5. She's not who she says she is

For this assignment I chose to analyze the online relationship situation that Professor Hancock briefly discussed in class last week. It started when Thomas Montgomery created a new version of himself: Tommy, an 18-year-old marine sniper who was serving in Iraq when he met Jessi, a 17-year-old girl from West Virginia. Due to Tommy’s status as an active serviceman, his Internet access was restricted, so Montgomery introduced Jessi to Tom Sr., Tommy’s dad, in order to deliver messages between the two parties. Eventually the two grew so fond of each other that Tommy proposed Marriage and Jessi accepted.

Eventually Montgomery’s wife Cindy found out what was going on and she sent Jessi a message explaining the situation and warning her about trusting people online. Jessi then turned to a friend who Montgomery had mentioned; Brian Barrett, a 22 year old who worked with Montgomery. Barrett confirmed Cindy’s story and Jessi was furious. She began going to Barrett for support. This didn’t go over well with Montgomery and, after much back and forth amongst the three of them, including real-life humiliation at work, Thomas shot Barrett dead one night as his shift ended. A police investigation eventually linked Montgomery and Barrett via Jessi, and the detective investigating phoned her to tell her she might be in danger. When a local police officer arrived at Jessi’s address at the request of the investigating police officers, he found that Jessi was away at summer camp, and her mother, Mary, had been using her identity the entire time.

This case involves a number of instances of digital deception. To start, Tommy and Tom Sr. were both created from thin air. Tommy’s life, which Montgomery explained many details of, was entirely fictitious. It was mostly conventional signals that Montgomery could simply talk about and be believed. The only real assessment signal that made up Tommy’s identity was a picture of a marine that Montgomery sent to Jessi; however, because there was never a plan to actually meet, this signal was not as high cost as it would be otherwise. The Tom Sr. character served to reassure Jessi that Tommy was the real thing. He was based mostly on the real Thomas Montgomery so his traits were not hard to fake; the only signals that Tom Sr. had to fake were his name (very low cost, conventional) and the idea of having a son (low cost, conventional). On the other side of the conversation was Jessi, who was made up of a number of assessment signals, which kept Montgomery and Barrett from questioning her existence. Jessi sent Montgomery countless pictures over time that would have been impossible to fake, as well as multiple pairs of underwear that a teenage girl would wear. All of this over time was very believable, and it wouldn’t have been possible if Jessi weren’t a real person, but Montgomery never thought of the idea that the mementos were coming from Jessi’s mother. Ironically, Barrett, the man who was killed, was the only person who wasn’t being deceptive in this ordeal.

This case follows Wallace’s attraction factors pretty well. Although the online sequence of attraction is reversed, physical attraction did play a part once the two parties had exchanged pictures. It served to further the infatuation that Montgomery had with Jessi. Proximity, as far as online spaces, was what introduced the two people to each other. They both frequented the online gaming site Pogo and the only reason that they met each other was because they both were in a room for teenagers. Over a period of the intersection frequency grew, and they took their relationship outside of the gaming site. The common ground that Tommy and Jessi shared was their age and their interest in online gaming. Finally, Disinhibition played a huge role in Mary’s willingness to continue with the lie that she was Jessi, and to send the photos and underwear to Montgomery.

McKenna’s relationship facilitation factors also played a part in sustaining this relationship. The removal of gating features facilitated the interaction between two fake parties because there were no barriers that would have kept them from interacting in real life. Interaction control was key in sustaining the lie. At one point Barrett asked to visit Jessi on his vacation and Mary, not wishing to reveal her true self, denied him that form of interaction. By keeping interaction strictly online, Mary and Thomas kept their lies going much longer. The idea of connecting to similar others is explained by the common ground that the two shared in Wallace’s attraction features. The “Getting the goods” factor of McKenna’s theory does not fit this situation, however, because I believe that if Mary had done any type of searching for Tommy or Tom Sr. she could have deduced that the whole thing was fake. This whole situation is truly a case study in online deception and relationships.

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