Don’t be silly. Of course it is.
The non-existent girlfriend. You’d think the green skin would have tipped him off….
If you are not aware of the particulars of this weird and confusing tale, read the extensive account here, and good luck to you. From an ethics perspective, all that matters is:
- Somebody perpetrated a web hoax, creating an imaginary online girlfriend for Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o.
- The young man told the media a touching story about how his grandmother and girlfriend had died the same day.
- Without checking any aspect of the story, outlet after outlet repeated and embellished the tale, despite the fact that the girlfriend never existed.
- In his comments to the press, Manti Te’o never revealed that he had not, in fact, ever met the woman face to face. Indeed, many of his comments suggested otherwise.
- As of this writing, no one is certain who created the fake girlfriend, or whether Manti Te’o was in on the deception.
- One conclusion of the ridiculous episode is that the national media doesn’t check facts, chases its own tail, and is completely incompetent and untrustworthy. But we knew that, I hope.
The other conclusion? Manti Te’o is also incompetent and untrustworthy. It doesn’t matter, for the purposes of this judgement, whether he was part of the hoax or not. If he was, then he’s mostly untrustworthy and just incidentally incompetent. If he wasn’t, then he’s spectacularly incompetent, and therefore untrustworthy—too untrustworthy, in either case, to want on a professional sports team.
He is either a liar, or an idiot. This is signature significance: no intelligent, reasonably alert individual would fall head over heels for a fake woman, and tell sad stories about her demise to journalist after journalist without having any proof himself that she ever existed, much less died. No, not even once. The story reminds me of the bizarre facts behind the Broadway drama “M. Butterfly,” which was based on the travails of a French diplomat, Bernard Boursicot, who was trapped in an espionage ring by a Chinese female impersonator. He fooled the jaw-droppingly gullible Boursicot into thinking that he was having an affair with a woman for nearly 20 years. I could see Manti Te’o falling for something like this, which means I could see him getting manipulated by gamblers, criminals or other shady individuals smarter than he is, which is to say, just about everyone.
I am not saying that the player is necessarily unethical, but he is untrustworthy, and that is all the team drafting him needs to know. I’m sure, however, that he can be fake drafted, and probably won’t even know the difference, at least for a few years. That would be unethical, of course, but also kind.
_________________________________
Facts: Deadspin
Ethics Alarms 
After I read the first story/timeline about this player and his “girlfriend”, the memory that immediately came up in my mind was when Joe Theisman changed the pronunciation of his name to, somehow, make him a more attractive Heisman Trophy candidate.
It seemed like a cynical way to add a human interest element to Manti for the electors. (Cynical for me to have this thought as well, no?)
De-Lurking to comment on this one. I have to disagree with your assessment, at least on the “Te’o wasn’t in on it” side. While I fully agree that if he was in on the hoax he was unethical, I think you are massively overblowing his so-called “idiocy” if he was gulled.
Online relationships are increasingly common, and since you can just as easily find someone across the country as across the state you may not be able to meet them face-to-face for dinner right away. Still, though, over time and hours of conversation it’s easy enough to feel that you know someone and even fall for them. There’s even a movie and entire TV series (Catfish) detailing incidences of this very thing, where people find that their online love interests are not who they thought.
You don’t have to be so jaw-droppingly stupid to fall for a trick like this either. Any half-intelligent person knows that the guy saying “Sure I’ll wire you money, just give me your bank account information” is almost certainly lying to rob you. But there’s no obvious motive here- it’s so much harder to mistrust someone who says “I love you.” Just because he’s a famous football player doesn’t make him a master womanizer who can see through every trick, especially if he thinks he’s finding love. As for implying he had met her- of course! Even while more and more people have friends and romance online-only, it still carries some social stigma. He considered “her” his girlfriend and lover, I can hardly blame him for ducking the mockery that would come if it got out she was an online relationship.
Finally, regarding her “death-” I have at least one close friend met through online gaming with a life-threatening condition (as Te’o’s girlfriend supposedly did). Although I’ve met her once, when a business trip had me in her state, that was only by fluke- and if her illness claims her life, I will only know via someone notifying her facebook page, or sending out a message from her phone. And I would greive at that, and never dream that it was all a lie.
