This Is Not Me
by Martin Dabon
Hello all. I’m not really sure if what I have to share fits on here, so I understand if this post gets deleted… but I’m desperate for help. Hoping anybody who happens to read this has undergone a similar situation but knows how to solve it. Sorry that this is going to be long, as I felt every detail shared is important, but thank you in advance if you read the whole way.
It all started about a month ago, when me and an old friend from high school and college (let’s call him “Isaiah”) decided to grab a few drinks one night after realizing we happened to both be in town that weekend. We hadn’t seen each other in person since the funeral of a mutual friend of ours a few years ago but kept in touch via social media DM’s (largely through sending memes back and forth instead of actually conversing).
The two of us were having fun first Largely just catching up on what we each had going on in our lives while reminiscing over the “highlights” from back in the day I ribbed him over his recent breakup with his girlfriend of three years, in turn he nagged at me for never leaving our hometown, but we were both able to laugh over our shared past. Each of us planned on driving after our meetup though so we were going easy on the drinks. Also, neither of us smoke. I bring this up just to say that any confusion stemming from substance use couldn’t explain what happened that night
At some point Isaiah headed back to the bar to buy our second round so I scrolled through my phone as I waited for him. Wanting to ask for more details about some of the misadventures he’d been telling me about, I felt like checking his profile to see if he’d posted anything about them. I found a few: scenery pictures he’d taken on his NY trip in October, a group portrait featuring ourselves and the rest of our friend group from when we all last assembled, as well as some blurry videos taken from his phone back when he went around party-hopping this past New Year’s. I’d remembered seeing and liking only a few of them.
When he got back I showed him what I was looking at and we talked more about them for a little while. He then pulled up his profile on his phone so that we could each refer back to specific posts on our own.
He showed me his memorial post of our late friend Kyle that he made on the anniversary of his passing, as well as a selfie with his new girlfriend, Misty, that he took on Thanksgiving. Neither I had seen before, so he spoke at length about both of those things.
It was after a few minutes of a back and forth though when he made an odd expression. He told me how he’d noticed something was off about the profile on my screen. I gave him my phone and watched him as his face flicked between each device. The look Isaiah had on grew more astonished by the second.
Eventually he seemed to grow scared. He handed me back my phone, shaking his head.
“This is not me. ”
I asked him what he meant by that, and he clarified that the account I was showing him on my phone was not his. My first instinct was to insist against him. I’d been following Isaiah for as long as I’d known him and figured I would know what his profile looked like. He gave me his phone and then he showed me what initially drew his suspicion… but before long we discovered something neither of us can to this day explain.
At a glance, the profile displayed on my phone and the one on Isaiah’s were indistinguishable from each other. Same username, same profile picture, and same biography The first discrepancy that Isaiah showed me was the follower counts. He said the numbers he had on his screen were what he knew to be correct, as he only let family and friends follow his profile while following strictly those exact same people back. Aside from that, he did follow a handful of pages which he thought made funny posts or covered his hobbies. The “Imposter”, as we took to calling him, on my phone had over a dozen less followers while it was following over a hundred more other profiles.
We dug deeper into this. Most of the Imposter’s missing followers were a select few of Isaiah’s friends and family who were instead following his real account. Whereas some of the Imposter’s own followers were total strangers to Isaiah, while some the accounts it itself was following was also unfamiliar to my friend. We even saw that some people followed both accounts.
But then we left the issue of the follower counts to the side as I noticed another oddity in the post counts. Isaiah specifically had two more posts than the Imposter. Together, we scrolled all the way down in search of the missing posts, trying to just reach when Isaiah had newly made the account during his senior year of high school. A full decade ago. We did our best to keep our cool as Isaiah navigated his real account and I the Imposter’s until we arrived at the bottom in unison.
Our screens were showing us the same exact post: Isaiah posing with his varsity basketball jersey after he made the team. We even read back the same caption… but what was really freaking us out was that the Imposter had posted their version on the exact same date as it had gone up on the real account. As we scrolled up the pattern repeated. Post after post the details were always identical in terms of content and the date it was posted.
There were still differences between each side though. Isaiah’s real posts tended to have slightly less likes than the Imposter’s. Each post also had different sets of comments and different sets of people who were leaving them. With the Imposter posts though the commentors were clearly under the impression that they were interreacting with the real Isaiah, based on how they talked to him. “What the fuck!” I remember thinking to myself. It was the most coherent thought I could manage, considering what was in front of me.
