On January 16, 2013, Deadspin published an exposé of Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o’s fake dead girlfriend. The next morning, reality TV personality Donald Trump tweeted his congratulations. Fourteen minutes later, Deadspin tweeted back “Go fuck yourself.” This is the story of that tweet, as told by those who lived…
Congratulations are in order for hopeless romantic, imagined boyfriend and soon-to-be NFL linebacker Manti Te'o: he's finally made a sound decision. Te'o — who was of course duped into believing that he had a girlfriend and that she died of cancer when in fact "she" was actually a he — has deleted (or at least…
Just like Katie Couric's interview with Manti Te'o last week, Dr. Phil's session with Te'o's hoaxer Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was basically a lot of sorry explanations from Ronaiah followed by an equal number "are you for real?" faces from Dr. Phil.
Is Ronaiah Tuiasosopo — the would-be gospel singer who crafted an elaborate fake online persona and "catfished" college football star Manti Te'o — gay? When Dr. Phil asked him for a soon-to-broadcast interview, Tuisasosopo said "yes." And then he quickly called himself "confused." And then he said this:
Dr. Phil says the man behind Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend Lennay Kekua, Roniah Tuiasosopo, told him he was "deeply, romantically in love" with Te'o and claims that the voice talking back to Te'o for countless hours on the phone was not his cousin, as reported by the New York Post, but him. Asked by Dr. Phil if he is…
I never want a boyfriend until I meet him; Charles* got me effortlessly. He enlivened me. I felt free to say whatever as we swapped pop-cultural obsessions, revealing ourselves in the process. Or at least, that was the idea. I told him I was nasty like the dirt under SWV singer Coko's fingernails. I meant it.
The government today kinda-sorta weighed in on the whole Manti Te'o hoax thing by issuing a set of State Department guidelines on how to avoid being the victim of "Internet Dating Scams."
Katie Couric's much-anticipated interview with Manti Te'o aired this afternoon and while it's hard to say anyone was surprised by the football star's fumbling manner and general stupidity, who knew that Katie could be so vicious?
Katie Couric's long-awaited, and equally as teased, interview with Manti Te'o aired this afternoon. Couric was not shy about addressing one of the most popular hypotheses about Te'o: "One of the theories, many theories, Manti, making the rounds is somehow you created this whole scenario to cover up your sexual…
In Manti Te'o's first televised interview since the news broke that his dead girlfriend story from last season was just a story, Te'o told Katie Couric that he did in fact lie about how much he knew to save himself the embarrassment. But still, the the 21-year-old Notre Dame senior told Katie that he had believed…
Okay. First, listen to this voicemail left on Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o's voicemail by his nonexistent "girlfriend," Lennay Kekua:
We're seeing the first previews of Manti Te'o's interview with Katie Couric, set to air tomorrow. In the clip, Couric flat out asks Te'o why he ran with the story about his dead girlfriend, even after learning the whole thing was a hoax on Dec. 6.
To hear Manti Te'o tell it, he's a victim of one of the greatest web hoaxes in the internet's relatively short lifespan. Te'o, the Notre Dame football star presently embroiled in a fake-dead-girlfriend scandal thanks to Deadspin, says that he was deceived for years by internet pranksters who led him to believe he was…
Manti Te'o, the Notre Dame linebacker whose dead girlfriend was discovered by Deadspin to not have ever existed, is very visibly on the market right now. Maybe he's looking to pick up the pieces of his shattered personal life by falling into the arms of another fake girlfriend? If so (and who wouldn't be?), may I…
As nearly everyone in America knows by now, the heartbreaking and inspirational story of Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o and his dead girlfriend was a hoax. As Deadspin conclusively proved yesterday, "Lennay Kekua," whom Te'o claimed to have dated until her death from leukemia last fall, never existed. But if…
Everyone was tricked into reading about sports yesterday, after the inspirational story of one college football star suddenly became so riddled with holes, plot twists, and BIG REVEALS, it would not have felt out of place as a character arc on Gossip Girl: Season 2.
This has been a fantastic week for media outrage, especially on Twitter. On Monday, a pro-Scientology ad in the Atlantic that was mocked up to faintly resemble an article generated hours of castigating tweets and countless op-eds. Then, last night, Deadspin broke the story of Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te'o and…
