On March 2, 2003 at 4:12 pm, I disappeared
March 2, 2022 4:12 PM Subscribe
Between 2003-2006 a blog was created entitled She's A Flight Risk. The blog detailed the life of a 20 something European heiress who had hidden money away and was running away from her wealthy, well connected father and the marriage he had arranged for her. The blog caught the eye of an Esquire reporter who did some digging and alleged to have met the heiress in person and claims her story was true. So the question is who was Isabella v.?
Is there an answer that doesn't require me to listen to a fifty-minute podcast?
posted by happyinmotion at 4:30 PM on March 2, 2022 [23 favorites]
posted by happyinmotion at 4:30 PM on March 2, 2022 [23 favorites]
Is the real answer that it's not any of my business?
posted by Catblack at 4:32 PM on March 2, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by Catblack at 4:32 PM on March 2, 2022 [8 favorites]
Is there an answer that doesn't require me to listen to a fifty-minute podcast?
If you skip to 48 minutes in, he concludes it with "Is Isabella real, was this all a hoax? I like to believe most stories even fiction are based in some form of truth, whether this all went as deep as Isabella claimed is a whole other story that I hope is told sooner rather than later"
posted by Lanark at 5:12 PM on March 2, 2022 [9 favorites]
If you skip to 48 minutes in, he concludes it with "Is Isabella real, was this all a hoax? I like to believe most stories even fiction are based in some form of truth, whether this all went as deep as Isabella claimed is a whole other story that I hope is told sooner rather than later"
posted by Lanark at 5:12 PM on March 2, 2022 [9 favorites]
Turns out the real inheritance was the Esquire reporters we bamboozled along the way.
posted by Mayor West at 5:40 PM on March 2, 2022 [36 favorites]
posted by Mayor West at 5:40 PM on March 2, 2022 [36 favorites]
What a pile of horseshit. Why does anyone believe this? At least "she" (who even knows who is actually behind the pile) is admitting that her forthcoming flight risk publications are novels--meaning, fiction.
The person who wrote what I read of this blog is almost certainly American, either educated in Europe or affecting British spellings.
They had tens of millions of dollars but didn't have any Internet access for years? Despite being an attention hound? Uh huh.
They had to go back to waterproof caches to access their previous writing? Like a bad spy novel? Mmmyeah.
posted by Flock of Cynthiabirds at 6:10 PM on March 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
The person who wrote what I read of this blog is almost certainly American, either educated in Europe or affecting British spellings.
They had tens of millions of dollars but didn't have any Internet access for years? Despite being an attention hound? Uh huh.
They had to go back to waterproof caches to access their previous writing? Like a bad spy novel? Mmmyeah.
posted by Flock of Cynthiabirds at 6:10 PM on March 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
if it's fake, good for her I guess. free entertainment in these trying times, etc. etc.
only the mean of spirit would try to ruin someone's fanciful creative endeavor but it would be much worse to play detective if you thought there was a chance in hell it could be real. which I suppose I don't. and considered as an imaginary situation, nothing could be more hilarious than the harrumphing confidence with which it is claimed above that Our Kind of People (or Those Kind of People, Whom I Know All About) Don't Abuse Our Daughters, Not That Way. the very rich never try to control their female relatives' private lives, any more than they murder their wives. what would be the point! why, it would be in poor taste! not the wealthy euroPEans! never them
how droll
and so forth
it is fake, but that is not why it is fake. it's fake because it reads fake, like a thirteen-year-old's dream of twenty-five, or like anyone's dream of living in a novel. it' s not fake because nobody's dad would ever be weird and sexually controlling and most ungentlemanlike, not if he had money and power and went to the good schools. and to treat THAT as the tell is just silly.
(it is also true that among the middle classes, my own people, this kind of self-dramatizing, one-sentence-paragraphing, factually enhanced and stylistically exaggerated manner is not actually an infallible tell that someone is making everything up, only a sign that they like to write their diary like a bad novel. they think it's intriguing. lots of people do it and only half of them are making most of it up. but I dare say rich people all have such universally good taste that such lapses are unknown to them)
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:47 PM on March 2, 2022 [8 favorites]
only the mean of spirit would try to ruin someone's fanciful creative endeavor but it would be much worse to play detective if you thought there was a chance in hell it could be real. which I suppose I don't. and considered as an imaginary situation, nothing could be more hilarious than the harrumphing confidence with which it is claimed above that Our Kind of People (or Those Kind of People, Whom I Know All About) Don't Abuse Our Daughters, Not That Way. the very rich never try to control their female relatives' private lives, any more than they murder their wives. what would be the point! why, it would be in poor taste! not the wealthy euroPEans! never them
how droll
and so forth
it is fake, but that is not why it is fake. it's fake because it reads fake, like a thirteen-year-old's dream of twenty-five, or like anyone's dream of living in a novel. it' s not fake because nobody's dad would ever be weird and sexually controlling and most ungentlemanlike, not if he had money and power and went to the good schools. and to treat THAT as the tell is just silly.