So yeah- while Te’o may be guilty of naivete (in matters of the heart at least) and some mild misdirection to avoid some mockery, I hardly think he’s the untrustworthy idiot you claim. The “fake drafted” line was an extra low-blow, and makes me wonder if you’ve ever been fooled by somebody. (This all goes out the window if it turns out he was in on it, of course).
He didn’t just fall for it. If he was tricked, which like you, I doubt, he was tricked to the extent that he projected all sorts of non-existant intimate details on the relationship and never himself questioned sufficiently to check with her parents, friends, etc. Why wasn’t there a funeral? Why wasn’t he invited? Why wasn’t he curious about these things?
“There are lots of unbelievably stupid and gullible people” is certainly true. The statement doesn’t prove he isn’t one of them.
I’m actually more inclined to think he got suckered- and gullible in one sense (romance) doesn’t necessarily translate into cluelessness in another (gambler interference).
What I think a lot of it hinges on, is where were these details comign from? I’m seeint the newspaper accounts of what obviously isn’t true- They didn’t meet and make eye contact after the Stanford game, or in Hawaii. But I can’t find sourcing that says these details came from Te’o. What I see comign from him- her love of music, the 8-hour phone calls, how sweet she was, and so on- don’t have to come from personal contact. A hoaxer (hoaxster?) could have played the part to the hilt and been thoroughly convincing.
Was Te’o flat-out lying and saying he’d met her? Or did he just let people think that, out of some embarassment at having an “internet girlfriend” or some other consideration? Projecting intimacy on a relationship is easy enough to do, just ask any lovesick person who’s heard “We should just be friends” after thinking romance was blooming. That goes double if somone is flat-out trying to trick you.
I didn’t say it necessarily translated into involvement with gamblers. I said it make him untrustworthy, and that someone that gullible is a risk to be exploited by gamblers and others. If I don’t trust my alcoholic brother in law to drive my child, it means I think he is capable of endangering my son by driving while intoxicated. It doesn’t mean that he necessarily is going to be driving drunk, just that he’s more likely to do so than others.
If he embellished the relationship to get publicity, he was part of the hoax, because he was lying himself. You are far too forgiving. My girlfriend died, the love of my life. I want to talk to her folks, go to her funeral. If he accepts some vague excuses why he can’t do either, he’s a gullible fool. That’s a long, long way from misinterpreting a comment from a real, live woman.
Maybe I’m just enough of a sentimentalist that I see it in others. Admittedly, I didn’t follow his comments particularly closely (other than feeling vaguely bad for him, until he creamed my beloved Spartans) but I think the sticking point here is just how much of a relationship he was claiming to have. Was he representing her as the love of his life, or just his dead girlfriend? Was their relationship in the media before she “died?” (again, I wasn’t paying attention, so I actually don’t know this at all). I just don’t see it as a publicity grab, at least not necessarily. I think it’s plausible that he started an online relationship, was falling for the girl even if not yet head over heels, heard that she died, and was broken up enough about it to say so. Couple that with a hint of embarassment over having an online girlfriend and the willingness to let people think they’d met, and there you have your story.
Now, I DO wonder if he didn’t discover the hoax well ahead of the media. If he did, and continued making it a point to talk about her, then he started as a victim and became a perpetrator, which I don’t dispute is wrong. Then again, the girlfriend/grandmother both dying was a compelling storyline that was out there already, so it may have just kept being a theme without his input. While coming clean may have been the most honest path, I know I’d be absolutely mortified in such a situation and can’t say I blame him for failing to expose himself to humiliation and ridicule.
We now know he either discovered or admitted the hoax well ahead of the media. Notre Dame wanted him to break the story. The fact that he didn’t has led to more suspicion.
I sure can. The story was all over TV and the internet! You are at the center of a hoax being promoted as fact to the whole country, you have a duty to report it immediately; so what if you’re embarrassed? Every second makes the problem worse. So he lacks character, common sense, accountability, guts and is gullible to boot. Yeah, I really want this clown on my team. We can entertain ourselves with snipe hunts and prank calls about “Prince Albert is a can” and “I’m calling for Amanda Huggenkiss” for months!
