One of the more tortured voicemails from Meri Brown to her invisible/nonexistent paramour, Sam Cooper. Cute devil, he is, for a man who doesn't exist. It's deeply sad and a little frightening to think of the emotional abyss this woman must have been living in to fall for such a ruse, though it's still less terrifying to contemplate than the abyss in the heart of a woman like Jackie.
It's been a while since I've written about the polygamous soap opera Sister Wives, which is undoubtedly the most poisonous reality program ever to air on TLC (often called The Loser Channel, though once long ago it was devoted to "learning"). And I should never write about Sister Wives again, because not only has the youngest/most recent wife Robyn popped out a couple more pups, the first/oldest wife Meri was recently CATFISHED by a sociopathic middle-aged woman (who lives in her mother's basement, no kidding) named Jackie Overton. This Jackie posed as a handsome, wealthy man called Sam Cooper for months and months, while poor Meri, jilted by the family and feeling oh-so-barren after her one-and-only kid flew the coop, ate up all his flattery with a spoon like an entire container of Cool Whip non-dairy topping.
Still with me? I'm not, but I'll go on. Sister Wives has become a sort of addictive agony for me now, and so far this season they've run TWO episodes that were two hours long. That's a mind-numbing four hours of dysfunctional polygamy. The whole thing has become so staged that you can see these folks looking around for their cue cards, and several times per episode the director speaks to them (captioned, yet) from off-camera. Breaking the fourth wall, or breaking the barrier of indifference in the family?
Kody, the clueless patriarch with the very unconvincing surfer-dude hairdo, always sits there talking, usually about himself, as if he doesn't even know WHO or WHAT or WHERE his wives are. Unless he's in the bedroom impregnating one of them (that would be Robyn), that's probably true. Three of the four wives, too old to have any more kids, have been pretty much shelved. Meri was even required to divorce Kody (as if they were ever really married!) so Kody could then marry Robyn (who used to be married to someone else, explaining how she had three kids - but now had to marry Kody, so her kids could be - oh, who gives a fuck).
So Meri, left alone in a giant house without her one grown-up child (a daughter who seems to hate her - we'll get to see the catfight next episode!)has been shunted aside as useless while Robyn just keeps poppin' 'em out. They obviously need some more kids, and soon the tally will be somewhere around 20. Squicks me out that they all look alike, but they're all half-Kody, aren't they? Squick. Anyway, Meri started itchin' for action of some sort. SOMEhow she ended up "chatting" with someone on the internet, and ended up with This Guy who turns out to be a woman. The woman is an especially poisonous sort who is now out to ruin Meri by posting all her intimate voicemails on YouTube, not to mention embarrassing photos showing her suggestively eating a banana.
But that's not what I'm writing about today! One of the many sons - well, who knows who the mother is, but we can assume Kody is the Dad - is named Garrison, and guess what. He wants to join the army! Here is where the show's credibility is stretched so far it's close to the snapping point. Why not call him Beetle Bailey or Sad Sack? But anyway, Garrison wants to join a garrison somewhere, and there is the inevitable feverish discussion amongst family members, when the decision was probably made months ago. One of the other brothers - "a brother from another mother", Kody calls him (and the rest of them, when he forgets their names) is training to be an Officer, whereas it looks as if Garrison won't rise any higher than digging latrines.
Wait for it: here comes my point! "I want to join the army," Garrison (Beetle Bailey) says, his muffled words spelled out in captions. "I think it will test my mettle." I am sure, nearly certain, that most of the viewers said, "My God, LOOK at that spelling mistake."
Now, Garrison didn't make the "mistake". I'm amazed he knew the word "mettle" at all. And using it did not mean he knew how to spell it. How many people DO know how to spell "mettle"? The producers of the show must have looked it up. It's one of those words where if you spell it correctly, someone will look at you with irritated contempt and say, "It's M-E-T-A-L," then wait for you to thank them for setting you straight. Imagine: thinking "mettle" is a word!
