Regardless of the cheating, this type of post doesn't fully sit right with me. Given the permanence of record on the internet, this does bring up the issue of how we police bad behavior, and how we incorporate forgiveness into that.
That said, the poster was pretty fair, and generally refer to her as "the runner". It definitely reads as an obsessive sleuthing, no doubt in part because there were follow-on discoveries made. As the saying goes, "one is a fluke, two is a coincidence, three is a trend", and it seems there's a trend here.
What's interesting is someone in the comments mentioned this:
> The majority of those "30K" instagram followers are fake accounts - many of the likes on her recent photos are spam bots. She 100 percent buys followers/likes.
My guess is a lot of people probably do this to bump up their social status a bit. It's relatively innocent (if a bit narcissistic), though if its true in her case, it fits a clear pattern. Can't verify though, given it seems she's shut down her social media presence.
This is one of those cases where sympathy and revulsion are equally valid emotions. I wouldn't want to be on the other end of the hive-mind, but it is a self-inflicted wound.
I don't agree that it's innocent. Competitors in marathons (the ones that have a chance of winning especially) have put a lot of time, energy, effort, and pain into training to be successful.
To have their rewards for that effort and commitment stolen by someone who didn't earn it is not fair and should be scrutinized and called out.
To call this "trivial" seems like maybe you have no interest or experience with marathons? It might be trivial to you, but substitute marathons for some challenging endeavor in your life. If your success was stolen by someone who cheated, you wouldn't think it was trivial either.
Certainly mass internet lynch mobs are a bad thing. But what this site does is necessary. There are many instances this kind of behavior documented on sites like this.
Some of these cheaters are obsessive and do it over and over again. It is very unfair to other competitors (even those who have no chance of being winners...), taking credit for the commitment to something that you don't have.
Maybe this kind of thing bothers me more because I've seen it with people who pretend to have military service ("stolen-valor"). It's just frustrating seeing people blatantly pretend to have done something difficult just to get the accolades.
Anyways, I agree that these are self-inflicted wounds for sure.
I was commenting that buying instagram followers was relatively innocent, not that the act of cheating in a race was innocent. Sorry, I thought that was clear from the context.
> To call this "trivial" seems like maybe you have no interest or experience with marathons? It might be trivial to you,...
I never used the word trivial in my comment. You've successfully made a straw man and beat it to death :)
I hope you don't mind if I take your double mis-reading of my comment to make a broader point: I think your reply is an unintentional but apt example of the righteousness that can get whipped up in these types of stories.
Righteousness does some messed up stuff to our thought process. It filters things in a way to amplify the negativity of the behavior in question, crowding out nuance in the quest to reinforce belief.
It looks like you latched onto the use of the word "innocent" and started your reply, and each follow-on sentence in your reply is your thought process reinforcing this emotion, which is increasingly divorced from the original post's point (how we police behavior in the age of the internet).
Sorry to make a bit of an example of your post, but I recognize it because I've done the very same thing myself - it's something we're all susceptible to. I think the environment of internet comment threads supercharges this, as threads gain steam because they're public and can have many more participants dropping in to make a point or build on something someone else said. There's often no feedback loop to this bottom-up aggregate behavior, which can outsize the real world effects (the 'punishment') relative to the person's offense.
This site [1] has a good summary of the emotional chain of causation for why we feel this way:
* Intuition focuses the mind on a single strategy. An angry person can only see the reasons for anger.
* Anger is an unconscious choice by the system. The whole body responds to the emotion.
* Indignation also gains its power from the territorial instincts.
* The amygdala triggers the anger emotion.
* LTP (long term potentiation) makes the amygdala sensitive to imagined offence.
* Self righteous indignation permits anger without guilt.
Within the context we're talking about, this is really instructive. There are examples that describe each one of these points. And the sum of many people's anger without guilt can be fearsome.
For what its worth, I'm in full agreement with you - it bothers me too seeing people cheat, or stolen valor, or any of these types of reprehensible behaviors. What I hope for is a society that polices bad behavior by giving appropriate punishment - where we find the right response that prevents future activity rather than simply seeking to satisfy our emotional desire for revenge. I worry internet shame posts may be more the latter than the former and may have terrible unintended consequences.
