Hot Abercrombie hoax
Anyone watching Blogdex over the past few months knows Hot Abercrombie Chick, a.k.a. Amanda Doerty. This site has popped into the top 10 least 5 times since I started noticing. I became interested last week when I saw it for the third or fourth time, and delved a little deeper. As it would turn out, all of the sites that Amanda was posting to were weblogs that posted their most recent comments on their front page, hence exposing comments to Blogdex. In other words, Hot Abercrombie Chick has been gaming Blogdex.
The notion that this attractive college freshman was spending all of her time trolling weblogs looking for exposed weblogs seemed implausable to me. But looking through the comments themselves, it appeared that most, if not all, were at least marginally on topic. In addition Abercrombie Chick was interacting with hundreds of commenters on her own site, and doing quite a good job of it. A person this prolific would have to be unemployed and completely focused, which anyone who has been unemployed knows is impossible.
Something was amiss, and I had to prove that Hot Abercrombie Chick was either a) a totally different girl, b) a guy or c) some team of people creating an identity. And I was devoted to outing this fraud. It turns out that Julia Set beat me to it:
Unfortunately there’s still no reference to this indictment on Amanda’s site, and still very little evidence beyond Julia’s post that this inside tip is true. Recent links to the site on Blogdex reveal that someone else is using Amanda’s tactics to call her out ("Comment Spamming Bitch Riding High On Blogdex!").
And I feel like a tool… she’s a man, duh!
April 19: Kevin at Whizbang is calling Julia Set’s bluff and intends to contact Amanda to clear this whole mess up.
April 20: Michael Williams has used Gender Genie to analyze Hot Abercrombie, and the system characterizes her writing as distinctly male.
April 21: this post is currently #2 on Google for the query "Hot Abercrombie Chick." How odd, and so rapid.
April 22: I’ve been collecting some background information on Amanda Doerty. Here’s what I’ve found so far:
- There is no mention of the name Amanda Doerty anywhere on the web outside of HAC
- All of Amanda’s content is hosted on free sites: Blogspot, Tripod and Yaphros (see next), all untraceable
- HAC photos are hosted on of Yafro (the moblog service started by HotOrNot). Here is her Yaphro site
- Apparently her site was originally called "Amanda’s Awesome Blog
" - HAC’s EatonWeb entry says that her academic weblog is written from Poughkeepsie, NY. The Vassar website has no mention of her anywhere
- Amanda seems to have been gaming Blogdex since the beginning. Check out her barely-on-topic comment on ScriptyGoddess circa February
April 21: I’ve done some background research on Amanda Doerty, and Ryan has also found nothing with a public records search. Andrew of Julia Set has also put together a list of giant question marks.
April 23: Bluebook (a legal weblog) reports on the possible illegalities of HAC’s political candidacy. If indeed she has a website or raises funds for her campaign under a false identity, she could be committing a felony
April 24: After HAC commented on his weblog, Justin notes that she used an anonymous proxy server to obscure her posting location.
