The Curious Case of Kacyee Nicole
By Mimi Lamarre
It’s 1998 — Y2K anxieties are simmering, Leonardo and Kate are stealing hearts in Titanic, Britney is belting out ‘…Baby One More Time,’ and across America the sounds of dial-up tones signal another night on AIM.
In San Diego, John Halcyon Styn walks onto his sunny front porch and down the steps of the Victorian home-turned-duplex where he lives. The twenty-six year-old with long, curly brown hair straightens his bag and unlocks his car parked on the curb. It’s an Integra that he’s painted baby blue with the license plate “DEF MANE,” his amateur rap moniker that references his voluminous hair.
He starts the engine and makes the twenty-minute drive to San Diego City College, where he takes classes in desktop publishing on the school’s clunky Macintosh computers.
He started attending the school only a few weeks before, when, on the precipice of going back to graduate school to become a licensed psychologist, he had come to the realization that he wanted to learn about… computers, those magical machines of hope and infinite knowledge. And if John stands for anything, it’s the idea that life’s too short not to do what you love.
And so here he was, cruising along on a stretch of San Diego highway, the windows rolled down and his hair flowing.
Why the shift from psychology to an *ahem* less traditional path, you ask? Because lately, the only thing that sparks real joy in John is publishing his zine, Prehensile Tales, which he started writing while he was working as a counselor at a group home. Brimming with his trademark wit, its audience is small, but the happiness it gives him is anything but. It is smart, and funny, perhaps a bit off-kilter – not unlike John.
John initially made the zine by good old-fashioned copy-and-pasting, xeroxing it out to his meager mailing list for the total price of $100. But as his knowledge of desktop publishing has grown, he has begun integrating more digital tools to create it.
After the day’s classes have concluded, he walks out of the City College building and drives to the call center where has a part-time job. In between calls, he secretly distributes Prehensile Tales to any willing customer. Handing it out is a dance that he has to play under tables and around corners to avoid the watchful eyes of the higher-ups.
That afternoon, John is making the prerequisite small talk with his coworkers around their grey cubicles when a voice cuts through the morass.
“John!” the voice calls. John looks around to find the vice president of the call center standing with his hands on his hips, staring watchfully out at his employees. His gaze locked on John, he asks, “Will you come in here, please?”
John walks sheepishly back to the office, trying to avoid the gaze of his curious coworkers. He walks in and shuts the door behind him. “Yes, sir?”
“John,” the middle-aged man says, already sitting behind his desk. “I know what you’ve been doing.”
John’s mix of youthful naivety and bold self-assurance lets him pull off a look of innocent confusion — What could you possibly mean? — his expression seems to ask. But then the man lifts a stack of papers from his desk, and John’s stomach drops. In the man’s hand is Prehensile Tales.
“You really shouldn’t be distributing these here,” the man says, wagging the pages at him scornfully.
John’s heart pumps nervously in his chest. He tries to muster up the courage to form an excuse. But lying has never been in his nature. Instead, he lowers his head, bracing for the inevitable blow.
“I’m not angry,” the man says. He sits back in his chair with dramatic flair. “I keep hearing about ‘The Internet.’ I was thinking you should figure out how to put your little zine online. And once you’ve learned, you could build our company a home page, too.”
John blanches. He has absolutely no experience online and no idea what the man before him is asking.
But it certainly sounds better than answering phones.
John’s Zine, Prehensile Tales. Courtesy of John Halcyon Styn.
In 1998, the internet is still more curiosity than commonplace. Fewer than five million websites exist and most of them are little more than static pages of pixelated graphics, scrolling marquees, and links stacked like filing cabinets. Search engines are clunky, dominated by names like AltaVista, Yahoo!, and Lycos. Netscape Navigator is the browser of choice, and “Web Page of the Day” features highlighted personal homepages filled with glittering GIFs, animated under-construction signs, and guestbooks where visitors can ‘sign in.’ The technology itself is born from ARPANET’s government-funded experiments in the late 1960s and standardized by Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the World Wide Web less than ten years earlier. To most Americans, it is still a novelty, something you access with patience and a phone line, and the constant battle cry of, ‘Hang up the phone, I’m online!’ To a rare few, though, it feels like standing at the edge of a brand-new frontier.
And there are the frontierfolk at the precipice, gazing out at an undiscovered landscape and believing that it is their inheritance – explorers like John. His tools for exploration are an AOL CD-rom and his parents’ landline. He’s learning as he goes, his mind brimming with the possibilities.