A little surprised to see this on the front page of HN, but I don't think we can deny that running is probably the nerdiest of sports.
Anyway, that's nice that she owned up to it. Most of the cheaters don't. As a guy who's no doubt proved my running bonafides -- 3:06 marathon pr + there's a picture of me on the Western States 100 wikipedia page -- I always wonder why people get so angry about this kind of thing. I mean, sure, it's not cool to cheat, but this ain't the Olympics. Who gives a shit?
Nothing is getting "stolen," especially not if you weren't in the top 10 or whatever.
I'm a casual runner, but I am engaged in a secret athletic struggle against my nemesis, a guy in my age group (55-59) who routinely finishes about 5 minutes ahead of me in local 5K races. It's a secret struggle because I'm not on even on his radar...but HE is on MINE. Believe me, if someone cheated and put yet another spot in the rankings between me and Nemesis, he would be stealing something important from me.
Cheating and doping both make me very angry as a casual athlete. I don't let it ruin my day, but it annoys me. Like come on, we are training 10h a week to go pay money to run a race and get a $1 medal. Let's kinda sorta keep it fair?
I train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu with a bunch of guys that are on steroids and it doesn't bother me a bit. In my mind I just handicap myself vs their strength advantage so I'm happy with my relative performance.
Heh. Actually I have a neck injury from a UFC fighter that was busted for doping. I don't blame him. He was just trying to keep his kids clothed and fed.
Obviously, I'm not gonna defend those behaviors. It's kind of a cliche, but they're really only cheating themselves.
As for the rest of us, who are we really racing against? Sure, there are the handful of jerks who you battle it out with on the local scene... and if one of those guys were to cheat, you're right, that would feel personal and that would piss me off.
But if some other random runner cut the course? Aren't we pretty much all just racing ourselves, seeing how far and fast we can push our bodies?
Yes and that is how I stay sane. However I really like to see how I rank.. like "Last year I ran in the 50th percentile, this year I ran in the 90th". 1 cheater, meh. 100 cheaters? Meh messed up my math ;)
"God dammit! Don't you know who I am? I finished 355th at the North Face 50 Mile National Championships!"
I mean... on some level, I get you. On another, though, I can assure you that no one cares about your marathon time or finishing place, unless you're at an elite level.
It took several attempts at doubling down on the deception (riding the course on her bike and posting the Strava trace) and being repeatedly called out before she gave up and admitted it.
Not nearly as laudable as admitting it as soon as someone accused her of cheating.
I don't like taking a drive-by, salacious interest in a story that doesn't affect me in the least, but will probably have serious, perhaps devastating consequences for the person involved for a long time professionally.
I also think it's worth pointing out that the original article, while using photos of the person involved, never uses their full name, so is to some extent not google-able. However, the full name is used in the comments, and then extensively in other media coverage of this story, so this is a moot point.
As with the parent, I'm not defending cheating in a competitive race, especially if sponsorship is involved. But ultimately, I can't take any pleasure in a worldwide glee-fuelled shame-fest over what is ultimately a relatively trivial, presumably non-criminal misdeed.
Maybe it's only me, but I don't see any "shame-fest" here. The article is facts based and points to concrete wrongdoings, not simply taking some moral stand.
"what is ultimately a relatively trivial, presumably non-criminal misdeed."
While it's not criminal behavior, it must be discouraged and punished as it does tremendous damage to competitive sports and other sportsmen by discouraging them ("What's the point? Everyone cheats anyway") or forcing them cutting corners themselves to stay competitive (see recent doping scandal).
It doesn't take a million strong Internet mob to punish an individual behavior. This bandwagon/mob/piling-on instinct may have served us well in the wild west or in small villages of a few dozen to few hundred people, but is highly inappropriate in the digital realm where the "village" consists of billions of people worldwide.
I was talking about the article itself. I don't usually read comments bar selected few sites (HN included), because there are always trolls and haters. It's not the article's fault that we have such dire situation on the whole Internet.
> It's not the article's fault that we have such dire situation on the whole Internet.
