The Washington Post reports on Tom MacMaster, a 40-year-old graduate student who fooled the internet into thinking he was a young Syrian-American woman who blogged about Syria’s turmoil while being openly gay. MacMaster had been cultivating his online identity as Amina Arraf for around five years, and “her” blog, “A Gay Girl in Damascus,” had gained 48,000 followers on Twitter.
MacMaster’s hoax came unraveled after he made a cryptic post last Monday posing as the cousin of the girl he made up. The post said that Amina had been kidnapped by three young men and was presumably in Syrian government custody. This news shocked the media and her followers, prompting even an investigation by the U.S. State Department. However, internet sleuths discovered among other things that the pictures MacMaster had been passing off as Amina were from a London woman’s Facebook account. Although he initially denied knowing anything about the blog, MacMaster confessed to fabricating the entire thing on Sunday.
Meanwhile, while trying to do a little more research on this story:
Keep it classy, International Business Times!
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Via: The Washington Post
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