and she had to face the consequences of her actions.

This was just a fiction book, but the stealing of identities is real on social media. Taylor Wolfe, of The Daily Tay, just wrote a blog post on her latest experience. While the person uses a different name they stole her pictures, her hobbies, her hometown, and her birthday. In writing the blog post she jokes about having a twin in her hometown, but it's clear someone is catfishing others with her face. It's also clear that it bothers her a little. To top it off, it's not the first time someone has stolen her pictures and pretended to be her on social media. Taylor is having fun with this experience. She went as far as requesting the person that is pretending to be her. 

If you found out someone was using your pictures on social media and pretending to be you, how would you react? It would probably bother me. I'm selfish. There can only be one person who looks like me until I reproduce. I was kind of sad when I realized there was another person in the world named Lashuntrice.

P.S. The big photo represents the original me and the smaller one represents someone in the far away land of the internet using my face to represent them. 

Lashuntrice

Lashuntrice