This led me to remember a few others, similar misspellings or word-switcheroos (some of them bordering on the malaprop-ish). I wish I could think of more, but I am sure they will come to me because they are jammed in my face daily. Someone on Facebook, a teenage girl probably, posts, "I looked out the window, and LOW AND BEHOLD, there was my kitten eating the neighbor's pet grasshopper." Well - ?? Low and behold has to be right, because low is spelled . . . low. That's just how you do it. You can't take off the w, for God's sake - it makes no sense!
Low, how the mighty have fallen. OK, here's another: "I was in the THROWS of the flu at the time." (This is a misuse within a misuse, because flu is often spelled flue - and that, too is a real word, but - ). That IS how you spell throws, if you are talking about multiple tosses. I even looked it up, and if one has the flue, one often throes up. (Sorry, that was a mistake. Or two.)
One of the most irritating for me - and it's becoming almost universal - is loose instead of lose. Thus, "even after following the 600-lb.-a-week Chris Powell torture plan, I just couldn't loose weight." I have this image of someone loosing great chunks of weight on civilization, and once that weight is loosed, it wreaks havoc (never mind) on all and sundry (no, wait a minute! That's Sunday.)
Something else happened, and it peaked my interest. People have completely forgotten how to spell piqued. It just doesn't look right! It couldn't have a Q in it, could it? To confuse matters still more, peaked can mean something quite apart from pointy: it can mean pale or sickly, though it's pronounced PEAK-id. I don't think anyone under 40 has heard of this word, or believes that it even exists. Like quinsy and lumbago, it has just fallen into disuse and (thus) obsolescence.
Now getting into pronunciations - a hair product ad for Tousle Me Softly kept insisting the word was towssel (almost like tassel) rather than tousle. I always thought the s had a z sound, not a sibilant sssss. The ad gave me the awful squeamish feeling that most young women aren't familiar with the word tousle, have never seen it or used it, or can't spell it, and surely can't pronounce it to save their lives.
Since it was pointed out to me, I've started to notice "vocal fry", a tendency for mostly-young women to drop the pitch of their voices on the last syllable of a word or phrase with a sort of darkly grating, almost grinding sound that's hard to describe (but you'd know it to hear it). If you're a Kardashian, forget about it, your voice is just one big CROAK. I also hear final words opened out with an elongated short-a sound: "That's not really trewwwaaAAHH" (or, with the requisite "uptalk", "trewwwaaAAHH?")
Then there's what I call the Say Yass to the Drass syndrome: "It's badder to go there for lunch when it's not so crowded?" "She saadd she had her nails done in raadd but it wasn't trewwwwwaaAAHH?" And so on. I would ask what language they were speaking - I can't even think of appropriate phrases for it because it isn't really English. I guess it's a form of Valley Speak, but updated in the most bizarre way possible.
One thing it does is convey privilege, even entitlement. This isn't just uptalk (and even older people are upspeaking more and more now, no longer outgrowing it at age 14), it's la-di-da-speak, the drawly cigarette-holding speech of a post-millennial Tallulah Bankhead. Poor folk don't vocal fry because they have other fish to fry. Adding an extraneous "aah" to the end of words like the little fillip on the top of a Dairy Queen soft-serve cone (and PLEASE do not tell me it's spelled Phillip!) strikes them as silly, or maybe they just don't have time for it.
Want a great example? or a horrible one? I've just discovered a real estate-flipping show called Flip or Flop on the home-whatever channel, and the woman on it is a living Barbie, I swear. She has every vocal mannerism ever invented. I don't know where it all comes from. I marvel at this, and at her appearance, her unblinking Barbie eyes and pound of makeup. Nearly every sentence is either upticked, fried, "oh-ahhh"-ed, "badder"-ed, or all of the above. I don't know how she keeps track of it all.