On a related note, Milo Yiannopoulos got banned from Twitter for the actions of his followers. It's commonly cited throughout the media that he was banned for racism but he was actually blamed for some of his followers who jumped into the thread. At most from his 4-5 tweets during the incident you could say that he was insensitive, but he never crossed the line into racism or said anything particularly heinous.
This brings up good questions about the responsibility of people for their followers online. At what level are you responsible for drawing out this behaviour? Should they be regulating random people who comment on their blog post?
Note: not debating Milo in general, just the rationale for this one case of permanently banning a person from Twitter
I think you're missing the big picture. As said in the parent, other news are covering also the story with her real name and pictures.
It's a shame fest with media trying to give as much info on the woman they can. Not this article in particular, but the coverage of the story is borderline hateful. The Internet don't like cheater.
This is a good question. It's easy to ask people to be reasonable and not take it too far. But there will always be writers online who don't have that filter.
Social media loves a good witch hunt.
At most we can only really be directly critical on a case by case basis. And try to push back generally.
Should this particular blog post have blurred her face? If it's certain she will be identified in other races regardless if her pic is spread around then I agree, it would probably be wise to blur it to at least temper the hivemind.
This is more about personal responsibility than unrealistically expecting everyone to follow your world view.
The drive-by internet mob can be awful. A just & fair society is one where punishments fit the crime, and internet mobs deliver outsized punishment for all sorts of minor and often illusory things. I worry about how this woman is dealing with this situation, right now, in realtime - perhaps her past behaviors are a sign of some issues she's dealing with. I'm heartened by many of the comments in the blog who advocate for sympathy, as the punishment has already been meted.
I think people don't realize how the little things add up.
Any one member of an Internet mob doesn't hurt an alleged wrongdoer much, but together they do deliver outsized punishment for all sorts of minor and often illusory things.
Social feedback mechanisms appropriate for small tribes of 100-150 people become overwhelming when used by 100,000-150,000 people, to say nothing of what happens if you add three more zeros.
You can see modern celebrity as the flip side of this problem, too. 100,000,000 people giving just a bit of respect and thumbs up to someone becomes quite a torrent of social currency.
> while using photos of the person involved, never uses their full name, so is to some extent not google-able
Wat?
Clearly her name is exposed in the Strava screenshot.
Took me exactly 2mins to find significant details about her in the blog post (also: if not, you can easily reverse-image-search her runner photos).
It's great to have her disqualified from the race, she clearly cheated.
Putting the whole story on the internet without worrying about her identity being exposed. Why? Is this really what you deserve when you cheat at a half-marathon?
Yes but the comment's assertion is valid. Because the screenshots clearly reveal her name and social media handles even if the article refers to her as "the runner".
I'm not so sure I agree with this line of reasoning. I'm betting she'd have had no problem with her face/name being plastered up for all to see that she had won 2nd place in the race, and promoting that on social media.
This outcome is the same magnitude, just with the sign bit flipped.
I don't like taking a drive-by, salacious interest in a story that doesn't affect me in the least, but will probably have serious, perhaps devastating consequences for the person involved for a long time professionally.
Long before the Internet showed up, what you describe was why you don't do such things. Is the punishment disproportionate to the crime? Yeah, could be. But whether it's pre-internet community gossip or the whole world knows, you don't such things because it could ruin your reputation if found out. Right or wrong, that's always been reality.
"Devastating consequences...professionally", as it should be. If she'll cheat in a race to make herself look good, what will she do in your business when real money is on the line? Cook your books? Lie about results (already has a track record for that one)? As long as she comes out looking good.
Its a common theme on HN to scoff at the trivial fines for companies caught cheating when the profits gained through cheating are much larger. In the case of this runner, I think a global calling-out is appropriate given that she'd sure accept the accolades were she not found out.
The problem with this argument in this case is that she put herself out in front of ‘the mob’. She actively promoted her ‘achievement’ to a public audience. Presumably she would have been happy for any level of adulation from the public. So when it turns around to public revulsion, that's just the other side of the sword, which she first actively employed.
I would have more sympathy for your argument if this story was about some form of private cheating. But this was cheating on a public stage, one that she particularly sought out.
