American River Review 2019 - Flipbook - Page 36
Italian...he lied about that too.” The Tumblr is four
years old and contains images that cover all four years
of Manny Ortega’s life, except that it isn’t Manny
Ortega’s life.
It’s mine.
It Was All A Dream… is the title of Manny’s Tumblr.
The about section reads: I’m not amazing but my blog
is alright. I post what I like and nothing else. Since
his blog entirely pictures of me, he must like me.
Perhaps someone else would find comfort in being
deemed attractive enough to have pictures stolen and
used on a fake profile. All I can find is a new sensation
of being violated; a violation that makes me wish it
were possible to erase my entire digital presence. My
hands are still shaking but now a nauseous sensation is
creeping through my torso.
“He says he doesn’t know you,” she types, “but I
think he’s still embarrassed about the whole thing. He
wouldn’t say how he found your pictures.”
I recall the documentary, Catfish, and the interview
Yaniv “Nev” Shulman had with Angela, the woman
who had been catfishing him. In the scene, he is sitting
across from her while she paints a portrait of him.
Downstairs her husband is taking care of the children,
an occasional cry of laughter is heard faintly. “I could
just take all of your photos and download them and
make new profiles with totally different names and
never make friends with people who knew you,” she
keeps her eyes on her brushstrokes, “and just create a
network of friends who are real-life friends.” Angela
uses this as an explanation to why so many people were
interacting with the fake profiles of Megan and Abby,
her two fictionalized daughters. Essentially she created
a community of fake profiles designed to mimic a
normal social network.
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American River Review
“Who’s the girl in the photos?”
“It’s a family friend. I feel like I betrayed her.” They
talk for a little longer while Angela finishes up the
portrait. “A lot of the personalities that came out were
just fragments of myself.” Nev sits there and takes
this all in. Angela had admitted to the creation of six
personalities, to using photos of her young daughter
Abby as one of those personalities, and to having
cancer. Light streams into the upstairs room they are
sitting in and Angela smiles.
“I think it’s someone you’re friends with on
Facebook because he has SO MANY pictures of you.”
Christina types this after revealing Manny Ortega has
been catfishing other people since 2008. The number of
photos is startling.
“He has pictures I don’t even have anymore,” I
respond. Most of the photos are from Tumblr but there
are several that I know came from Facebook. When I
get to Manny Ortega’s 2009 posts, the photos are from
sources I can’t exactly pinpoint.
Somewhere between scrolling through four
appropriated years of my life and messaging Christina,
I make a post to Facebook.
Urgent: So, if any of you guys have seen Catfish,
you’ll definitely want to check this out. Apparently,
this guy has been using my photos and videos for
three years. Emma Van Miles, Alex Nguyen, Megan
Stevenson, Megan Orosco, Jo Jimenez, Justine Roe,
Alejandro Moore you guys are all in some of the
pictures he’s used. I’m kinda in shock right now.
http://dannyspinelli.tumblr.com/tagged/myself
Manny Ortega takes his Tumblr down that night and
I spend some time editing the privacy settings of my