Oh. Oh. Oh! When I actually listened to this snippet of the Flip or Flop couple on a talk show (you'll see what I mean after only a couple of sentences: the woman is a blonde Kardashian), I heard another affectation: at the end, she said, "thank yeeaaaoooowwwwwwwhhhhhh" instead of "thank you". There's a sort of diphthong-y thing going on, a whole series of vowel sounds strung together. A simple sequence of ee and oo becomes a sort of cascading waterslide of vowel sounds that seems to encompass all of them. Instead of spreading out slushily in a crescendoed short-a sound, it sort of goes "YAOWWWH!" and is hauled back in again. Doesn't anyone realize how bizarre they sound? Why are they doing this? Was it a decision on their part? Who started it? More to the point: when will it stop?
Good morning, gentle readers. Since I must constantly keep you updated and informed on the fascinating details of my dull, disappointed life, here's two cents' worth of stuff on a phenomenon you may or may not have heard of. It's called "other". You may have heard of catfishing (or "catphishing", a more accurate term) in which someone on social media assumes the identity of an imaginary person, hooking in somebody who is lonely, vulnerable and easily deluded. This happens for obvious sexual, emotional and/or financial purposes which are always self-serving, and sometimes sadistic. It happened to Meri Brown of Sister Wives, no less, and a watered-down version of it happened to me, sort of, but I wasn't aware of it for years. I don't get a lot of FB messages except from one person, a close friend I keep in touch with because he has been sick lately and not given to talking about it unless I ask him. Then I read a post from another FB friend which said something like, "I don't know if you're aware of it, but your Facebook messages have a category called 'other' which functions like a junk email/spam file. It automatically files suspicious messages and isn't obvious to access. Most people don't even know about it." I just had to find out what this was about.
There were a few dozen messages, some of them of the "unclaimed money" variety where you only have to send the person $5000.00 to get your billion-dollar "lost" inheritance. Some were nonsensical, and a few were generic "hi, let's be friends" messages that hoped to snag me very easily, the hook being barely baited. I've picked out a few favorites. Some of these went back several years because I simply didn't know they were there: it's not obvious at all, and as with so many Facebook features, you have to be born knowing about it, unless you're me. Then you never find out until it's too late.
2 mutual friends: Genni Gunn and Linda Clay
I do everything at I AM A GENERAL CONTRACTOR
June 29, 2012 11:27 pm
HELLO PRETTY LADT I WAS JUST PASSING WHEN I SEE YOUR WONDERFUL BEAUTIFUL FACE I WAS CATIVATED IF YOU DONT MINE CAN WE BE FRIENDS
This has got to be one of my favorite Facebook messages ever. Never before have I been called a "PRETTY LADT", and I never will be again. These things are sent out in bulk in the hopes that one in ten thousand might "bite", take the bait, be completely convinced this guy (? Could be anyone) is interested in her personally, is truly "CATIVATED" (speaking of "catfish" - maybe this was an encoded warning of sorts). And I have to admit, I "DON'T MINE", never have mined and probably never will mine because I simply don't have the equipment. This reminds me of something from the old TV series WKRP, in which someone filled out a dating service form with hobbies that included "logging", a much more rugged activity than low-impact running. There are usually details to pad out the profile and give an impression of prosperity, reliability, whatever. A "GENERAL CONTRACTOR" who does "everything" (including a lot of vulnerable women) must seem like a good thing: this is a self-employed, financially solvent guy who writes all in caps and can't spell.
