Celebrity Impersonators on the Internet: An Untapped Problem Within Our Cyberworld Society

No doubt many of you reading this have been on a message board, in a chat room (hopefully one that isn't loaded with slime of the earth as 99% of them are), chatting in instant messaging or even MySpace online and encountered someone making claim to be a celebrity. It usually happens on those fan boards devoted to a particular sole celebrity...namely the younger ones rather than older, established ones. If someone happens to get your screen name on AIM or MSN Messenger--these celebrity impersonators will sometimes randomly IM you and try to convince you they're Mr. or Miss Famous So and So. And, quite often, they've been known to be so convincing...your online friends will come to you saying they talked to the real Mr. or Miss Famous. If you're in the know--you can tell them they just talked to what's been known in internet circles for a few years now as a growing problem of "posers." Yes, people may take what these people do at just face value sometimes. But it's turning into a strange aspect of internet society that should really be studied more in a sociological arena. It's also emerging as a new form of a worldwide mental illness that almost becomes inexplicable until we dig a little deeper into the human psyche.