On March 6, 2013 a mommy blogger's post about dieting went viral on Buzzfeed and somewhat popular blog Mamamia. However, in as quickly as the post went viral did it become a target of scrutiny, and that scrutiny has revealed some glaring questions about Australian "blogger" Amy Cheney. Is this blogger defrauding her readers' emotions by pretending her seven-year-old daughter wrote an interesting list about dieting? It certainly looks like it, and training as a criminal profiler and analyst of investigative evidence makes it easy to point out some of the glaring issues in the "diyet" list that is currently making viral rounds around the internet.
It certainly does appear that Amy Cheney is feeding off gullible readers who are openly sharing their body image issues in response to her recent post about her seven-year-old daughter. But are her intentions pure? Possibly. She shares many valid points in this post, but at the same time she appears to be taking a somewhat dramatic, theatrical approach to shunning society for making her daughter want to eat "appals" and "keewee froots."
Handwriting analysis is just one of the many things studied by crime buffs, especially myself. That's why it was immediately apparent that the list allegedly written by a seven-year-old girl just stood out as fraudulent. Notice how this girl alternates between using the number three properly, and then backwards. There are fluctuations between cursive and print in the list, and there stress marks on some of the letters, clearly displaying that the writer was using deliberate strokes as if trying to keep their penmanship at a child-like quality. In particular this is noticeable on the the Gs, Ys and Rs in the list.
Furthermore, Amy Cheney's seven-year-old daughter appears to spell in the same comical way as the popular internet "LOLcats" that are famous for the phrase "I can haz cheeseburger?". However, for having such poor penmanship and spelling for a seven-year-old child, this girl appears to have perfect grasp on the use and look of the "backslash." She also appears to know how to make the perfect check mark. The grandiose hook of her lower-case "F" in "2 keewee froots" also denotes the possibility that an adult wrote it.
It's not illegal for Amy Cheney to pretend her child wrote this, but it would be dishonest to her readers who opened up about their own body issues in response. I reached out to Amy Cheney on this Facebook page and pointed out to her all of the different errors that made the list look as though she is the one who created it. Instead of responding she chose to delete the article that she wrote off of her own Facebook page, and then refused to answer any questions. Does this mean she admits to being a blogging fraud?
It would be nice if Amy Cheney took to her blog to address this issue. Did she fake her daughter's "diyet" list or is this "child development" expert neglecting her child's education? This story is gripping media headlines right now, so it's a shame to see such a potentially scandalous situation grip the gullible masses -- when anyone with investigative training can see that there are some issues to be had with this list.
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