After sitting for a moment with all of that, my first assumption was that the Imposter account was made by some stalker who had been replicating Isaiah’s online activity for
years. I can’t say I know better now, as at the moment I’m at such an utter loss that I feel incapable of even speculating on the Imposter’s true nature.
Continuing on with me and Isaiah in the wake of our findings, we took a breather from our phones. We were still lingering on some burning questions, such as what were the two posts the Imposter hadn’t copied from Isaiah. Our drinks, which had sat forgotten, were then suddenly remembered. We downed their latter half.
“What the fuck!” Was all Isaiah could manage to say about things after our second of levity.
I held back expressing my aforementioned initial assumption, having the forethought that a “hyper-dedicated cyber stalker” was still a large jump to take but also not wanting to scare my friend any further. Instead, I suggested to him that it could’ve been a glitch in how his profile was being shown to me. After a few times refreshing the page though I only became less confident in that conclusion.
“If it was just the follower and post counts that were weird, I’d agree with you on that,” he had said to me. “But no, actually looking at the details, like comments and likes, proves that these are in fact two separate accounts! Question is, who’s behind the fake one?”
Still meaning to calm Isaiah down, I helped him work through several possibilities. Was this some kind of a hack? It wasn’t anything like any other hacking we’d seen. He still had full access to his real profile.
Was this a prank or a gag account? If so, where was the humor in it supposed to found?
An identity thief? Isaiah had never been forwarded a “ransom” or been notified of any suspicious activity regarding his data or bank accounts.
I eventually got around to suggesting my “stalker theory” Isaiah’s own guess was close; he was leaning towards it being someone catfishing as him. However, we soon concluded that this hypothetical stalker or catfish would have to be dedicated to a degree beyond what made sense to have kept this up for so long and with such thoroughness. They were even convincing enough to fool Isaiah’s real life friends and family into interacting with their profile.
Still, we couldn’t let go of the idea that this Imposter account was being controlled by a whole other person. Maybe it was an AI or a bot, due to its indepthness, but that would mean someone would’ve had to have programmed it ten years ago and maintained it all this time! This led to us wondering at their motivations. No one had ever complained to Isaiah about being scammed by the Imposter’s profile. If this was being done as a joke it was missing a punchline. Had Isaiah not noticed it on my phone earlier this profile would have been going on unbeknownst to either of us, just as it has been for years.
“It’s a stalker.” I sounded surer out loud than I actually was in my own head. “You should report this to customer services and get it taken down.”
Isaiah started to focus on going back over the Imposter’s account. “Wait, I don’t know if I should do anything right now. I mean for how long this guy’s kept this up, it doesn’t seem like it’s ever really affected me in the real world.”
“What?” I was baffled at Isaiah’s change of tune, “It’s still someone else presenting themselves as you online! They’ve fooled even people you’re close to!”
“What are the posts he’s missing…?” Isaiah mumbled, seeming to barely register my words. “At least put something out warning everyone not to interact with the fake.” I suggested.
“Making a post like that might provoke the guy into actually harming me, ” Isaiah sounded half-hearted in his argument. “Like I said… he hasn’t done anything in the real world yet.”
“Yet!” I tried to emphasize the word to Isaiah, but his focus had gone on to scrolling the Imposter’s account. He was at least paying enough attention to nod at me when I then offered to get us our third round.
When I returned Isaiah’s face was in his hands. Both our phones were face down on the table. “Look at our messages. ” His voice came out as a low groan.
It dawned on me without even having to take my phone back. Admittedly, I’m not sure why we didn’t realize this sooner, when we had been going over the followers I was following the Imposter, but not the real Isaiah.
When I opened up the DM’s between me and “Isaiah” , I was expecting to see a conversation which I wouldn’t recognize at all… but it was as exactly as I remember last seeing it before we came to the bar. Every string of words I had ever sent remained unaltered after the revelation, but my stomach turned as I lingered on who had been on the other end. It had never been Isaiah I’d been speaking to online.
“For how long?” I wondered aloud before uttering the next thing that struck my mind. “How did you know to meet me here?” I asked him as he sat there. Planning this hangout had been the topic of the last few exchanges I thought I’d been having with him.