As he learns, John begins to publish his own zine online. He lands on a website name: Prehensile.com, and codes it using another new skill, HTML. While before it might have cost him money, now it is free to publish and accessible to the entire world. John can hardly believe it.
A few months later, when John has built both an online zine and a home page out for the call center, his boss asks him to build out an online mall for Sony, one of their main clients. A computer consultant – to use another metaphor, a pirate in this new land of uncharted waters, who just so happens to arrive at John's office with a literal parrot on his shoulder – helps John create it.
John even learns to code a chat forum on his own website so that people can leave comments and provide feedback on his latest posts. His audience is people from all around the U.S., many of whom engage with his posts with kindness and interest. His joy, it seems, is boundless, multiplying with each hit on the site.
And, then, on a day like any other, he opens his chat forum to find a message from a co-founder of a website called CollegeClub.com, an embryonic website aiming to connect college kids across the U.S.
“Hi, John,” the message begins, from a man by the name of Bennett Fisher.
And just like that, John’s fate is sealed.
Not long after John is clicking “open” on a message from Bennett Fisher, another young woman sits at a computer on the east side of Indianapolis. Her name is Saundra Mitchell, and the machine before her is what she likes to call “a frankenputer,” assembled painstakingly from a series of parts, thanks to the expert hands of her stepfather, an IBM engineer well-versed in computer science.
While others in Indianapolis are still unaware of this special form of magic, their small family – Saundra, her partner, her mother, and her stepfather – relish in it, each member spending hours exploring the nooks and crannies of the internet.
As the caretaker to her first grade child, being online is a bit of an escape – an opportunity for Saundra to get outside of the bounds of the house and explore. And those trips take her far and wide. It seems just yesterday that she would have had to make a pen pal in Japan in order to get the anime picture which she desired. Now, she can download them in a day.
Most recently, Saundra has taught herself HTML, which she uses to set up her very own online journal. In between playtime, nap time and dinners, she posts stories, fan fictions, and screenplays. In fact, she has just sold her first screenplay the year before, and she dreams of becoming a real, famous writer, and she believes, wholeheartedly, that this is the way to do it. The internet, for all intents and purposes, is her golden ticket.
Socializing online comes so much easier to Saundra than it does in real life – she’s always been better at writing than she is at speaking. And she has many online friends to show for it.
That day, she sweeps her dirty-blonde hair over one shoulder, and logs on to chat with her close internet friend, Becky Edwards. Becky works as a nurse assistant, and they often trade messages in between journal posts. Working on her online journal sucks Saundra into a vortex where there is no time or place, no beginning or end, just the words on a screen and messages ping-ponged back-and-forth.
What could have been seconds or minutes or hours later, she looks at the clock, and realizes with a start that it is dinner time. Another meal to be prepared, more chores to be done and grubby toddler fingers to wipe clean.
She sighs heavily, switches off her computer, and gets back to the work of real life.
Back in California, Bennett Fisher invites John to join CollegeClub under the title “community manager” — the go-to person for building buzz and keeping students plugged in. John quickly discovers that CollegeClub isn’t just another website: it’s one of the first large-scale online hangouts built just for college students. Think of it as a mash-up of a campus quad, a group chat, and an early prototype of Facebook. Members can send private messages, drop voice mails, and dive into lively message boards like The Arts, Politics, Pre-College, Health & Fitness, and Fun & Games. It’s the dawn of online community life — and John’s right at the center of it.
John accepts the new job without hesitation, leaving his old boss at the call center grasping at straws the way he once clutched Prehensile Tales.
And soon, John’s eccentricity is reflected on the site; CollegeClub is splashed with bright banners pushing the latest promos — like one on February 7, 2000, shouting in bold red letters: “5 Alanis Morissette Videos – Only $9.99!” At any moment, users can spin a pinwheel-style icon labeled “Who’s Online?” to see who else is hanging out on the site in real time.
In CollegeClub’s case, the old cliche rings true: there’s something for everyone. John is instantly enamoured by the community and the thousands of people talking to one another across the country.
CollegeClub’s office is in a high-rise in downtown San Diego, about an eight-minute drive from his house. On John’s first day, he arrives early, walks onto the office floor, meets almost all of the other twenty-or-so employees, and drops his bag beside his cubicle with a satisfying thunk! He turns on the personal computer lying behind his desk.
