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" \nBy now you&amp;#039;ve probably heard about the craziness surrounding Heisman Trophy contender and Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te&amp;#039;o. If not, here&amp;#039;s a recap: Earlier this year, Te&amp;#039;o received a lot of attention after the news broke that his grandmother died, followed hours later by his 22-year-old girlfriend, Lennay Kekua. Kekua, who Te&amp;#039;o called &amp;quot;the love of my life,&amp;quot; had reportedly been suffering from leukemia, but had insisted that he continue playing football, no matter what happened to her. Soon after hearing about the deaths, Te&amp;#039;o led Notre Dame to a 20-3 victory against Michigan State. It was heartbreaking and inspirational\u2014and people were riveted. But, hold the phone: According to a new story released by Deadspin, Lennay Kekua never existed\u2014she was part of an elaborate hoax that Te&amp;#039;o may or may not have been in on. Lennay had a Twitter page, pics stolen from another girl that were allegedly of her, and fake sister who tweeted as well, so a lot of effort went into making this seem real. Many people are arguing that Te&amp;#039;o was in on the hoax to raise his profile for the Heisman and the upcoming NFL draft, but Te&amp;#039;o now says that they had an online relationship and that he was totally duped. (You can get all the juicy deets here.) There are still SO many questions as to what the eff really happened and it&amp;#039;s sketchy at best (Te&amp;#039;o is on the record as saying they met after a football game; now he says they never met in person. We mean...was he doing The Te&amp;#039;o a lot during their relationship?). But this whole scandal got us thinking about honesty and the Internet.  If Te&amp;#039;o made up Lennay Kekua, did he really think he could get away with it? Whether it happens right away or years later, everyone gets caught when they lie thanks to online pics, tweets, and public records. Whether we&amp;#039;re calling out &amp;quot;sick&amp;quot; from work or telling a big whopper, we all know it&amp;#039;s harder to get away with lies now\u2026so is the &amp;#039;net making us more honest? Yes and no, says Jean Twenge, PhD, coauthor of The Narcissism Epidemic. &amp;quot;Between Twitter and Facebook, the Internet makes us be more honest about what we&amp;#039;re doing and where we&amp;#039;ve been,&amp;quot; she says. We know that it&amp;#039;s a bad idea to call out sick\u2014and then post a pic of ourselves at the beach\u2014because it ups the odds that we&amp;#039;ll get caught. On the flip side, her research has found that narcissism is going up and, with that, we feel more confident that we&amp;#039;re the exception to the rule. Basically, we know the risks of getting caught in a lie, but do it anyway because, on some level, we think we&amp;#039;re special and can get away with more. There&amp;#039;s also this compulsion of sorts to Tweet and Facebook everything we do that comes back to bite us in the butt when we lie, too. Why do we feel the need to publicly write everything we do? On some level, it feels like if we didn&amp;#039;t post a pic of something or write about a cool event we just went to, it&amp;#039;s not as important\u2014even though you know your mom could see it and realize you didn&amp;#039;t come home to visit because you &amp;quot;had to work all weekend.&amp;quot; No doubt a lot of interesting info is going to come out about the Manti Te&amp;#039;o scandal. But, if he was in on it, we&amp;#039;re floored. Did he really think he could get away with that? Apparently the answer is yes.  Want more from Korin? Follow her on Twitter. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/advice/a4148/manti-teo-lennay-kekua/>