hi,
my name is Grace, i saw your profile and i became interested to know more about you, please can you give me the chance to know more about you? i will be very happy to be your good friend . this is my private E_mail ( babegrace222 (@) yahoo.co.uk )
PLEASE DON'T REPLY ME HERE. CONTACT ME THROUGH MY PRIVATE E_MAIL, SO THAT I WILL SEND YOU MORE PRIVATE PICTURES ( babegrace222@yahoo.co.uk )
You and Justine Favour aren't connected on Facebook Lives in Kharkov, Ukraine Now this one is really strange. Why would a person named Grace (not a friend, of course) take special notice of my profile, saying she "became interested to know more about you" (then repeating the phrase)? The "babegrace222" alone is very strange and emanates the possibility of porn-y pictures. But then there is that "PLEASE DON'T REPLY ME HERE" which is in urgent caps, and the reference to "MORE PRIVATE PICTURES" - ay ay ay! What sort of private pictures, and how much do they cost? (But remember she wants to be my "good" friend, so it must be OK). But the strangest thing of all is that this message isn't from "babegrace222" at all, but someone named Justine Favour who is NOT on my Facebook page and lives in Kharkov, Ukraine. If she exists at all, I very much doubt her name is Justine Favour.
Chat Conversation Start
April 16, 2013 9:30 am
Hi, How are you doing? hope you are doing great..Iam John, from Austin,Texas.Am 9year widower,i live with my pet dogs wamma and sandy. I need a long term relationship a woman who will love me for whom Iam..caring,loving,nice.passionate,romantic honesty,with a great sense of humor.sure,Am a gentle man,caring,lovely,respectful,passionate,romantic,good manners with a great sense of humor.distance doesn't matters in any relationship,what matters is the heart and love shared.i love traveling,going to the beach,playing pool games,camping,fishing,drawings,watching movies and sunset. you caught my attention.i will love to know more about you..keep safe and God bless. John,
This is the closest thing to classic catfishing I've ever received. Probably sent by some cash-strapped middle-aged woman desperate to squeeze someone (anyone!)so she can pay her overdue bills and her drug dealer. Every detail in this thing has been stage-managed: the up-front phony well-wishes, the mention of living in Austin, Texas (somehow a solid, wholesome-sounding place),and the nine years being a widower - such a long, long time to be lonely and bereaved (though he has two dogs, golden retrievers who bound around their master, eager for a walk to go score some wallets in the park).
He immediately states what he "needs", "a woman who will love me for whom Iam"(sic). He then goes on to list his reams of good qualities, many of them repetitive. "Loving" and "lovely" may have been conflated, unless he truly is lovely (a slip?). The really revealing statement is "distance doesn't matters in any relationship". This is always a red flag in social media, because it places the other person at a safe (unsafe) remove. If you never look into the other person's eyes (and the photos they send might be of George Clooney's better-looking brother), you never catch their vibes, see into them and figure out if they are sincere. It goes on and on. "You caught my attention" has a generic feel, and notice he never uses my name. "Caught" has squirmy connotations when applied to catfishing. And it's doubtful he even looked at my profile picture because they're often abstracts, landscapes and pictures of Harold Lloyd. The activities he enjoys, take note, mostly don't cost much, so he's cheap. "Sunset", the last activity mentioned, doesn't cost anything at all. "Keep safe and God bless" is the ultimate irony, because if you in fact answered this thing, I doubt very much that you would be on safe ground. A couple of these things had apparently disappeared on me, leaving me wondering just how bad they might be, or who was policing it in the first place:
This message has been temporarily removed because the sender's account requires verification.
You and Loquilla Loca aren't connected on Facebook
Loquilla Loca. Hmmmmm.
Dear Facebook friends, I hope everyone had a nice weekend! This is just a friendly reminder that tomorrow night -- April 24 -- Honoria Birdsong will launch her second collection of short stories, Bad Dope, at the Dakota Tavern (249 Ossington Avenue), and we want you to celebrate with us! Author Kathryn Krackenburger will interview Birdsong live on stage, and copies of Bad Dope will be available for purchase (and autographing!). Plus, it's just nice to have any excuse to go to the Dakota, isn't it? Be there any time after 7 p.m. It's totally free, too! This book launch just gets better and better! -- Neville Tuesday, Publicist, Handcrank Books
Sorry, folks, I had to include this one (with certain details changed to protect ME) which came in and was promptly filed under "other", even if it isn't strictly catfishing. But it is, most definitely, junk mail. Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam. Let me tell you just why this offends me so much. I was briefly in an online a "writer's group" (a contradiction in terms, I've always felt) that was based exclusively in Toronto, with the writers doing more nasty, whispering playground-talk and backstabbing than anyone ever did on FB. Most of it involved slagging writers from anywhere but Toronto, a kind of blood sport. I mentioned doing some contract work for a textbook press and was sniggered and sneered into the ground: "oh well, I guess if you want a paycheck that badly", "cheap outfit, shitty pay", and worse.
