The Vampire Catfish: A Message Board And The Boy Who Believed
2/26/202641 min
Michael was 16, lonely, and stuck in a small Southern town when he met someone called Dennis on a vampire-themed online message board. What began as a thrilling, romantic connection soon spiraled into something darker. We follow Michael’s journey as he tries to make sense of the many layers of deception two decades later.
Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Audiochuck.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 0· Soundbite0:00
[crickets chirping] Campsite Media.
Speaker 10:03
Hello?
Speaker 0· Soundbite0:05
What is this? So what do you want me to say? Yeah, what's going on here? Like, why- Oh, it's just a chameleon. Chameleon.
Speaker 10:11
Chameleon.
Speaker 0· Soundbite0:12
Chameleon Weekly. Oh.
Josh Dean· Host0:13
[laughs] Today's story comes from a listener who heard the show and wants to tell his own story, because he thinks it's important for you to hear it, a story about an online community that, back in his teens, was a refuge, until it wasn't.
Michael· Guest0:30
Le Jardin Sauvage is what was called a message board.
Josh Dean· Host0:34
Michael's in his mid-40s, has floppy bleached blonde hair, and today he's wearing a blue googly-eyed Cookie Monster T-shirt.
Michael· Guest0:42
To put it into more modern parlance, it was kind of like Reddit, [laughs] only very self-contained.
Josh Dean· Host0:51
You know what he's talking about, I'm sure. But back in the early 1990s, message boards were just beginning to take off. They were incredibly primitive by today's standards, but for a teenage Michael, they offered a whole new world of opportunity.
Michael· Guest1:05
I was never the popular kid in school. In fact, like I tended to be ostracized more often than not. So my first experience with having any sort of like, quote unquote, "friend group" was this board.
Josh Dean· Host1:18
For a kid who often felt like he didn't fit in, Le Jardin Sauvage was a way to connect with people who actually got him.
Michael· Guest1:25
My experience of the world was extremely