My Thoughts (And Digressions) On The Manti Te'o Situation

I spent the morning watching ESPN SportsCenter, and one of their lead stories was that they were able to interview Manti Te’o about his role in this now infamous hoax. (As with any other major mainstream media story, I refuse to put a spiffy, catchy title on it.)  Was Te’o purely a victim? Was he a knowing part of the hoax? Was he initially a victim who didn’t come clean? As usual, when the initial story broke on Wednesday, those questions was raised, and then society began to come up with the quickest opinions, then answers, and then reactions, as soon as possible, before finding out the story from all sides. (I normally would have written “facts” instead of “story”, but I have a feeling we will never know what all of the facts are.)  I was initially confused about what happened, and as the week went on, my confusion increased more than it cleared. The ESPN interview was not taped, as requested by Te’o, so what I saw was the interviewer’s (Jeremy Schaap’s) careful take on the interview. For me, some of the confusion cleared up, enough so that I could place this situation into a context that could end any additional curiosity on my part.

That context is this:  regardless of what else we may learn; regardless of whatever other facts, sides, stories, spins, etc., comes out of there from here forward; I find the process of the hoax intriguing.

Allow me to take a detour here:  I am a process-oriented person. Since that sounds so career-oriented, let me explain in terms of my career first:  my strength in being in Accounting/Finance is taking the base level item, a transaction with a balanced debit and credit, and understanding how that transaction fits into increasingly higher levels of summarization:  detailed Income Statements and Balance Sheets, various financial ratios, and then summarized trends and explanations of those statements. In addition, my strength also involves looking at the processes that create those transactions; understanding what the starting point is, and understanding the twists and turns that activity takes in becoming a transaction.

Twists and turns? On any good road trip, it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. It’s about the various roads and turns, and what you see along the way, that makes the road trip – the “process” of the journey. Or the journey behind the journey. And even in some of my other areas of interest, the common theme within those is the process. Photography:  for me, it’s not just about taking the photo. It’s about finding a subject, determining the lighting, the angle, what I want to include in the shot, what I don’t want to include, etc. Music:  for me, it’s not just about listening. It’s about how the different instruments interact with each other, what’s the melody? What’s the harmony? How are those adapted throughout the song? What do the lyrics mean, if anything? Does the background music align with the lyrics?

Back to topic: the process of this hoax is very intriguing to me. Someone came up with this idea – the idea of pretending to be a girlfriend, and then pretending to die. Why? Then they decided that it was something they actually wanted to do. So, how? And to who? Why Te’o? And so it starts. Fake twitter accounts - multiple. A hacked Facebook photo of some seemingly random person. Why that person?  Phone calls with disguised voices, and supposedly by multiple people involved in the hoax. Which means, that this person shared this idea and plan with others, who all agreed that not only was it a good idea, but they wanted to be involved. And this went on I think for two years? THAT is some process.

But it goes even further – after the supposed death in September, the story catches wind and hits the media, and off and running we go. Now it’s mentioned during many Notre Dame games; many news articles and feel-good stories are written about it; it becomes inspiration for the team, and who knows who knew what when. A lot was seemingly taken at face value. And those performing the hoax stood back and watched. What were they thinking? What would be their next move? Was that even being thought about? And how was this going to end? What was their plan?

These are all questions that we’ll never get answered. But in my thought process, my first thought went down this road:  there has to be something off emotionally or mentally with those who came up with this hoax, gave birth to it, and raised it to where we are right now. It’s early in the life of this story yet, but I have yet to hear anything about what is happening to, or with, the culprits.  Supposedly, there probably is not a criminal aspect here, though in some of the “expert analysis” that comes from the media in stories like this, there may be a civil/lawsuit aspect that may apply here. Shocker, I know, but I’m not interested in that.  But I feel like something needs to be addressed in how something like this was able to get so far down this road, that it actually fooled possibly millions of people. And, knowing how many people watch college football, I don’t think using “millions” here is an exaggeration – and that astounds me. I actually rarely watch college football, so I never heard this story during that time that it was believed to be real.

And THAT is the second road my thought process traveled down:  I think it is outright scary that the lines between reality and fantasy or fiction are more blurred that ever. With all of the different outlets out there bombarding everyone all the time with some homogenized blend of fact, opinion, and assumption, combined with our ever-shortening attention span and related lack of critical thinking, leaves us much more vulnerable to something like this going forward.  We all know that “reality TV” isn’t “reality”, but have we really comprehended that statement? We’re calling something reality that isn’t real, and accepting the use of the word “reality” in that fake context.  There’s a generation of TV viewers who admit to getting their news from “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central. They get their news from a comedy station. Although, the news on non-comedy stations is a joke anyway, so who has the last laugh?

You know what? I thought I was starting to understand this, but…I’m more confused than ever. I can’t process it all anymore. Guess I’d better hit the road…  :)