It can be really easy to make navigational errors in amateur races, especially with turnaround points. Usually there is no crowd lining the whole course, signage is bad, and the marshalling can be spotty.
Yes, this person is a bit narcissistic and a tad dishonest, but it might just have been easier to go along with the misunderstanding rather than fess up to messing up.
EDIT: OK, OK, "very dishonest" then. My point being that this stuff sometimes happens, people deal with it in different ways, and that witch-hunts can be just as damaging as the transgression itself. But yes, a lot of you (rightly) care about the integrity of amateur sportspeople who are also in the public sphere.
I agree that the internet mob can be unduly cruel, and as a larger issue I'm uncomfortable with the notion than a single mistake a person makes is now often immortalized on the internet for eternity, but does what this runner did really count merely as a tad dishonest?
Honest navigational errors can indeed occur. I made one such mistake in high school during a cross country race that took place in an unfamiliar wooded course. I didn't even realize I had made a mistake until I reached the finish line. The giveaway for me was that I finished in front of a number of runners whom I knew throughout the season to be faster than me, and I didn't remember passing them. It was a pretty simple mistake to rectify, I told my couch and teammates and we retraced the course to the place I went off course, no big deal.
I particularly enjoyed the part of this story where the runner retraced the course later that day, on bicycle and despite feeling ill earlier, so she could spoof the GPS data. I hope that labeling something like this as being only a tad dishonest isn't emblematic of the way SV and HN in generally view the topic of honesty.
Reading the parent comments felt like they are making cheating acceptable. This did not seem like a little mistake, it seemed more like systematic cheating. She had multiple chances to apologize, but she went on until she was faced with the facts.
1) She was disqualified immediately, but she complained to the person in charge and actually convinced them that they made a mistake and that she didn't cheat. If she had accepted being disqualified, this wouldn't have ended up on the internet.
2) She biked the course later in the day in an attempt to fake the data, but failed because the data is timestamped. I am not sure how she could have possibly been more dishonest than that.
No way. I've missed turnarounds in races multiple times (although this usually results in running farther than intended) and it would NEVER occur to me to just go with it and grab a podium spot. This goes way beyond "a tad dishonest".
Tangential question: do runners get disqualified for overruns? I can't imagine many people running too far reach the podium, but I'm curious whether accidentally adding a half mile is still a disqualifying error.
> The overall feedback I have received from the public regarding my work on the blog and the Boston reviews has been positive. (At some point I will try to clarify the review and filtering process - but runners that just had a bad day in Boston, or paced a friend, or just took their time, are not going to be singled out. They have nothing to worry about).
In this case she cut part of the course; she sought out officials to reassure them of her time; she accepted the medal; she faked data after the race; she only came clean after she was confronted with this information.
I agree that now she's come clean any identifying information should be removed. And I hate some of the comments that are clearly piling on. And it should be obvious but any attacks on social media are unacceptable.
> I agree that now she's come clean any identifying information should be removed.
The media is running this story with full personal information included, this stuff is the first google hit for her name and several more on the first page of results. Google's "summary" of her on the right side when you google her name describes this event and contains nothing else.
The point at which she could have prevented this is when she was caught the first time, now it's too late.
It is not possible to prove a person who got second place in a public event was a cheater and prevent their identity from coming out. Even if the blogger hadn't posted her pictures, she would have been identified quickly.
Not just that - race records like this are public. Even a piece which said only "second place runner in this marathon cheated" would be easy to connect to her name.
This runner cheated consciously, lied afterward, covered up the cheat with a conspiracy later (biking the route to create a fake data trail). Its hard to smear any investigation as 'obsessive' compared to that.
And cheating at public events is not innocent. Its a rupture of the social contract, up there with stealing and libel. It should be dealt with promptly and vigorously. She should be banned from all further events. This is not the sort of person you want in your society, in your business, in your life.
I'm more disturbed with the evident impulse to forgive. Is nothing important any more? Is character and honesty so worthless?
