Who might you be?

One of the most sympathetic characters I ever came across on Topix was Sublime1. What a nice guy! I never read him terribly close because, well, he wasn't that interesting. A family man, he wrote a lot about him and his wife raising the kids- boring, typical suburban stuff like that. He liked to exchange parenting notes with the moms who were in the regs at the time. I noticed the guy would post a bit racier in the evening to the girls and I figured he was having a few cocktails. Twice he went a bit too far, got a little too horny with the girls, and they pretty much told him to stuff it. No big deal to them, just the cost of doing business as a woman. Guys get stupid. You either marry them or tell them to fuck off, right?

Anyway, they told Sub to stuff it and, into his cups as he was, he reacted badly. It was Topix but, I really think the guy was literally crying. His posts were rambling- alternately whiney and threatening, just like a drunks would be IRL if he thought a gal had done him wrong. But, he wasn't a bad guy. He was just a guy having a bad night. I recall asking a couple of the ladies to see if they could straighten things out with him. He really seemed upset. I talked him down as much as I could.

It just seemed like the thing to do at the time. I wasn't certain I did the right thing afterwards but, my heart was in the right place. You hate to see somebody suffer but, you also hate to have somebody following you around like a puppy just because you did something nice. I talked him off the Topix ledge and the guy was suddenly my new bestest friend. I was his hero. He wrote responses to my blogs that were longer than the blog entries themselves and got miffed that i wouldn't publish them. (Ferrerman note: I could never tell if he actually agreed with me even though he seemed to be agreeing with me. His replies would just ramble on, presenting all sides of whatever I was posting about  and then, eventually, end. So, I encouraged him to start his own blog. He did. He made one post about legalizing pot and quit.) Within time, I fell out of his favor. I don't think I was ever mean to the guy but, he started getting angry towards me. It's kinda like "no good deed goes unpunished" meets "how much money does this guy owe me?" I had a boss that would ask that whenever it got back to him that one of his people were talking bad about him. It's human nature to talk shit about your creditors. Wonder how much the republicans owe Barack Obama?

Anyway, in time he began to change. After losing his job and moving the family across the country to start anew, his whole persona started anew. He started talking in the threads about how he and the wife were swingers. Chicks had always dug him and the wife saw fit to share him with the rest womankind because, well, he's that good.... Suddenly, instead of posting about raising a family in the suburbs, he was the Lifestyles & Entertainment writer for the regulars. He got a Harley to carry him and the wife to their sexcapades. He started wearing $900 sunglasses, losing them and shrugging it off. He upped the usage of thug slang in his posts. He was definitely the most "G" of any lawyer, anywhere in any hood! Word!

I had to wonder if, way back when, I had not created a monster....

Well, not me. Someone had created a monster but it wasn't me.

I've felt for nearly a year now that Sublime is not a real person. The complete reversal from family man to The Most Interesting Man In The World  WITH a family is just not to be believed. We already went through this crap with the fake therapist. Cheese and Ricearoni, kids: it's the internet and if it seems too good to be true, why the fuck are they on Topix???!!! I'm not saying that Sublime is full of shit  and he's the typical Topix poster living in his mom's basement and yada-effing-yada like everyone says about everyone else on the internets. I mean that he's a character in someone's head, totally made up. No wife, no kids, no Harley or lawyering being done. No obnoxious wife-swapping and Letters To Penthouse retellings of such. Just a character who does these things in someone's mind.

There are "socks" all over Topix and everyone acknowledges that. But, we're not talking a sock puppet here. We're talking a complete, detailed real fake identity here. Who goes to all that trouble?

Well, whoever created a French therapist/teacher with a Secret Service husband, who had a grant from the government to study people on Topix,  maybe.... I think I've documented that pretty well.... I don't know who that person was and it doesn't really matter. You get what you pay for in life and Topix is free. It gets a little implausible at times and isn't as entertaining as it should be as most people are just posting bullshit about themselves but, it makes you wonder how many other posters out there are figments of someones imagination and how many others "talk" to these people every day. How many of them are completely made up as well?

If Ferrerman did not exist, who would invent him? I'd like to think they'd give me more hair..