Late Thursday afternoon I was driving home and did the usual… I clicked on NPR for whatever program was on the air. I listened intently as the reporter told the story of a Notre Dame football star, Manti Te’o, who was fooled into believing that a virtual romance with a woman was actually real.
After discovering that he had been the victim of a hoax, Te’o, a Heisman Trophy runner-up, perpetuated the story by telling tales of the woman’s early death from leukemia in September. Living as though the virtual is actually the real has become so widespread and, in this case, we get to see how deep into our world the virus has traveled.