Then I guess that’s where we hit our basic disagreement. I think it would have been more right for him to come clean, but that this is one of those cases where a failure to do the best thing isn’t the same as being fully in the wrong. Football star or no, he’s young and got tricked, the story blew up, and coming clean would have embarrassed him on a national scale. It seems to me that you are showing a disturbing lack of sympathy, and are condemning him based nearly entirely on moral luck- he fell for a prank, and when the pranksters jerked his emotions around he got emotional. Your last reply doesn’t even follow: He wasn’t the one pranking, remember? Somebody did something incredibly cruel to him and he didn’t want to be a laughingstock in addition to having grieved and then been personally embarrassed. I hope that the next time you make an error nobody decides it makes you an idiot, even if you don’t realize it and publicize it fast enough for them.
What do you mean “more right’? Coming forward was right, not doing so was wrong. It was selfish and self-serving, allowing a harm to continue when it was in his power to stop it at the actual cost of nothing, because he would have to come clean eventually anyway. In other words, wrong. He’s not a child, though you write like he was one. He’s an adult, in fact and by law.
When you don’t do the right thing and know it is the right thing, the you are doing wrong by definition. Too damn bad that he would be embarrassed. It didn’t “become” a national story, he made it so. He was responsible, and he ducked responsibility. What is there to sympathize with? This isn’t moral luck in the least. It’s not luck that his girlfriend didn’t exist–it’s his own incompetence and gullibility.
If I take advantage of my celebrity to cause a hoax to be covered as news and then fail to report it the second I realize what has happened, I sure hope everyone accuses me of either being unethical, a fool, or both, because that’s exactly what I’ll be. And he Did realize it, and still didn’t reveal it.
An adult, but a young one. Yes, I am more inclined to give a college student the benefit of the doubt.
Yes, he got fooled. You seem to be saying that he is in the wrong because of it. I disagree. You brought up other issues of gullibility in athletes- gamblers, criminals, etc.- but those are known quantities that star athletes are known to be vulnerable to, and with any luck see coming. Having someone pretend to be interested in you, for whatever ends, is not something you just see coming. If a player’s girlfriend from the same college died, would you fault him for saying he was playing in her honor? If not, then you can’t fault Te’o for saying the same thing because he THOUGHT HIS GIRLFRIEND DIED. It’s worth caps-locking because it’s the key to it all. He was the victim. He didn’t “cause a hoax to be covered as news,” that was what happened by virtue of his good-faith actions. It’s luck that his girlfriend didn’t exist because he fell into the sights of an unbelievably cruel person or persons.
If you say the “actual cost” of coming forward is nothing, then you are saying his reputation and PR is meaningless. If embarassing coverage isn’t a cost, then sympathetic coverage isn’t a gain. If sympathetic coverage IS a gain, then embarassing coverage IS a cost. A man of stronger character may have been willing to take on that cost. Te’o was unwilling to suffer a cost derived from being victimized and lied to.
No, Luke, I was very clear: he’s untrustworthy because he was fooled, so thoroughly and so long, and because he made his foolishness the media’s. Untrustworthy doesn’t necessarily mean unethical. It can just mean to dumb, gullible or immature to be trusted. That’s what the original post was about.
There was no actual cost, because the damage to his reputation and the embarrassment were on the way anyway—there was no actual benefit to be derived from delaying.
At best, he’s an idiot, Luke. I even a casual friend dies, I investigate cause of death, hospital, funeral arrangements, and contact the family if possible. My girlfriend? Come on.
Forget the girlfriend for a minute: Did he go to his grandmother’s funeral? Send flowers? A card? Do we know?
Sorry, just now read at the link you gave. Good luck with this guy, NFL! What a waste of football talent, or at least, what a risk of such a waste.
This guy is a total fraud. How can you call someone your girlfriend if you never laid eyes on her? I think he concocted this story to make himself look good. I can’t understand why Notre Dame would continually support him.