(it is also true that among the middle classes, my own people, this kind of self-dramatizing, one-sentence-paragraphing, factually enhanced and stylistically exaggerated manner is not actually an infallible tell that someone is making everything up, only a sign that they like to write their diary like a bad novel. they think it's intriguing. lots of people do it and only half of them are making most of it up. but I dare say rich people all have such universally good taste that such lapses are unknown to them)
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:47 PM on March 2, 2022 [8 favorites]
I hadn't thought of she's a flight risk for years, but all the memories of those little blog vignettes came rushing back as soon as that title came up. Oh for the early days of blogging when the line between personal storytelling, performance art, and epistolary novels masked as fake blogs was just so delightfully blurry, before Twitter and Facebook reduced us all to pithy status updates.
between this post, the epic Brunching Shuttlecocks FPP from a few days ago, and having to fill my wife in on the backstory of Trogdor the Burninator I have felt a need to look up and see if {fray} still exists or is being updated (yes it's still online, no it's been frozen in time)
posted by bl1nk at 8:50 PM on March 2, 2022 [7 favorites]
between this post, the epic Brunching Shuttlecocks FPP from a few days ago, and having to fill my wife in on the backstory of Trogdor the Burninator I have felt a need to look up and see if {fray} still exists or is being updated (yes it's still online, no it's been frozen in time)
posted by bl1nk at 8:50 PM on March 2, 2022 [7 favorites]
nothing could be more hilarious than the harrumphing confidence with which it is claimed above that Our Kind of People (or Those Kind of People, Whom I Know All About) Don't Abuse Our Daughters, Not That Way. the very rich never try to control their female relatives' private lives, any more than they murder their wives. what would be the point! why, it would be in poor taste! not the wealthy euroPEans! never them
That’s not the point. Of course there are monsters everywhere. My point is that they use different sets of tools. Arranged marriages aren’t a thing in Western Europe absent recent immigrants. It’s like claiming they were a child bride, or sold for a horse. It just doesn’t make sense in the context of the milieu.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:04 AM on March 3, 2022 [6 favorites]
That’s not the point. Of course there are monsters everywhere. My point is that they use different sets of tools. Arranged marriages aren’t a thing in Western Europe absent recent immigrants. It’s like claiming they were a child bride, or sold for a horse. It just doesn’t make sense in the context of the milieu.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:04 AM on March 3, 2022 [6 favorites]
it is fake, but that is not why it is fake. it's fake because it reads fake, like a thirteen-year-old's dream of twenty-five, or like anyone's dream of living in a novel.
Very well said -- it's like a YA narrator. leotrotsky is also right. It's not impossible, of course, but still. I remember that I always liked the URL and found it clever, but how "clever" is a person in these circumstances really going to be?
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a person who did have some knowledge of these circles, such that the rewards of selling rights didn't tempt them or outweigh the benefits of staying quiet. But that might mean anyone, and not necessarily anyone interesting.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:26 AM on March 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
Very well said -- it's like a YA narrator. leotrotsky is also right. It's not impossible, of course, but still. I remember that I always liked the URL and found it clever, but how "clever" is a person in these circumstances really going to be?
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a person who did have some knowledge of these circles, such that the rewards of selling rights didn't tempt them or outweigh the benefits of staying quiet. But that might mean anyone, and not necessarily anyone interesting.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:26 AM on March 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
I sent her — "her", I guess, who knows who actually ran the blog — email once, back in the early days of that blog. I got a response, too, answering my question that I can't even recall now.
posted by emelenjr at 10:23 AM on March 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by emelenjr at 10:23 AM on March 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
Yeah, it's fake.
But:
...nobody's dad would ever be weird and sexually controlling and most ungentlemanlike, not if he had money and power and went to the good schools.
Believe me, there are men, especially rich men, that love to control people, especially women, especially their daughters. Just another possession. They'd gladly "sell" their daughter for power or to secure some imagined social standing.
But this one sounds particularly fake. Oh, the drama!
posted by BlueHorse at 11:37 AM on March 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
But:
...nobody's dad would ever be weird and sexually controlling and most ungentlemanlike, not if he had money and power and went to the good schools.
