In internet slang, a "catfish" is someone who pretends on social media to be who or what he is not, usually in the pursuit of deceptive online romance.  Unlike Rolling Stone, the Washington Post has interviewed the three friends "Jackie" sought help from the night she was allegedly gang-raped at a fraternity on the University of Virgina campus – "Randall," "Andy," and "Cindy," as the Rolling Stone called them.  During those interviews, the Post learned that the "Drew" who supposedly invited "Jackie" to the University of Virginia frat party may have been a false persona Jackie herself created.  The purpose was to create a fictitious romance for the purpose of raising jealous feelings in a male classmate she wanted a relationship with.

Randall said he met Jackie shortly after arriving at U-Va. in fall 2012 and the two struck up a quick friendship. He said Jackie was interested in pursuing a romantic relationship with him; he valued her friendship but wasn’t interested in more.

The three friends said Jackie soon began talking about a handsome junior from chemistry class who had a crush on her and had been asking her out on dates.

Intrigued, Jackie’s friends got his phone number from her and began exchanging text messages with the mysterious upperclassman. He then raved to them about “this super smart hot” freshman who shared his love of the band Coheed and Cambria, according to the texts, which were provided to The Post.

“I really like this girl,” the chemistry student wrote in one message. Some of the messages included photographs of a man with a sculpted jaw line and ocean-blue eyes.

In the text messages, the student wrote that he was jealous that another student had apparently won Jackie’s attention.

“Get this she said she likes some other 1st year guy who dosnt [sic] like her and turned her down but she wont date me cause she likes him,” the chemistry student wrote. “She cant turn my down fro some nerd 1st yr. she said this kid is smart and funny and worth it.”

The night of her purported rape, Jackie was supposedly on a dinner date with this upperclassman.  Afterward came an ever-changing, emotional story of a sexual assault that Drew arranged.  Here's the problem, also as reported by the Post.

U-Va. officials told The Post that no student with the name Jackie provided to her friends as her date and attacker in 2012 had ever enrolled at the university.

Randall provided The Post with pictures that Jackie’s purported date had sent of himself by text message in 2012. The Post identified the person in the pictures and learned that his name does not match the one Jackie gave friends in 2012. In an interview, the man said he was Jackie’s high school classmate but “never really spoke to her.”

The man said he was never a U-Va. student and is not a member of any fraternity. Additionally, he said that he had not visited Charlottesville in at least six years and that he was in another state participating in an athletic event during the weekend of Sept. 28, 2012.

“I have nothing to do with it,” he said. He said it appears that the circulated photos were pulled from social media Web sites.

In other words, someone, most likely Jackie, copied online photos of a hot guy from her high school and created a fictional flirtation.  The night of her big dinner date with this imaginary person ended with her calling her friends while she was in a highly upset state. Perhaps she meant to win over Randall by being in need of a rescuer, for he seems to have gotten the full force of the hysteria.

“She had very clearly just experienced a horrific trauma,” Randall said. “I had never seen anybody acting like she was on that night before, and I really hope I never have to again. . . . If she was acting on the night of Sept. 28, 2012, then she deserves an Oscar.”

Nor, as Rolling Stone reported, did Jackie's friends urge her to stay quiet because of a campus culture indifference to rape. 

The friends remember being shocked. Although they did not notice any blood or visible injuries, they said they immediately urged Jackie to speak to police and insisted that they find her help. Instead, they said, Jackie declined and asked to be taken back to her dorm room. They went with her — two said they spent the night — seeking to comfort Jackie in what appeared to be a moment of extreme turmoil.dvised [sic] her to see the police.

No blood, although in later versions of her story she said she was amid fragments from a shattered glass table during the assault.  And despite their urging she seek help, she asked to be taken back to her dorm room.

If I had been asking the questions, I'd want to know which two friends spent the night with her and who suggested they do so.  A cynic might wonder if she was angling to get Randall there alone.

Then there is this new fact from her friends.

They also said Jackie’s description of what happened to her that night differs from what she told Rolling Stone. In addition, information Jackie gave the three friends about one of her attackers, called “Drew” in the magazine’s article, differ significantly from details she later told The Post, Rolling Stone and friends from sexual assault awareness groups on campus. The three said Jackie did not specifically identify a fraternity that night.

The Rolling Stone article also said that Randall declined to be interviewed, “citing his loyalty to his own frat.” He told The Post that he was never contacted by Rolling Stone and would have agreed to an interview.

There is no evidence of rape here other than Jackie's three friends' story that she was badly upset after she said she had been on a date.  But once the word "rape" was out, the feminist activists got a hold of the story.  They then turned her over to a reporter with an agenda.  With each retelling, the facts seem to have become more horrible and the evidence ever weaker and more inconsistent.  A fraternity gets named.  The attack becomes more violent.  The number of assailants increases.  Friends, two of them male, who were supportive are made into part of an alleged cover-up.  And increasingly what can be proven matters less and less.  After all, American college campuses have a culture of rape.  What other evidence is needed?  As the story spreads, the person at the center of it finds that it becomes harder and harder to retract.  First would come the huge embarrassment of having to admit she had been catfishing her own friends.  Then would come the animus of the feminists.  She would be persona non grata on large parts of the campus.

Because the feminists wanted so badly to believe not only that such a horrible event could happen, but that university authorities would help cover it up, they suspended doubts even though there was little physical evidence for the story.  In Rolling Stone’s case, the reporter and editors also omitted basic fact-checking, preferring the muddy waters of narrative to the clarity of fact.  That often leads to singing the blues.

Well, my mother told my father,

just before hmmm, I was born,

"I got a boy child's comin,

He's gonna be, he's gonna be a rollin stone,

Sure 'nough, he's a rollin stone

Sure 'nough, he's a rollin stone"

  -Muddy Waters-

 The Catfish Blues aka Rollin' Stone