He smiles to himself, and thinks, Let’s begin.
He dives into his new role with fervor. He sends out newsletters. He assembles a group of volunteer hosts, all of whom are in charge of monitoring the site and making sure that it is up to snuff. The company plasters his face on its marketing campaigns.
An advertisement for CollegeClub, featuring John Halcyon Styn. Courtesy of John Halcyon Styn.
He often works late, and even sleeps at his desk. He likes it when his co-workers see him disheveled, hair still mussed from sleeping sitting up in his chair. He is a true believer, a disciple, a workhorse chugging along in service of mankind. The workplace, he finds, has that kind of ethos: not cult-ish but not not cult-ish.
The site gains in popularity, usership, and investments. It seems to be almost everyday that John meets a new coworker, each of them as happy to start his or her new job as he once was. Before he knows it, there are almost 200 employees, many of them smiling twenty-somethings like him, evangelists of this new form of communication. Every last one is a committed disciple to this community, in the way that CollegeClub can unite people for the betterment of society. John’s brother, Jim, even comes to work at the company in 2000.
Some months in, John looks around to find that his most of his friends are either here, in this office, typing away at their personal computers, or online, in the web forums. And he is completely and totally fine with that.
One morning like any other, John arrives early at the office and logs onto the site. He presses the large rectangular power button on the beige tower that is his computer, and it responds with a satisfying click. A low, steady hum fills the room as the cooling fan kicks in, joined by the soft whir of the hard drive spinning up.
The monitor — a bulky structure that takes up most of his desk — flickers from black to a deep grey, then flashes bright for a moment before settling into a dim glow. After a short pause, the desktop appears, filled with chunky icons: “My Computer,” “Recycle Bin,” “AOL” and “Netscape Navigator.”
He clicks the internet icon and types in the URL: http://www.CollegeClub.com.
The website which he holds so dear appears before him, with its flashing blue, white and orange icons. Shop. Auctions. Photo Gallery. Discount Card. Msg. Boards. Horoscopes. At the top appears its tagline: The World’s Largest College Community.
He skims through the messages and late-night chats he missed, then drifts over to his usual message boards.
Multiple volunteer hosts that John has enlisted have sent him the name of a CollegeClub user: Kaycee Nicole. The hosts have all written to tell John that Kaycee is the perfect candidate to become a fellow volunteer host, one of the many people tasked with monitoring chat rooms and message boards in given topic areas on the website.
Posts on CollegeClub can occasionally border on the risque: under the “Fun&Games” section on Nov. 20, 2000, for instance, there’s even a post entitled “The Wrong Thong: Panty Raider: From here to immaturity, making it hard to be proud of being a gamer.” Because… what else could you possibly talk about in the world of gaming?
The job of every volunteer host is to ensure that this material does not veer into inappropriate content – and the volunteer hosts John already employ believe that Kaycee would be perfect to do so. Each volunteer host spends hours a day engaging with users and making sure that they are happy with the site, and the hosts write that Kaycee already spends a lot of her time online.
John looks through Kaycee’s profile, squinting slightly at his screen as he sees the pictures that she has posted of herself.
Photos of Kaycee originally posted to her Geocities website. Source: Internet Archive
Kaycee’s profile name on the site is KuteBabe, and her tagline is “Outgoing, athletic, free-spirited soul with a tender heart.” She lists her body type as athletic, her hair as blonde, her eyes as hazel. Her favorite movie is Armageddon and her favorite CD is Savage Garden.
She’s a small town Kansas native and she loves basketball. “I was born in Northern Oklahoma, and just recently moved to Kansas,” she writes. “I'm a simple country girl I guess, but I love to travel. ;-)”
Her best date? “Well I like to spend quality time together but if I had to pick a *best* date...I'd say after seeing a movie we went on a romantic walk. Just the moonlight, the shimmering lake, and us! *w*.”
As for her pet peeves: “Ppl who have no remorse if they hurt others, and also ppl who think they are better then anyone else.”
John clicks back through her posts – many of them are about her home life, her friends after school, her sports likes and dislikes. She has, like so many others, built a small world for herself on CollegeClub.
She looks like the kind of girl who would be popular in high school, filled with extracurriculars and friendships and whispers behind closed palms about the new cute boy in class. And, as much as John loves his compatriots on CollegeClub, not many of them are what you would describe as popular in real life.
Kaycee’s robust life in the real world could provide her with the social awareness and perspective to implement CollegeClub’s code of conduct, John thinks.