I think those who would forgive her believe that the response is disproportionate, and that the cheating doesn't rate worldwide infamy. I guess I side with runnr_az on this in that what she did is not right but it also isn't very important. But maybe he and I share the same worldview on running and racing, in that in almost all cases racing's value comes from doing the race, not the result. Yes, in the moment I'll do whatever I can to scratch out one higher place in the result, but after the race is done it really doesn't matter if I got 23rd or 123rd. Those that finished faster could have trained harder, trained more, had more experience, had better coaching, had better genetics, or even cheated, but I found that in the end those places don't matter nearly as much as the experience I got, and even if I found out that one or five or twenty people had cheated in the races I've done, it wouldn't have taken away from that experience.
I guess if one subscribes to the race-as-life metaphor, where cheating in a race is tantamount to stealing from someone, and how one acts in a race is how one will act in the rest of life, I can see more reasons to get angry, but I think that viewing this as "rupturing the social contract" is a more extreme view, and is entering the area that Hugo was exploring with the Inspector Javert character. Yes, she cheated, yes it's wrong, and yes, she should face consequences, but how much mental energy should we expend in the pursuit and punishment of this cheating? I think I'm almost as disturbed by the obsession with the cheating as by the cheating itself.
Maybe this thinking is objectively wrong, but at least for me that's why, if forgiveness means not to ban her from all future events, my impulse is to forgive.
That seems like a kind of double-think. The race is important or it isn't; its meaningful to ban her or it isn't. If the race isn't that important, then 'banned for life' is a symbolic gesture only.
Other people are saying this in other ways in the thread, but the race is what someone makes of it. If what someone cares about is their place, and that's all that's important, I can see how what I wrote could be black and white. But for a lot of people, especially as the race distance gets longer unless one is on the podium one's place really doesn't matter for a race to be important, and it isn't worth caring much about whether someone is cheating.
I didn't mean 'obsessive' as a smear, more that they were dogged in their pursuit, going as far as crunching biometrics and zooming in on a watch for evidence (enhance.. enhance.. [1]). It was an entertaining read since it looked eerily similar to how conspiracy sites construct their hilarious conclusions. And yet, it was real.
Also, 'relatively innocent' was meant in context of buying instagram followers, not in cheating.
> I'm more disturbed with the evident impulse to forgive. Is nothing important any more? Is character and honesty so worthless?
The thing I'm most disturbed by in these threads is how easily nuance is lost to the power of righteous indignation. It's like we're reading an entirely different set of comments.
You have to draw a hard line on cheating. Else it all falls apart. This person is not 'nuanced'. They are a calculating conniver, a con, a selfish calculating persistent cheat. The 'I'm sorry' letter reads like a con trying another tack.
Cons are very skilled at manipulating the audience. They want exactly the reaction the 'forgive and forget' crowd are giving them.
Why should someone who cheated at a PUBLIC event and very publicly claimed the prize and actively misled other runners and the judging committee not be exposed publicly? Is it not in the public interest to punish these peoples? Or should we never report on such misdeeds for fear of any personal and professional retribution? Isn't that part of being a responsible adult in a civil society? She's a sponsored running/lifestyle blogger, for God's sake! The social contract works for a reason.
There is nothing wrong with the methodology (using her own Garmin watch as conclusive evidence) but there is something to be said about the medium through which she was exposed (the Internet).
The problem is the Internet never forgets so even if she learns a hard lesson from her actions and chooses to become a changed person (ala becoming a coach/public speaker/etc), her name will still rank high on search engines for her cheating 10/30/X years from now.
EDIT: Not trying to excuse the terrible act of cheating she engaged in, but I think it is important to realize the role of the internet as a permanent record of everyone's (mis)deeds, regardless of whether it was a crime or not.
I think you missed the point as well. The newspaper coverage of her public deception and lying is on par with the benefits that she would otherwise try to benefit from by building up her image on fake wins and defrauding people who have trained harder to get those same results - and somehow we're supposed to give her a pass because she might want to have another public trust position in the future? She should work and convince those in the public space like another person committing other public trust breaches and taking fraudulent actions. Are you saying the Internet should forget, especially inconvenient/correct but damaging stories? Public records also never forget.
For the record, I absolutely do not condone what she did.
What she did was very dishonest and she has paid the price.