This gooey invitation-thing reeks of exclusivity and pathetic CanLit insularity: we seem to think we're big shit, and sadly, we are not.("Plus, it's just nice to have any excuse to go to the Dakota, isn't it?" Oh, my goodness, he's from Toronto so he must be right!)Myself, I thought the Dakota was where John Lennon got shot, but no, it's in that only-place-in-Canada-to-be-a-writer-of-any-importance, Toronto. I was grateful to see the event was "totally free" - I've never heard of anyone with the audacity to charge people for a book signing, but in Toronto, one never knows. (And I never knew there were degrees of "free": partially free, 75% free, totally free?). While I am the first to admit that "this book launch just gets better and better" (didn't anyone tell this guy he's trying too hard? But this is what Toronto authors sound like now), I am also quite eager to pass, since they probably do a retinal scan at the door to make sure you're not from Vancouver.
It ended up in "other", folks. It's a piece of junk, a mass mailing that never should have come to me at all. I'm not about to hop a plane and spend a couple thousand dollars to go see Honoria Birdsong push her dope book. Sorry. Please go fishing for someone else.
(A follow-up on the Meri Brown catfish story of a couple of days ago. That impeccable source of information, In Touch Weekly, has closed in on Catfish Woman and had a guy interview her in a phony foreign accent to make it seem less like In Touch Weekly. True to form, Jackie Overton, outed a couple of weeks ago, denies everything. But what do they expect her to say:"Oh, yes, I'm Jackie Overton and I catfished Meri Brown. Surprise, surprise!" It's like these reporters on Dateline who chase after a guy on trial and yell, "Mr. Peterson, did you kill your wife?" "Oh, yes - they might as well just give me the lethal injection right now!").
Caught in the act!
Jackie Overton — the woman who pretended to be a businessman from Chicago named Sam Cooper in order to lure Sister Wives star Meri Brown into an online affair — had nowhere to hide when she was confronted by In Touch Weekly at her Shindler, Okla. home on Oct. 9.
In audio recorded during the incident, Jackie denied her identity when asked by In Touch Weekly and struggled to give any name, stuttering as she said, “My name is Ka, Case… Kelsey Williams.”
The real Kelsey Williams is actually a cheerleader with Oklahoma City Thunder
Jackie Overton, who claimed to be a woman named “Kelsey Williams.
In fact, she denied knowing Jackie Overton, but when she was shown a picture of herself — from her own Facebook — she failed to keep her stories straight, telling In Touch, “The picture you showed me looks like her. But that’s not me. I have no idea.”
Additionally, the glasses and moles of the woman claiming to be “Kelsey Williams” match up with the ones seen in Jackie Overton’s Facebook pictures.
Interestingly enough, within hours of the confrontation, the phone number provided for “Sam Cooper” — which was also connected to Jackie, and another one of her fake identities (a woman named Lindsay who claimed to be Sam’s assistant) — had been disconnected. Shortly thereafter, the website used as a front for “Sam’s” business was taken offline as well. (Blogger's note: but here's his blog link, and does it have some interesting stuff on it!)
Listen to the audio of the confrontation to hear all of Jackie’s lies:
For more on the Sister Wives scandal, pick up the new issue of In Touch Weekly on newsstands now!
