[Air-L] A little OT but about fake identities in RL and online (and scandalous!)

[Holly Kruse]

I am now your trusty air-l email list manager, but back in 1994 I  
founded Setters-L, which is still the primary internet forum for the  
four setter dog breeds (English, Gordon, Irish, and Irish Red &  
White), and I ran it for several years before handing it over to a  
new admin team in the early 2000s.

During the fairly early years of the 1990s, there was a subscriber  
who went by "Clark Rocke" (or "Rocka" -- I can't exactly remember),  
and he adopted a special needs Gordon setter from, as I recall,  
Montana.   He explained to me during the subscription process that  
this wasn't his full name, and that his name was in fact Clark  
Rockefeller.  He said that he didn't want people to know who he  
really was and just be interested in him because he was a  
Rockefeller.  Because Setters-L didn't/doesn't allow anonymous or  
pseudonymous subscriptions, that was a bit of an issue, and probably  
what started my back channel chats with him.  I think he also posted  
to the list about taking the dog to the club in Manhattan to which he  
belonged to swim, which was allowed for rehab purposes because of who  
he was.  This was also a time when I was with my now-ex, who grew up  
in Manhattan, and he and I went there fairly frequently with dogs in  
tow.  Thus, "Clark" and I chatted about getting together with our dogs.

I fell out of touch with him and well, here's what he's been up to  
lately (and when he was on Setters-L, and before).  From the New York  
Times:

FASHION & STYLE | August 24, 2008
Ready-Made Rockefeller
By PAM BELLUCK and SARA RIMER
The fine art and town house convinced many that Clark Rockefeller   
was real. Now the charade is over.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/fashion/24rockefeller.html

I'm sure this case raises some interesting scholarly questions,  
especially about identity -- in this case, taking on a false identity  
in real life, then taking on a different (but reallly the same)  
identity online in a faux effort to deflect attention away from the  
supposed real life identity which is in fact fake -- but at the  
moment I'm just floored by my experience with a now-notorious  
fakester... and kidnapper.


Holly

---
Holly Kruse
Faculty of Communication
The University of Tulsa
800 S. Tucker Drive
Tulsa, OK 74104
918-631-3845
holly-kruse at utulsa.edu or holly.kruse at gmail.com
http://personal.utulsa.edu/~holly-kruse