“It was you who told me the time and place.” Isaiah handed me his phone and it became my turn to obsessively scroll. What was said in order to plan this meetup was the exact same on both screens, but on Isaiah’s phone everything else before that was wholly alien to me. He had been speaking to my own digital Imposter.
The DM’s between my Imposter and the real Isaiah were eerily alike to mine and Isaiah’s but the messages mismatched in terms of content. What was spoken about was different, while my Imposter approached the same topics from angles I had not taken myself. Silly as it was, even the memes shared were different But what got under my skin the most was when my Imposter would update Isaiah with details about my personal life to an exact accurateness.
I almost opened up my Imposter’s profile on Isaiah’s phone, to see how closely my online activity was being mirrored and who among the people I knew were being fooled by this fake. But I stopped myself.
“Let’s leave this alone,” I remember saying, defeated. “We’ll do something about this later… but maybe you were right earlier. At least these stalkers, pranksters, hackers or whatever haven’t harmed us in the real world yet.”
Disturbing as our situation was, we managed to convince ourselves in that moment that this matter wasn’t urgent. I and Isaiah settled on doing nothing for the time being. Maybe that was a mistake, but in that moment our minds were in no shape to take any kind of decisive action. We took some token sips of our last drinks and left to go our separate ways.
Last night, Isaiah called me. I didn’t know it was him at first, as we didn’t actually have each other’s phone numbers saved. I’m aware that’ll be strange to some, but the both of us primarily talk to people over social media or messaging apps. Hopefully you’ll understand why we mutually decided against trying to contact the other via our usual means.
Because of that, I was curious about how Isaiah got my number.
“I asked ‘ you ’ for it, and it gave it to me. ”
My heart sank at his words. “You know that wasn’t me. ”
In the following weeks after that bar trip, I had tried my hardest to just put it all out my head. I took a “social media cleanse” and refused to open any of my apps. Refused to give in to my curiosity about my Imposter. Didn’t help much when friends who I saw in my day-to-day would ask me about why I was posting after I had told them about the cleanse. That was harder to ignore, that whoever was pretending to be me was somehow carrying on with their façade despite my abstaining from doing anything online.
“I’m on my way to see you. We need to talk.” Was the rest of all Isaiah said to me in a frantic rush before he hung up.
I was still trying to make sense of that call when he arrived at my apartment a little over an hour later He seemed manic, his face pale and eyes red like he hadn’t slept at all. On top of that, he seemed to have developed a new tic. He wouldn’t stop scratching the tops of his hands; he would carry on with this behavior the rest of the night. Though I occasionally tried to keep him from doing so, Isaiah would dismiss me with, “I’m just itchy,” before resuming to dig his nails into his skin. Ravenous. It must’ve hurt, as his hands were covered in fresh scars and was sharkskin rough up to the fingers.
He was still holding onto his phone though, and I caught enough of a glimpse at the screen when he’d entered to see that he had his Imposter’s profile open. It was hard picturing him driving all the way here in the state he was in.
I tried to get him to surrender at least some form of an explanation to me, but he wouldn’t offer anything until I sat down with him in my living room. I got him some water, and he just went off like a gun.
Below is my best attempt at transcribing what he rambled at me:
“I know we said we’d leave this alone, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them. Especially mine… or not mine… but you know who I’m talking about!”
“The day after we met up his account was recommended to me. There was no point trying to help myself after that and we’d left so much shit unresolved, like his missing posts!”
Isaiah then fell forward, almost off of the couch. Weeping into his own lap he said, “I figured them out though!”
“It was Kyle’s memorial post!” he told me, “And my Thanksgiving picture with Misty! He didn’t have them!”
“Took me hours to figure that out… Ha!” He would punctuate his speech every now and again with a laugh, as if a joke only he could hear had passed over his ears. “Had his profile on my phone and my own on a laptop. I kept comparing us, looking for anything different or off between the two of us!”
There was brief pause, and I took that moment to ask Isaiah, “What do you mean by off? Whoever this person is, they’re just copying whatever you post, right?”
“No! We’re different people!” he shot up in his seat. “Didn’t realize that until after I started to really look at the two of us!”
Isaiah then essentially threw his phone into my face, holding it right up to me as he showed me a post of his Impostor’s that I hadn’t seen. “This went up a few days after our bar trip!” It was a picture of Isaiah posing shirtless at the gym. “This is not me! I’m nowhere near this toned or muscular, and I think he’s little bit taller… this wasn’t even taken at the gym I go to!”