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Meantime, beloved readers, for whom I rise to worship and live for each day (?!), here's another squeeze of juice: a Facebook page set up specifically for the Meri/Jackie catfish episode! One of the more bizarre manifestations of Facebook I've ever seen.
But catfish is now a verb, something that can be done to you. Stuck to you, more like. It happened to Meri Brown, the cat-riarch of TLC's bizarre polygamist saga Sister Wives. I didn't get to see any of the current episodes 'til last night, though it was already getting near the end of the season. Why? None of the episodes had recorded, that's why. And why is that? I don't know, but I think I deleted "series record" at the end of Season 5. Four neurotic wives, seventeen children and one asshole patriarch was just a little too much for me to stand.
And yet, and yet, here it is again, the Browns growing even more dysfunctional as they begin to have illicit-yet-platonic affairs with people who don't actually exist.
This whole thing is far too complicated to recount in a mere blog post, especially one with as short an attention span as mine. Suffice it to say that Meri, the original/oldest wife, was just conveniently dumped so that polygamist/surfer-dude Kody could legally marry Robyn, his youngest, prettiest, still-producing-babies wife.The reason given was that previously-married Robyn had kids that were going to be taken away from her unless she was legally married to the K-Man.
There had to be another way, you'd think, but no. So Meri had to get out of the way and divorce Kody. Kicked to the curb, and probably no longer receiving Kody's every-four-night's ministrations because she's now a "divorced woman" (which would, let's face it, be immoral), Meri got a little itchy, a little antsy, and somehow or other ended up on-line, late, late at night.
Catfishing is a blood sport that demands a victim, or, better yet, victims (spouses and girl/boy friends caught in the swirl of blood going down the drain). Some people put a lot of planning into these things, especially if they want to hook a big one like a high-profile reality star. It's the little things at first, the warmth with just a frisson of over-friendliness. Then, slowly, subtly, stepping up the flattery, allowing little hints of sexuality to peep through. Photos exchanged, compliments given, sighing, seething. And other things. This is a masturbatory activity if ever there was one, with orgasm guaranteed every time. For a middle-aged woman, for whom the whole thing can misfire all too easily, that's a pretty darn good deal.
Then. . . what do you think comes next? A sudden silence. Confusion. What happened? Where has he gone? Doesn't he love me any more? Jerk, jerk, goes the hook.
Frantic phone calls. Increasingly-desperate declarations of passionate love. Dismay, anger: don't you care about me any more? Don't you care about what we had?
It always ends with some sort of awful public announcement on the catfisher's blog, with all those pathetically desperate phone messages posted for all to hear (see below). Not only that, catfishers are cheered and praised by their legions of fans, who don't quite dare do this sort of sadistic stuff themselves but nevertheless highly approve of someone else doing it.
This is sad. Sad because Meri is infertile and could only produce one baby, with difficulty, in a family which is now looking forward to its EIGHTEENTH child. Sad because she was expendable enough to be expected to abdicate so the nubile new-ish wife could step up and take her place. This goes against every so-called law of polygamy, in which the first wife is always First, and the succeeding wives ever-more-subservient.
So it was catfish time, but the story is even more strange than that. The man who didn't exist, Sam something-or-other (doesn't matter), isn't even a man. Meri's throbbing new beau is a great tough butch of a woman named Jackie Overton, but she also poses as Sam's assistant Lindsay (still with me? I'm not.) The torture was stretched to the most excruciating level when Meri was led to believe she'd be going to Disneyland to FINALLY meet Sam, and instead met up with Lindsay/Jackie, who told her Sam "couldn't make it" (to say the least!) The YouTube video of Meri's voicemail messages (below) features photos of them having a squealing good time in the Happiest Place on Earth.
Insane?
Insane, and it all melted down eventually, with charges that Robyn, the youngest-and-prettiest-and-most-fertile wife, knew all about the catfishing scam and said nothing, claiming it was all going to come out eventually, so why bother to stop it.
Can I click that setting again - you know, the one that says Cancel Series Record?
