That 'Tradwife' Account Folks Couldn't Stop Reading? Fake

For the past few years, the "tradwife" (short for "traditional wife") phenomenon has been taking off online, drawing gawkers intrigued by an ultraconservative lifestyle in which women and men adhere to old-school gender roles, with the woman in the relationship cheerfully tending house, cooking, and raising their many children. An internet detective, however, has now exposed one of those popular accounts, run under the handle "Patriarchy Hannah," as fake—though it's still not entirely clear who's behind it.

• The facade crumbles: NBC News reports that earlier this month X user Ryan Duff started suspecting the person running the account wasn't actually a right-wing mom of 14 married to a guy named Tony, as she's said over the years. Duff pored over images that "Hannah" had posted online, property records, and obituaries to slowly piece together that she didn't appear to be who she said she was (see his initial tweet thread here). He says his search led him instead to an unmarried 37-year-old Arkansas woman named Jennifer, though images of the home that "Hannah" posted turned out to show a residence in Louisiana.

• Confession: Soon enough, the account holder, whoever it is, came clean. "I just want to say that I am sorry for the lies I told and the hurt I caused," the account owner wrote on X, before deleting the account with 27,000 followers. "I never intended for this account to become as big as it did, and once things started snowballing, I enjoyed the relationships I'd built and didn't know how to put an end to it." The person added they wouldn't be returning to X, and that "the bottom line is that I am not who I presented [myself] to be." They also implored the public to stop contacting their family.
• Reaction: Response to Duff's findings ranged from fascination to shock and anger from those who avidly followed the account. Others pointed out how gullible many were for falling for it. "We as humans generally trust in someone as who they say they are," psychotherapist Stephanie Sarkis tells USA Today. "So, when we find out that's not true, it brings up a lot of questions about human nature and also people feeling taken advantage of."

More theories here and here. (More social media stories.)