He was right. While the face and features of the person in the photo bore an uncanny resemblance to my long-time friend, there was a subtle difference in their form and figure that became more obvious the longer I stared. Isaiah was also not one to post something like that on social media, and he had never done so.
“He’s not just copying me anymore, but he’s been posting his own stuff!” Isaiah continued. “That gym photo was only the first… I waited days… kept checking, but nothing… and then he made another! And then another!”
He started to scroll past more and more new posts dated from the past month on the Imposter’s account. It was a myriad of pictures and videos that I could barely make out due to how quickly they were being gone over… but I could at least parse a person in each one that was a twin to Isaiah’s own likeness.
Then he started to read the captions aloud. “Throwback to my tour of Italy… Just met up with some old friends for a few rounds of pickleball My first painting to be accepted at a gallery !”
Isaiah’s mania reached a crescendo. “I’ve never done any of this shit! I’ve never left the state, let alone been to Italy! I don’t play pickleball or even know who these people he’s posing with are! I don’t paint!”
He showed me more posts, but I could never describe them all. What I can say is that the Imposter was no longer just emulating Isaiah but doing his own thing entirely. Doing things that I know Isaiah has never done and spending time with people I’ve never known him to hang out with. And assuming it really was the Imposter himself that was in every photo or video, he looked enough like Isaiah that I don’t think I’d be able to tell them apart in a police lineup.
“He’s even using my name!” my friend groaned, “Not just my face, my fucking name! And he’s living my life!” Isaiah then breathed out a long sigh, “But it’s not ‘my life’… it’s better than mine!”
I don’t remember what I said in response. It had been some attempt at words to comfort him, to make him feel better. It seemed to work on Isaiah somewhat, that is until he pulled up a particular post that he said I needed to see for myself.
“This was from earlier today When I saw it, I knew I needed to talk to you. ” A deep despair was plain on his face as he added, “She said yes… ”
On the screen was a picture of a woman’s hand wearing an expensive looking diamond ring. The hand belonged to Isaiah’s ex-girlfriend. An additional picture showed her in the arms of a man that I knew wasn’t Isaiah, as much he appeared to be. I was left speechless, staring blankly at the screen.
There was a thud that brought me back to my senses. It was Isaiah collapsing onto my floor. He became inconsolable. Ranting and crying out incoherently.
I tried again to calm him, offering assurances and adding explanations which I didn’t believe myself. I recall rehashing to him some of the theories we had come up with during that night at the bar I reminded him that he had found a new love with Misty, and even posited that his ex-girlfriend was the Imposter all along playing a sadistic prank on him.
“He’s living my life better than me!” Was the only reply I understood from Isaiah. “Why can’t I be living his life?”
He went on in this state for maybe half an hour Not sure how I didn’t receive any noise complaints. At a loss for what else to do while Isaiah was like that, I scrolled through his Imposter’s account myself. It was more of what I have already described. With each new post I encountered, the less I could come up with a logical explanation for what was
happening. This wasn’t some stalker or hacker or catfish… it seemed more like a doppelganger.
The last post I encountered before stopping was what convinced me that I needed to seek outside help for this. I’m still in disbelief, but my own eyes really did witness it It was a single photo which had gone live while Isaiah’s phone was in my very hands. “Hanging out with my boys!” It was a photo of me, Isaiah… and our friend Kyle. He’s been dead for years now. Me and Isaiah were at his funeral. But there he was, sitting right next to me in a selfie he was taking while the three of us were all grabbing drinks at the very bar where this had started.
I became numb, but I had enough sense to pick Isaiah off the floor and place him back on the couch. He was conscious but sobbing. I told him he could stay the night but that I would be holding onto his phone. He didn’t argue.
As I write this, it’s the next morning and my mind is still chaotic. I barely got any sleep. Isaiah is still in my living room. Don’t think he’s awake, yet Can’t let him see the same post I saw
Do any of you have any idea about what can be done about this? Can accounts like this be hidden from us? Or banned? What’s causing us to be exposed to them? As much as I want this to go away though, I also want to see what my Imposter has been posting to see how he’s been living his life better than mine Please, I’m open to hearing anything that you think can help.
Thank you.