(Below is the Daily Mail account, in case my version of it is a hopeless garble. It's a warning of the cost of extreme loneliness and naivete, but it's also a story of exquisite cruelty and hook-jerking. And no one pays any sort of penalty for this sort of thing except the victim. Jackie Overton is now gloriously famous, the world's most powerful catfish lady. A bottom-feeder if ever I saw one.)
Sister Wives star Meri Brown has confessed she was recently 'catfished' into a fake online relationship with a man who turned out to be a woman.
The first wife of polygamist Kody Brown said the relationship was purely emotional, and says she's sharing her story to prevent others from falling into the same trap.
'During an emotional and vulnerable time earlier this year, I began speaking with someone online who turned out to be not who they said they were,' Meri told People.com.
The 44-year-old told People that she never met her online 'boyfriend', and regrets the entire situation.
The term 'catfishing' refers to people who create fake online profiles in order to trick others into online relationships, and was popularized by MTV reality show Catfish.
However, reality star Meri said her family had been by her side through the messy online affair and shocking reveal.
'Throughout this ordeal, my family has supported and stood by me. I am grateful to them for their love and strength through this difficult time,' she told the magazine.
Meri, who is 46-year-old Kody's first, legal wife, agreed to divorce him this year so he could legally marry his fourth wife Robyn.
The polygamist patriarch says he and Meri remain 'spiritually' married. The change was thought to be so that Robyn's three children could get his health insurance and he could adopt them.
However, as a result of the shifting family dynamics, Meri has been under emotional strain.
The reality star was allegedly duped by a female catfisher, who posed online as a 42-year-old male CEO named 'Sam Cooper', according to reality blog AllAboutTheTea.
The TV gossip site claims they met in person after Meri traveled to Disneyland in Los Angeles to finally meet 'Sam' this year - but instead met up with the catfish woman, who was posing as his assistant ‘Lindsay’ and claimed Sam couldn’t make it.
They allegedly spent the day together without Meri realizing that 'Lindsay' was actually 'Jackie', who was posing as 'Sam' online.
The reality star appeared increasingly distant during the last season of the show as the divorce storyline played out.
(About the YouTube video. C'mon. Cut me some slack. I only posted a minute-and-a-half of what could have been a seven-minute recording. I needed to provide a sample for reference, though it disturbs me to think of that great fat bitch Jackie licking her feral lips over Meri's desperate pleas for Sam to pay attention to her. Can't pay attention when you don't exist!)
There had to be more. . .
These are just a few of the mildly-sexy photos Meri sent to her catfish lover Sam. I found another one with her shoving the banana into her mouth, presumably mimicking fellatio, though it would be hard to perform fellatio on a catfish you've never met (let alone a woman). The truly winsome ones are kept under internet lock and key and can't be saved, unfortunately. The thumbnails above are watermarked to keep us from blowing them up and selling them as masturbatory aids.
And then there's this. . .
This scum-of-the-earth Jackie character is gradually letting more and more artifacts leak out, prolonging the embarrassment. What jeebies me out about this is the constant reference to "love". How can you feel love for/feel loved by some anonymous dame in a basement, clacking away at 3:00 a.m. just to keep a reality star on the emotional hook? What exactly did she SAY to Meri to make her feel so "loved"? How can this happen with a person you've never met? Hasn't she ever heard of FICTION? Apparently not. I have heard of cases where women were duped out of a quarter of a million dollars by total heartless sociopathic fake-outs.
Let's see now. . . Meri Cooper Brown. . . M. C. B. . . Ms. Meri Brown-Cooper. . . oh, screw that, let's make it Mrs. Sam Cooper!
The Catfish Strikes Back!