Merely pointing out what has already been said elsewhere in the thread that the internet, as a medium of communication, can deliver outsized punishments long after any "crime" has been committed.
Outing any wrongdoing in a position of public trust can deliver punishment, whether that's outsized or not depends on the context and what they were trying to gain from it. If she weren't a sponsored lifestyle blogger, then I would agree that this was an exaggeration, but given the fact that the then conspired to cover her tracks is damning enough to get labeled as a cheater in the race's public records. She had to know that it would be possible to permanently damage her image but judged the risks lower than the benefits, and that's on her, not the public that she tried to mislead.
And this is called being responsible for one's own actions. It is harder in the Internet age, and you pay for poor choices longer, but it is life today. Maybe her story will encourage the next person considering cheating of not doing it. The internet has almost regressed social things to become somewhat tribal. "The internet says this person is bad, so they are bad" kind of tribal.
I don't think there's any reason this post shouldn't have happened, or the cheating shouldn't have been given a public, lasting record. And yeah, the sponsorship and team membership raise this from "costing someone else a medal" to "serious manipulation".
But I share the sense that something is weird here. Maybe it's just the section trying to cast doubt on the claim that she was feeling nauseous - there's a sentiment here that I find strange regardless of the bare facts.
>> Maybe it's just the section trying to cast doubt on the claim that she was feeling nauseous
She was feeling so nauseous that she couldn't finish the extra 1.5 miles all by herself but could bike the entire course to falsify data on Strava to double down on her cheating? Give me a break. The fact that she only recanted after all the evidence was presented to her about the depths of her cheating tells us all we need to know about her character in this instance. Positions of public trust bring with them public responsibility, and this is what it looks like, for better or for worse.
You mean by pointing out another race a few months ago where she ran another half-marathon but pictures show that someone else finished the race with her bib?
Yes, partly that. But more the part where he dredged through her Strava and found a random entry where the cadence and heart rate data looked odd compared to her description of the activity. That wasn't even for a race, just her training log.
The domain name is quite straight forward. I honestly don't understand the discussion revolving around the morality of investigating falsified competition times in a recorded sports event with prizes for placement.
Back in the days when you could buy 7,000+ twitter followers for $5 on Fiverr I use to buy followers for people all the time for fun. Friends from high school with very silly twitter account would wake up with 7,000 new followers. I also bought followers for small companies from time to time because I really enjoyed them. I noticed that their own real followers would increase after that. Confirmed this with my own twitter account.
I made the conclusion that people are more likely to follow a account that already has a lot of followers. So if the first 7,000 are fake the next 1000 or 2000 will be real and actually valuable followers.
>>My guess is a lot of people probably do this to bump up their social status a bit.
I had thought the Black Mirror episode titled "Nose Dive" was a bit silly at first, but as usual with that series, it 's turning out to be pretty prescient
In time you will come to know that obsessive internet race cheat sleuthing is the greatest form of entertainment in the world. You get your Sherlock Holmes fix, you get insane psychologies to study, and you do good for the world, putting honest racers back on the podium.
There is a new crazy story every year or so, tune in next year, it is going to be great!
She's a 'lifestyle blogger' so it's not like she's trying to be anonymous and then being outed by some troll. Also she didn't mind everyone celebrating her second place.
Sorry to distract from the effort of leaving her name out of this, but your discovery about her followers seems kind of like a funny coincidence considering her last name.
That said, the poster was pretty fair, and generally refer to her as "the runner". It definitely reads as an obsessive sleuthing, no doubt in part because there were follow-on discoveries made. As the saying goes, "one is a fluke, two is a coincidence, three is a trend", and it seems there's a trend here.
What's interesting is someone in the comments mentioned this:
> The majority of those "30K" instagram followers are fake accounts - many of the likes on her recent photos are spam bots. She 100 percent buys followers/likes.
My guess is a lot of people probably do this to bump up their social status a bit. It's relatively innocent (if a bit narcissistic), though if its true in her case, it fits a clear pattern. Can't verify though, given it seems she's shut down her social media presence.
This is one of those cases where sympathy and revulsion are equally valid emotions. I wouldn't want to be on the other end of the hive-mind, but it is a self-inflicted wound.