10 years ago, if you used the term catfish, you were probably referring to an actual catfish or someone nicknamed Catfish.  Now that term is synonymous with creating a fake online profile.  Thank you Nev!

As I kid, I was a huge fan of the show, The A-Team.  (Queue the A-Team theme song)  Mr. T’s character, B.A. Baracus, was my real life super-hero and I hoped to be as strong as him someday.  So when fake celebrity profile pages became a thing on Myspace, I decided to join in on the action.  So why not be “Bad Ass Mr. T” on Myspace?  Before I get into the backstory of my Mr. T persona, let’s go down memory lane as to what Myspace was or still is.  Does anyone still use it?

Myspace History 101

For those who were not on Myspace or have no clue what Myspace is, let me tell about this one hit wonder!  Myspace was the pioneer Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat, etc.  Around 2005-2006, I would say that Myspace was the bridge that made it okay to be on the internet and socialize with other people.  Prior to that, you had AOL chat rooms and a conglomerate of webpages like Blackplanet.com or Migente.com, that allowed you to meet other people through their profiles. But it was still considered creepy to meet people from the Internet!  Myspace allowed people to become friends with one another. Friends! Actual friends, right?  What made Myspace cool was the fact that it became mainstream and of course, women were into it!  So jocks & beauty queens were now a part of internet collective.  Myspace allowed users to post pictures of themselves, put on their favorite music, upload videos of themselves, and other features as a way to connect with their friends.  Now, you could stalk someone without greeting them with an “A/S/L?” first.  Of course, I fed into this frenzy late and was glad that adding people to your online circle started to become less weird, less loser-ish.  I no longer felt like an online nomad looking for online lady friends anymore.  Myspace was now considered the cool toy.

Once the allure of adding your real life friends to your friends list along with everything else associated with Myspace faded, fake profiles started to pop up.  At first, I was like, “Woah, my brother is friends with Vida Guerra! How is that possible?”  Then I quickly realized that this was a fan page, not the actual Vida Guerra.  Remember Vida Guerra?  She was my brother’s #1 friend and the famous “model” on music videos of that time.  After seeing numerous fake friendships starting to form on all of my friend’s Top 8, I started to become friends with fake profiles as well. I remember adding God, Jesus with guns, Black Jesus with guns, Jewish Jesus, Toaster Oven, Jiff peanut butter, and the character Tituba from the book, The Crucible.  I was fascinated that someone took the time out to create a profile for the character Tituba.  That name always stuck with me.  I don’t remember much about The Crucible, but I guess as a horny teenager, the name Tituba was kind of arousing.  You could spell Tit and Tuba from that name and I’m guessing it gave me the impression of a big tittied woman playing the tuba. Stupid, I know!

After all of this, I decided it was time for me to see what it would be like to be a fake celebrity.

Mr. T has entered the arena!

So one day I decided to create an official Mr. T Myspace page.  This was before celebrities started verifying their pages, so it was very easy to create a page on any celebrity.  There were other Mr. T profiles as well but I decided to put my creative writing skills to use.  My caption stated, “The T’ficial profile of Mr. T!” and people bought into it.

My first week, I out-friended all of the other fake Mr. T profiles and was the top dog of Mr. T’s on Myspace.  It was quite a feat.  People were sending me messages left and right and I couldn’t even keep up.  So I decided to create a little shtick for my profile.  I created a blog where I would give my Mr. T insights and would ask my friends to send me any issues going on in their lives so that I can give them my special Mr. T advice.  At first all the messages I received were about coming to a club to hang out, people offering me money to go visit them, asking for autographs, and random questions about the A-Team show.  Since I was not the Real Mr. T, I just decided to respond to a few and then write my blog posts.

Mr. T’s advice column

The blogs were downright made up at first.  I made up the stupid advice questions that were supposedly brought up to T and I gave them the most bad ass advice Mr. T can give.  “Mr. T how do I handle a disagreement with my friend?”  Mr. T’s response?  Beat people up who are not being nice to you.  Punch those fools in the face!  “Mr. T, how do I get a lady friend to notice me?”  Out muscle the fool that she’s into! That’s what!  As you can see Mr. T was very aggressive with his advice.  I guess that’s how T sounded like in my head.

I made dedications to my Top 8 fans and things just spiraled out of control. My own profile was very slow and boring.  My own real life wasn’t very exciting so I started to take on the Mr. T persona more and more.  I added photos and put in my Mr. T signature on everything.  Women were sending me messages, guys wanted to hang with me, and everyone seemed to really gravitate to my profile.

I had a handful of diehard fans that I would message often and even one lady who really wanted to know my identity.  At first, I didn’t want to tell her I wasn’t Mr. T because she seemed to have the hope that she had connected to the real Mr. T but eventually I caved in and told her that I wasn’t Mr. T.  She appreciated the honesty and continued to be my number one fan.  Unfortunately, I don’t remember her name but I do remember that she was from California and had on some sort of police uniform on.

I did this for a couple of weeks and eventually slowed down with my T’ficial page.  I still kept getting messages, adding more friends, but I knew that this was all due to the fact that they thought they were reaching out to the real Mr. T.  Advice questions started rolling in and I really couldn’t keep up

Then one day my T’ficial page disappeared.  Gone, completely gone!  I even looked for the profile and couldn’t not find it at all.  All the other loser Mr. T profiles still existed except for mine.  It was like the movie, Life of Pi, when the tiger just leaves without saying good-bye.  I didn’t get a message or email saying “Cease and Desist!” from some lawyer or a message from the real Mr. T saying, “Stop fucking with Mr. T because this is the real Mr. T! Fool!”  Nothing.  Just gone. I felt a little sad but I moved on.  I didn’t create another profile as I really didn’t have the energy to do it again.  I just wish I would have kept in touch with my some of my diehard fans or added them to my real page.

Mr. T Resurfaces!

A couple of months go by and I see a promo for Mr. T’s show titled, “I Pity The Fool” on TV Land.  I thought it was funny to see Mr. T back on TV but what pissed me off was that this was a show about Mr. T giving advice!  I was like HOLD UP!!! Wait a minute!  Mr. T stole my idea!

The show didn’t do very well and I never saw one episode.  All I can surmise is that that show could have used me.  So yeah, I believe the real Mr. T destroyed my Myspace page to gain his infinite millions of dollars!  I, of course, did nothing about it because my proof was destroyed by someone at Myspace headquarters. But my story had to come out.  I’m a little bitter because I was robbed of millions of dollars!!!  Okay, let’s be real, I was robbed of a potential writing job.  I’m glad your show failed Mr. T!  We could have been contenders Mr. T!  We could have been somebodies T!  We could’ve been….friends but now we’re bums!