A resident shocked the Virgin Islands this week by admitting that his actual life bears little resemblance to the one he has been depicting on Facebook for years.
“I’m just a regular guy,” Rutherford Eastman explained in a tearful video he posted on Monday. “I have a job as a security guard, and I work nine to five just like everyone else.”
The disclosure has drawn astonished reactions from Mr. Eastman’s thousands of Facebook friends, who have long seen his posts of luxury automobiles and flashy jewellery as evidence of a success they could only dream about.
“OMG! I just can’t believe this,” a veterinarian posted underneath the video. “I’d always assumed that everyone on Facebook was completely honest.”
Indeed, the incident is causing many residents to rethink their relationship with the popular social networking site – and their entire worldview.
The ruse
In his video, Mr. Eastman recounted how he used increasingly elaborate tricks to mislead his Facebook friends.
“I never actually lied,” he said. “But I can’t deny that I wilfully posted information designed to make other people believe things that weren’t true.”
The ruse started by accident.
“I took a selfie in a club one night and posted it to Facebook,” he said. “Only when I read the comments later did I realise that a beautiful woman was standing behind me in the photo.”
He got so much positive attention from the post that he employed a similar tactic the following weekend. Soon, it had become a habit for him to sidle up to unsuspecting women and snap a selfie in order to create the illusion that he was hanging out with them.
“I started getting more friend requests than I could count,” he said. “I’d never been popular before.”
#Highroller
From there, the ruse grew more complex.
“Soon, I was buying costume jewellery and posing near strangers’ vehicles as though they were my own,” he said.
He would accompany such photos with cryptic hashtags such as #rollindough, #swagforlife, and #highroller.
He also Photoshopped his image onto luxury vacation destinations, and most of his Facebook friends came to believe that he was a famous music producer living on Mosquito Island.
At the height of his popularity, he said, he fielded dozens of invitations from glamorous women daily.
“But there was a little problem,” he said. “When I’d drive to pick up a date in my Datsun, they wouldn’t even get inside.”
Ultimately, he added, there was no escaping the fact that he was still a security guard earning only a modest salary.
“So I decided to come clean,” he said, adding that he feels that “a great weight has been lifted off his shoulders.”
‘Betrayed’
But for others, the pain has only just begun.
“I feel betrayed,” said a West End doctor. “I’ve always looked up to Mr. Eastman, thinking he was someone I could aspire to be. Now I find out that he didn’t even exist.”
After several emergency therapy sessions, the doctor added, he is now considering moving away from the territory.
“I’m not sure if I’ll trust again,” he said. “Every time I read the simplest social media post now, I find myself getting suspicious, and then I break out in a cold sweat.”
Some residents have suggested that they might take the draconian step of giving up Facebook altogether.
“I haven’t been able to log on since I watched his video,” said a Great Mountain woman as tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t know if I ever will again.”
Other residents, however, said they felt immense relief when they learned of the ruse.
“I was always embarrassed admit it, but I was jealous of Mr. Eastman,” said a Fahie Hill man. “We went to high school together years ago, and it made me feel horrible to think that I was just a regular guy and he was rolling in a Mercedes. Still, I couldn’t stop checking his posts.”
Experts alarmed
Mr. Eastman’s disclosure has also drawn attention from abroad, with some experts suggesting that his case might not be as unusual as it seems.
“We must not discount the possibility that other Facebook users routinely post misleading information about their lives,” said a professor of eco-socio-techno-cultural studies at Harvard. “This could have more far-reaching implications than anyone has realised – and horrifying ramifications for society.”
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg did not respond to queries about whether he knows about other instances of social media users posting misleading information about their lives.
Disclaimer: Dateline: Paradise is a column and occasionally contains satirical “news” articles that are entirely fictional.
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