Inevitably, new material is surfacing claiming that there really is a Sam Cooper, that he's a flesh-and-blood man instead of a catfish, and moreover, he and Meri have been getting it on hotly for some time now. It must be true, cuzz I've seen it on all sortsa show biz sites! Are you paying attention, Meri?:
"However, since her opening up, the person behind the catfishing, previously identified as Jackie Overton posing as Samuel Cooper, has taken to their personal blog to continue addressing the claims, and has even added new sections with voicemails left by Meri, and a password-protected section which allegedly proves sexual encounters with the reality star.
In a first post, the allegations that Meri was catfished is denied, and that there were physical meetings between them:
"I have 194 voicemails from Meri, that prove not only did we fall in love, were in love, but we were together. At Disneyland, twice, in Utah for a whole week, and all the number of times in and around Las Vegas. We talked every single day, for 6 months. It started March 1st of this year and we broke up August 23rd of this year...," the post reads. "I DID NOT CATFISH Meri...I am a guy and it's ridiculous I have to even say that Lol In my opinion, it's easier to go with the rumors that have been floating around for 2 months and go with the catfish story the internet trolls and SisterWives haters created in order to keep the media damage at a minimum. She does not want to admit to an affair, she does not want to admit that she fell in love with me and she does not want to admit we had sex, a lot.."
In the second post, the need to request a password to see proof that 'Sam' and Meri had sex is detailed as well:
"I added this page to prove without a doubt that I am all man Lol. And Meri and I had sex over 60 times. Nothing has been edited. Nothing. You can clearly see her, you can definitely tell its me. You can't deny we were happy, having fun, and in a consensual sexual relationship."
(Note that a lot of these posts have been taken down. Not sure why. These things normally don't turn legal, mainly because they're not illegal. It's OK to pretend to be somebody you're not, so long as money isn't involved. And in any case, a lawsuit would just make Meri look like the vacuous, love-starved diva she really is.)
(but wait, there's more. . . )
There's always More, and in this case, More-more. "Sam Cooper" keeps a blog called Not Batman Yet, and it's very interesting in that it drips with hints about his/her "relationship" with Meri Brown. Of course, Sam Cooper is really Jackie Overton, the sadistic bitch who very quickly hooked the head Sister Wife at a vulnerable time, when she had been more-or-less cut loose by the family. This strange blog has a curiously blank, devoid-of-personality quality to it, bloodless, and the "gallery" of photos consists of very cheesy generic Google images, as if playing with the reader to suspend his/her disbelief. One entry goes on for a few thousand words, but here's the gist of it:
"The path that I am on now is only towards you. I can’t wait for all of the things we have talked about. I’m excited to get to know everything about you and your life. It sounds challenging. It sounds that you have been doing it alone for so long already, that sharing yourself with me might be an adjustment at first. But you say you want to. I can’t wait to show you my life and everything about me. I am so excited that I found love again! It’s exactly what I need. And I will take care of you. I want to. I live for that. You are my every desire. Making sure you stay happy will be my top priority. Your wants and need are as important as my own. And I know you will definitely take care of me. You are so loving. So kind. I’m in awe of that. It really is like a dream to me that you exist in my world. And I love you very much."
"I needed to be rescued from myself. Honestly, my love, I was drowning. My life had become mundane and plain. Go to work, come home. Repeat. I want to explore. I want to travel. I want to see your eyes light up when I surprise you with anything. I want to feel you when we hug. I know that building on the love we have already created will be such a great feeling. My heart already starts beating faster anytime I am talking to you. I think I had to grieve and really take my own time with it. Time heals all? I guess it does. But you have to want it and that’s the change in me.
I realized something the other night after we got off of the phone. You are happy too. I think maybe you were in a little bit of a bad place too before we found each other. Am I making you feel this way? I hope so. Doesn’t it feel great! I wish everyone could feel this good. There is so much more I want to say to you. So many more stories about my life I want to share. I could talk to you all day and night."
He also mentions reading the book of Mormon and scouting out property in Utah to build a casino, where gambling is illegal. Really, isn't that why the Browns moved to Nevada? Their whole family system seems pretty dicey to me.