But John knows there is the small matter of Kaycee being a mere 17 years old. Was she mature enough to monitor the behavior of adults? Was it inappropriate to ask her to do so? Looking deeper into his computer, staring at his screen, John thinks harder. He rereads her posts.
The next day, in one of CollegeClub’s conference rooms, John proposes it all to his bosses: the pros and cons of having such a young woman be a leader on their site. They all come to the same conclusion: if they are a website meant to be aimed at college kids, shouldn’t it be just fine that someone around that age help be in charge of the site?
And so, on a day when the final hours of 1999 seem to be fading and a new era hovers on the horizon, John asks Kaycee to become a volunteer.
She, in her teenage excitement, agrees — whole-heartedly, kindly. Just as John had, what now seems like a lifetime ago, she steps into her role with gusto. A cliche, and a universal truth: friendship takes all forms, and often comes in the most unlikely of places. John and Kaycee become the fastest of friends, trading back-and-forth messages from Kansas to California. Occasionally, she calls, her voice coming across like the sound of windchimes through the phone.
As the work continues, John comes to realize that Kaycee is just as smart and effervescent as he had thought her to be when he first read through her profile. She shares insight about users and spends hours each day online. She even tells John about her real life – or, at least, her life outside the confines of CollegeClub. They trade phone calls criss-crossing from Kansas to California – one time, Kaycee’s mom, Debbie, gets on the line, too, speaking boisterously with Kaycee in overlapping tones of conviviality.
Kaycee sends gifts to the CollegeClub headquarters, too – axe body spray, baseball hats, and all kinds of gifts and candies to John’s brother, Jim, who has gotten to know her, too.
The hat and frame that Kaycee Nicole provided to Jim and John Halcyon Styn. Source: courtesy of Jim Styn.
In the framed photo that Kaycee sends to Jim, she wears a black, halter-neck dress, and holds a bouquet of red roses. She is beautiful, young, and happy. She sends two hats with the letters “KC” emblazoned on them. And, in white lettering, she has written in a permanent marker on the hats blue brims:
With love, Kaycee.
By the late ’90s, John, Jim, Kaycee, and the rest of the CollegeClub crew weren’t the only true believers in the power of the internet. 1999 was shaping up to be a watershed year in the digital revolution. Teenagers Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker launched Napster, the free music file-sharing service that sent shockwaves through the music industry—and straight into the boardrooms of furious record executives. That same year, Wi-Fi made its debut, untethering computers from cords, and Pyra Labs’ Blogger turned everyday users into the first wave of online storytellers.
One of those personal bloggers dutifully chronicling his life for the world to see is Matthew Haughey, a computer programmer working on the lush, sunshine saturated campus of UCLA. He’s the prototypical computer programmer: tall and thin with brown hair and brown eyes. Matt is a web designer, and UCLA, in a phase of expansion around the dot-com-boom, encourages him to build out online interfaces to his heart’s content.
He fully immerses himself into this online world with fervor – and subscribes to long email chains where enthusiasts trade the latest tricks. In the late ‘90s, only a handful of people — fewer than twenty — even use the phrase “web blog,” and some proudly tuck links to their own blogs into their email signatures.
This small, tight-knit circle of bloggers feels like a club of digital crusaders — savvy, eccentric, and deeply enthusiastic about the web’s possibilities. And among them is none other than John Halcyon Styn. Matt had first crossed paths with him online and frequently sees him at festivals attended by bloggers, like South by Southwest. He finds John to be sweet, open, and perhaps a bit naive.
In 1999, Matt, following in his online friends’ footsteps, quickly realizes he wants something bigger when it comes to blogging: a shared space where people can discuss, debate, and discover together. Out of that vision comes MetaFilter, a new website which he codes himself. At first, only a few hundred people join. But just a year later, in 2000, the site is named “Cool Site of the Day,” and membership swells to nearly 3,000.
At its core, MetaFilter is framed as a community weblog, like CollegeClub: any member can post a link to something interesting — news articles, obscure websites, essays, odd corners of the web — and then others can discuss it in long comment threads. The community comes to pride itself on being thoughtful and self-policing.
Six years before Reddit is founded, the platform is its great-great-great grandfather – brimming with explorative and investigative ideas. And Matt, sitting in his Southern California office, is completely thrilled by the community that comes to form around the site – not unlike how John Halycon Styn feels about CollegeClub.
