Recently, there have been several imitations of players who used to come to this site. What I hope to explore here is the mentality of people who feel the need to do such things. What is the point? What do they get out of it?

The most famous example is several cheater_1 cases, but the new case seems to be Ouachito, here: http://www.chess.com/members/view/ouachito

Admittedly, it's perfectly possible this is the same guy. The reason I don't think this is so is that Ouachita named himself after a place in the USA, which Ouachito isn't.

Anyway, that isn't the subject of this thread. Why would someone want to pretend to be someone else? What is the goal? Discuss!

no idea.

Hmm. Perhaps not the most constructive post on the forums, but it certainly isn't the worst. Onwards we march! 

It's just for laughs. A lot of people seem to enjoy winding other people up. So they pretend to be someone everyone hates and then annoy them. This only works where ones true identity is hidden of course , and the internet is one such place.

But it just wastes everyone's time, and ultimately, they're just being nuisances. Why can't they just leave everyone alone so we can get on with things we want to do? 

Because they are scum. That's just how it is. The minority will always ruin it for the majority.

They do it for their own amusement, they want people to respond to it (perhaps because they don't get enough attention in real life). And apparently this one achieved this. It probably wasn't that time consuming to set up an account (we all together spent more time posting about it), now he will just log on every few days and check out what has been said about his account.

I didn't make the thread for that specific account, I just used it as an example. I am not talking about any player in particular, rather the mentality of those who seek to deceive others over the internet.

I've already answered that one Nytik xD

Unless you do it yourself, RR, I think any answers will just be the opinions of the poster, and therefore it couldn't hurt to hear other's views!

It's a pretty standard thing to do for someone with that mental glitch (jor from annoying others), or attention seeking. Really, that's all there is to it.

As a side note, Ouachito's account has just been closed, making my link pretty useless. Oh well. There's bound to be someone else along any minute now...

I understood the point of your thread completely. I said what I think about mentality of such people in particular in first 3 sentences. Then I only pointed out that this particular member achieved what such members want to achieve. I didn't mean to blame anyone for that, it's an interesting topic and I agree that this "ouachito" is a good example.

Discuss are you insane.

I think this thread doesn't need to exist really, it's obvious that there will be people like that out there. For example, I bet theres someone in the world who probably tried to jump off a cliff 50 metres tall hanging by a thin rope to survive. Why do they do it? Ask them, they're dead =D.

Well on the other hand if you really want to hear some reasons, 100% that they're not very good reasons.

Edit: well it can exist to bring light to this topic, but the discuss bit is... Actually never mind its ok.

Lord-Chaos: It's an interesting question as to whether a thread 'needs' to exist. Obviously, this one doesn't. But neither do 90% of the forum posts at chess.com, eh?

I don't think we have had a "needy" thread around here for yonks.

Why they do it?  It's the equivelant of playing pranks. Yeah it is pointless, but so are the people who get angry over such things on the internet. 

Hey i wonder.... http://www.chess.com/members/view/aabbccdd