Believe me, there are men, especially rich men, that love to control people, especially women, especially their daughters. Just another possession. They'd gladly "sell" their daughter for power or to secure some imagined social standing.
But this one sounds particularly fake. Oh, the drama!
posted by BlueHorse at 11:37 AM on March 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
Between this and the Inventing Anna story on Netflix and the 'kid makes $80m' that is backstory to the Anna Selvy, story, I want to be a newspaper fact checker.
I swear their 'fact checking' consists of 'Are you an heiress and do you have $80m?' Yes.' Or are you really running from yr dad, check yes or no'. Do you have someone who can verify? "Yes, my best friend over here in another room named She's a Flight Risk #2. OK let's write this thing!
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:26 PM on March 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
I swear their 'fact checking' consists of 'Are you an heiress and do you have $80m?' Yes.' Or are you really running from yr dad, check yes or no'. Do you have someone who can verify? "Yes, my best friend over here in another room named She's a Flight Risk #2. OK let's write this thing!
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:26 PM on March 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
Reading the Shylock Holmes post, this strikes me as a writing project of a bored software engineer (speaking as a bored software engineer). Browsing her Twitter only enforces it; she has so many classic nerd interests. I mean, she even has a Keybase account.
posted by airmail at 2:14 PM on March 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by airmail at 2:14 PM on March 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
And if I had that level of interest in my fake writing project? I'd totally hire a bodyguard and rent a fancy hotel room to do an interview for the fun of it.
posted by airmail at 2:16 PM on March 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by airmail at 2:16 PM on March 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also, on reading some excerpts from the Esquire article:
posted by airmail at 2:36 PM on March 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
Despite this ... my father made four mistakes...And:
He sent me to the United States before I was 9.
You don't send your kid to the center of the free world... and become culturally attuned to that place during their most formative years... and then, suddenly, reverse yourself when they are at their most independent and expect to be able to exert unopposed control--that is, unless you are my father.No one but an American would unironically believe that the US is the land of the free and that European women are oppressed in comparison. Especially in 2003, when the rest of the world was shitting on GWB.
...
My mother has done a brilliant job of finding her path through this noise... Though she is a European wife, no aide would dare tell her "no" to anything.
posted by airmail at 2:36 PM on March 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
Ha, I just vaguely remembered this awhile back and used my only Ask to date to find a name for it. Revisiting it with nearly two more decades of Internet exposure & life experience was a trip. I'd still be interested in hearing more of the story, but would definitely be looking for it on the fiction shelves.
posted by Ann Telope at 4:22 PM on March 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Ann Telope at 4:22 PM on March 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
Ah, "She's a Flight Risk." Like bl1nk says, this came out of a creative time with lots of web 2.0 storytelling.
This was one of the digital stories I wrote about in my first book. Revisited it for the second edition and it remained a mystery then. Let's see if someone spills secrets in time for the next.
posted by doctornemo at 6:24 PM on March 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
This was one of the digital stories I wrote about in my first book. Revisited it for the second edition and it remained a mystery then. Let's see if someone spills secrets in time for the next.
posted by doctornemo at 6:24 PM on March 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
Between this and the Inventing Anna story on Netflix and the 'kid makes $80m' that is backstory to the Anna Selvy, story, I want to be a newspaper fact checker.
Just FYI, fact checking is more likely to occur in magazines and less likely in newspapers. Newspapers tend to rely more on the journalist to get it right and the editor to catch things. But Esquire is a magazine, so. :)
I loved the surreal, weird, shimmery quality of some blogs of that era. (I don’t think I read this one.) It felt like a playground, not a battlefield for political narrative. For like 45 minutes in there at least.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:43 PM on March 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
Just FYI, fact checking is more likely to occur in magazines and less likely in newspapers. Newspapers tend to rely more on the journalist to get it right and the editor to catch things. But Esquire is a magazine, so. :)
I loved the surreal, weird, shimmery quality of some blogs of that era. (I don’t think I read this one.) It felt like a playground, not a battlefield for political narrative. For like 45 minutes in there at least.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:43 PM on March 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
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If you’re rich, well-connected, and old money in Europe, why the heck would you need an arranged marriage? You send the kid to expensive Swiss boarding schools, run in the right circles, and their circle of friends would be well-heeled by default. Problem solved.
Besides, arranged marriages just aren’t a *thing* in that part of the world and haven’t been for at least a couple of generations. That’s even true among royals, where it’s the most plausible. It’s just not done.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:27 PM on March 2, 2022 [5 favorites]