Speaking of: about 120 miles away from where Matt sits, John is spending yet another late night in the office. As he stares at his screen, his friend Kaycee sends a message asking if he can talk. He dials her phone number, just as he has many times before.
“Hi, John,” Kaycee says on the other end of the line. Her voice comes out high and breathy, not as twinged with teenage joy and excitement as normal.
“Hey, Kaycee,” he smiles, placing his phone harder into his ear. Of all of the parts he loves about his job, this is his favorite.
“Listen,” she begins, her voice hesitant. “I have to tell you something.”
“Okay,” he hesitates.
She comes out with it. “I have cancer. Leukemia.”
John’s breath catches in his throat. His mind reels.
“What – what do you mean?” he stutters. “How do you know?”
“I’ve been diagnosed,” she says simply. “But, don’t worry, I’m going to beat this.”
He swallows hard, eyes fixed on the bulky computer glowing before him. In all his young life, he has never known anyone with a cancer diagnosis, and he has no idea what to say.
The hesitation of the dial up. The whir of the fan. The beep of the computer. He wants to smash all of it, to place his fist into the place where the blue-and-orange letters of CollegeClub normally appear.
But, instead, he swallows and says, “Okay. Okay. What can I do?”
In 2000, the speculation begins to brim about the dot-com bubble burst. Startups fail. Stock prices crash. And investors start to slowly grow wary. By August of that year, CollegeClub, with ad revenue and investor funding drying up, files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy – and is eventually acquired by StudentAdvantage for $7 million cash and $1.5 million in stock. While the capital flowing into technology in previous years was fast forward, someone has hit the slow motion button. But that someone forgot to press pause on the transfer of Americans’ lives onto their computers, the slow gluing of people's eyes to a screen. Despite it all, engagement on CollegeClub continues to be high, reaching three million users.
It’s no coincidence that Kaycee’s story found its audience online. In a moment when so many were beginning to live — and feel — online, her voice fit perfectly into the growing hum of the digital world. Her struggle, her optimism, her vulnerability — all of it resonated in a space hungry for human connection. What started as a late-night phone call between two friends becomes something larger: a shared story unfolding online. A Toronto-based blogger named Randall van der Woning meets Kaycee’s mother, Debbie, through CitizenX, a community site curated by John Halcyon Styn. Moved by their courage, Randall offers them a platform. Together, they create Living Colours — a blog where Kaycee’s voice echoes across the growing web, and strangers gather to listen, to comfort, to believe.
Kaycee’s very first post set the tone in August 2000:
I’m beginning a new, exciting journey. It’s a journey into my survival. I want to win! I’ll fight to the finish!
From that moment, the blog becomes not just a diary, but a beacon — alive with the force of her will and the flood of compassion that comes pouring in from readers who suddenly feel they know her. She calls herself “The Warrior,” after one of her favorite songs.
Kaycee’s supporters shower their warrior with praise, and with gifts – natural vitamins from Randall, a baseball cap from Tim in Canada, and from John Halcyon Styn, a box of hats which he and other CollegeClub users sent to keep her bald head warm.
John had originally put the ask out on CollegeClub for users to send him hats to then send on to Kaycee. Those hats arrive in San Diego slowly through UPS parcels and FedEx boxes.
He ends up sending around 15 hats onto Kaycee, which she receives with gratitude. She writes on her blog on August 18, 2000:
There was also a big box of goodies from my sweet and sexy Styn brothers, Jim and John. It was loaded with pics, CDs, T-shirts, caps, personal notes AND the most awesome multicolored Court Jester hat. I will definitely be wearing those caps and hats proudly.
Each follower and user begs to give Kaycee more. They want to help her, to lift her up just as she has lifted them. On August 19, 2000, she and her mom, Debbie, return to her house to find a small package on their doorstep. To the Mother of Kaycee, wishing you many years of happiness with your daughter. Happy Birthday. Signed: someone who noticed. Inside the box was a 14 karat gold cross necklace with diamonds and her birthstone. Kaycee writes effusively:
Thank you for your words, and for giving my mom such a beautiful gift. See? Life is totally mysterious and awesome.
But, then, there are the devastating details, the blogs written in hospital beds in the midst of a cataclysmic disease. Just a month after she starts the blog, on September 3, 2000, Kaycee outlines the devastating toll that chemotherapy is taking on her body in a searing post about her time in the hospital. She is having trouble eating, her body plagued by the “poison” that is the drugs trying to fight her cancer.
