She has since written a series of private eye mysteries* using the name of Robert Galbraith
*Now adapted for TV
Posted on 11/10/2017 9:29:31 AM PST by jjotto
For the last eight years, baseball fan-turned-writer Becca Schultz has presented herself online as Ryan Schultz, a false identity she assumed when she was 13 years old, duping and harassing women on Twitter along the way.
On Wednesday night, a woman named Erin tweeted a series of screenshots announcing that Schultz is not actually Ryan, a married father of two studying to become a pharmacist. Instead, Schultz is a 21-year-old college student in the Midwest, whose entire career as an aspiring baseball writer has been under a fraudulent byline.
Schultz began contributing to Baseball Prospectus’s local White Sox blog at the end of the 2016 season and wrote for BP South Side and BP Wrigleyville throughout the 2017 season. Additionally, Schultz wrote for the SB Nation sabermetrics site Beyond the Box Score throughout 2017.
People who knew Ryan Schultz online say that in retrospect, some of his behavior seemed odd, but no one expected that this moody White Sox fan from Missouri would actually be a teenage girl.
Schultz’s fraud was as true to the catfish genre as can be. She told the people who discovered she was not who she said she was that she assumed the identity because she felt as if she couldn’t write about baseball professionally as a woman, especially at the age of 13. As the deception went on, she couldn’t figure out how to get out of the middle of her web of lies.
Over time, Ryan formed serial relationships with women who use Twitter to talk about baseball and hockey. Some women told me that he would get drunk and berate them; others told me they felt emotionally abused and manipulated because he would imply that he’d hurt himself if they didn’t continue to talk to him. Ryan received nudes from at least two women I spoke with, one of whom said she did it because she was afraid he would hurt himself if she didn’t.
Schultz’s story is interesting for reasons far beyond its sheer shock value. It’s entirely reasonable that at the time she created the Ryan persona, she might not have thought she could easily have a career writing about baseball as a woman. She’s also drawn a big red arrow sign pointing toward the exploitative ecosystem of online sportswriting, which created the conditions for her to get her enviable opportunities without much interrogation from editors who have a lot to do and few resources with which to do it.
Most of all, though, there are real women who have been genuinely hurt by their interactions with a woman who, as she tells the story, caught herself up in a lie she didn’t know how to untell, not least because it was bringing her what she wanted.
So, maybe double, triple perhaps, the maturity level of many of the serial blogpimps on FR?
Hmmph ... that never worked for me.
Those women just responded with a smirk while they were handing me a knife ...
I must be missing some trick, when this girl, now a young woman, can get women to send "him" nude shots.
I could try forever and no women would send me their nude photos. What am I doing wrong? :-)
As a Jewess on the US, I can only point out that the number of women who allegedly DATED, but had no sex with, Roy Moore is EXACTLY the same number who accused President Clinton of FORCIBLE RAPE, a FAR more serious offense. Now we know why all REAL Americans put our 2nd Amendment FIRST. Just sayin’!
2harddrive here needs another timeout.
Think there was a TV movie about a female reporter who posed as a man.
Harry Potter author J.K.Rowling used her initials, IIRC, rather than her first name because the target audience, boys, might not want to read books by someone named Jennifer.
..if I knew that trick would have worked...
What Bee Ess. Just stop posting.
“...non-sports online behavior is nothing compared to most celeb sports commentators...”
Exhibit #1) Keith Olbermann
Possibly either a lesbo (doubtful at 13 but possible), or there is an unmentioned manipulating boyfriend.
Yeah, it's always a man's fault. Women are innocent little creatures who can do nothing bad if left to their own devices.
George Elliot
Who did they send the checks to? Who cashed them?
Cam Newton is shocked a teenage girl knows that much about baseball.
Facebook will hurt itself if you don't send nude pictures to it, too.
If he identifies as a married adult man, thean he should be accepted as that.
She has since written a series of private eye mysteries* using the name of Robert Galbraith
*Now adapted for TV
The brothers Bell (Acton, Currer, & Ellis)
Well played
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