For the Luv of Mike. The story of how I catfished a Taylor Hanson catfish
I was scrolling through my TikTok FYP when I saw a clip from Dancing with the Stars and one of this season’s contestants, Taylor Hanson.
I liked it, of course. I used to love Hanson.
“Mmmbop ba duba dop ba doo bop.” When I first heard those non-words being sung on the MuchMusic Countdown, I was frozen, stunned, absolutely enamoured. I was almost 14 years old in May of 1997 when Hanson released their first single, “mmmbop.” I lived in northern Alberta, Canada in a city of 35,000. Hundreds of kilometres from the next biggest city. Our home sat on the edge of the boreal forest with bears often making their way to the large patio door in our living room.
I lived with my mother, father and three younger siblings. The house was loud, angry and sometimes very lonely for a teenage girl. My mom was usually yelling at someone and most of the time it felt like it was me. My brothers were constantly fighting, chaos around every corner. In our living room sat a desk my father made, with a wooden chair. On that desk was our family computer. A boxy beige computer and monitor that was loud when it ran. The classic dial-up sound winding in my ear at every internet connection.
As a teen in 1997, with brand new access to a computer and extreme curiosity, I got to work.
I was a shy girl, so the internet was exactly what I needed. A way to socialize in my comfort zone, while remaining in my home where my mom often controlled my movement. It is no surprise to me now that I ended up in a Yahoo chat room almost nightly dedicated to the pop band Hanson.
The online Hanson world was a wild environment with people in the chat using handles mixed with lyrics and band member names. I was Sarah_1983. I quickly made friends with another Sarah. Through Sarah, I was introduced to her new friends, three brothers sharing the handle bmms3. I don’t remember how it came to be known or discussed, but a few people from Yahoo Hanson chat room became friends in a little group with the understanding that bmms3 was the Hanson brothers themselves. It was our secret. I added bmms3 to my Yahoo Messenger and the request was returned. We chatted often. It was my understanding that most of the time I was talking to the middle brother, Taylor. Or rather, the person on the other end was pretending to be Taylor Hanson most of the time. Our conversations were teenage chats, sharing stories and common interests. We were online friends.
I was embarrassed to be a Hanson fan in real life. I was worried I would be made fun of at school by my friends. In the evenings when I logged into Yahoo Messenger, I was escaping into a community where I could be myself.
It was exciting to think I could be talking to the real members of Hanson. It gave me butterflies. I hoped it was real but the mystery made me feel gullible. I knew catfishing was possible, although the term catfish didn’t emerge until over a decade later. We called it “posing”.
One day, months into our online friendship, I had a wildly intrusive thought. In search of answers, I wondered if I could guess their password and get into their Yahoo email. The truth was, I was dying for certainty. I needed to know who was on the other end of bmms3. Someone from our friend group? The other Sarah? It killed me to not know for sure.
So there I went typing away.
Screen name: bmms3
Password? hanson
Password incorrect. I tried again.
Screen name: bmms3
Password? itzhanson
I was in.
Breaking into someone’s email is an exceptionally invasive thing to do. Despite that, the thrill is immediate when the page starts loading and you know you’re in. What I was doing was wrong but this was someone claiming to be a celebrity, someone I was convinced was lying to me. I told myself, this is justified. You want answers, don’t you?
When I browsed through the sent and received folders of their email, I found nothing unusual. Normal email exchanges between “Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson” and their friends. I couldn’t believe someone would make up such an elaborate hoax to go as far as curating an email inbox with an extremely obvious password. I don’t remember everything I saw but I do remember an exchange between Taylor and a girl with whom he was discussing how a quick clip of her ended up in their “Tulsa Tokyo and the Middle of Nowhere” tour documentary. It seemed real.
I logged out without clarity.
Surely this isn’t the real band. Surely this is all an elaborate game someone is playing on naive fans, myself included.
Shortly after this event, a message flashed on Yahoo Messenger from bmms3.
“Did you break into our email?”
My heart dropped while simultaneously speeding up.
I did. I did something bad. And they knew.
“No, of course not”
Suddenly, bmms3 logged off.
For good.
I was filled with regret, half because it was a terrible thing to do and half because I’d never know the truth. On top of that, my online friend group was gone. My virtual existence as I knew it ended as fast as a door slamming in my face.
Just before bmms3 discovered my antics, I was given Taylor’s new private Yahoo handle: jordy_tater. Jordan is the first name of Taylor Hanson.
Weeks or even months later, I thought of a plan. I logged out of Sarah_1983 and logged into a new Yahoo handle I created: for_the_luv_of_mike.
I mentally adjusted my details ever so slightly to create a persona that was true to me but distant enough from Sarah_1983.
I was going to catfish my catfish and try to get my answers.
I sat at the homemade desk my dad made, and sent jordy_tater an email. I pretended my little brother’s name was Jordan and I was confused thinking that this was his new email address.
When the reply arrived in my inbox, the person on the other side introduced themself as Jordan. I gave a name that didn’t belong to me and apologized for my “error”.
The conversation began.
Quickly, our emails turned to frequent chats and the ruse began to fade away. I was always fighting with my mom. Jordan was willing to listen. He often encouraged me to talk to my mom and try to resolve our issues.
Jordan and I didn’t talked about the band Hanson. Our friendship had nothing to do with my being a fan of Hanson. He always showed care and compassion toward me and people in general. Jordan was a friend whose advice I valued.
I remember laughing at Jordan as he questioned my handle one night, having never heard the expression “for the love of Mike” before. I remember my joy weeks later when he messaged me to say he was nosily reading his sister’s book over her shoulder when he saw it right there in the text: for the love of Mike. He told me he burst out laughing, instantly thinking about me.
It no longer mattered who was on the other end of that grey chat screen in the blue glow of the boxy beige computer late at night, in the living room of my family home in northern Alberta, Canada. I created this whole scheme to get answers and it turned out I never really needed them.
Our online friendship was brief. We naturally faded from each other’s lives within a year or so. The communication waned and the email chains became more and more distant. Eventually jordy_tater never logged in again and Yahoo closed for_the_luv_of_mike due to inactivity. By the time I was 19, the internet had removed all proof from my fingertips that the friendship ever existed.
It vanished. We vanished.