Supporters send Kaycee long e-mails, like Patty, akaLeafqueen, who sends an ecard that says “Sunshine for Today,” and Travis at Texas A&M whose note “fills her with smiles.” On Sept. 5, 2000, Kaycee writes that her mom has just brought a stack of papers and gently set them in her lap.
“What’s this? Did you write chapter one of a novel?” Kaycee asks.
Debbie winks at her daughter, “I only wish I wrote as well as these wonderful friends do.”
Realizing that they are all kind notes from her pals, Kaycee writes to her followers in gratitude:
It was all e-mail to me. I read each one. I laughed. I cried. I closed my eyes and said a prayer to thank God for these awesome friends who were filling my heart with love and strength. I feel so touched by their words. Some are my regular e-mail pals. Some are new. Some of them I know their names. Some of them I don't. All of them are special to me. If I could I'd HUG every one of them….
I need this communication. I can't even tell you what it means. Think about your life. You're out there having fun, coming and going, doing the things you love, hanging out with your friends, playing sports or just chillin'. Then *BAM* you're immobile, your whole routine vanishes, and you can't leave.
As each user tries to figure out what they can do to help her, they begin to think bigger.. Surely the costs of cancer treatment on a middle-class family must be staggering? But Kaycee denies their offers, saying on March 1, 2001:
First off, I sure wasn't raised to ask perfect strangers to give me money. Secondly, if I did do that I don't think I'd feel too good about what I'd bought with money I asked strangers for. I'm not sure I'd even feel I deserved it since I hadn't worked for it myself. That's all way too easy. And it's not even close to being right.
But you say, "Hey KC you have t-shirts for sale on your site." Yup, I do. But they're at cost, I don't make anything from them. And if I asked for money for anything, I'd ask you to donate it yourself to any number of awesome charities.
They all, of course, adore her for her selflessness, and continue to want to know what more they can do. They are all so lucky to have been brought to Kaycee Nicole by the magic of the internet, so blessed to have read her words.
And then comes 2001 — the internet’s next chapter. Wikipedia goes live. Broadband takes hold. One innovation after another, the web keeps expanding, giving voice to those who need it most: people like Kaycee, navigating illness, uncertainty, or isolation, finding connection where the real world sometimes can’t reach.
On Randall van der Woning’s suggestion, Kaycee’s mother Debbie also starts her own webblog. She writes beautiful, detailed accounts of the pain experienced raising a daughter who she knows will probably die. In one, she writes:
I told her I loved her and everything was going to be alright. She was told not to talk or move around. Green, glassy eyes looked at me as blood trickled out of her mouth. The urge to hold her as I had when she was a child was fierce.
For John, it’s devastating but also strangely hopeful. The internet, for all its chaos, suddenly feels like a place where love and care can live.
Then, in March 2001, everything seems to turn. Kaycee posts that she’s beaten the cancer. She’s been discharged from the hospital. Her entries glow with gratitude, joy, relief. For those following along, John included, it feels like a miracle.
But the relief doesn’t last long. Just weeks later, in April, Kaycee tells Randall, one of her closest online allies, that her liver is failing, that she’s dying. The news hits like a jolt. It doesn’t make sense. It feels too sudden, too cruel.
Randall quickly posts the news on Kaycee’s blog, before calling her and saying that he would like to visit her. Kaycee, so sick and close to death, says that she would love for him to visit. First, though, she has one, final dying wish: she wants to drive to Florida with her mother, her best friend, to visit a family friend in Miami, and to see the ocean.
That week, Kaycee writes of laying in the backseat of a car, watching the blue skies and clouds above her while her mother drives. Even still, she writes that she looks forward to going home — to see her little brother compete in his last track meet, to celebrate Mother’s Day at her grandma’s house, and to get to see her uncle beat her aunt in badminton. She wants to watch the peonies bloom, and all traces of winter disappear.
As Kaycee travels, John imagines the hats he had sent nestled in the corner of her hospital room in Kansas — filling her with the hope which she so desperately needs. They will keep her head warm. They will provide her with the strength to walk again, to make her way back onto the basketball court. She will live.
But, then, it happens. On May 16, 2001, Kaycee’s blog is updated with a photo of a pink rose with a black background.
Dearest Kaycee, Your Living Colours will brighten our days for the rest of our lives. Thank you for the love, the joy, the laughter and the tears. We shall love you always and forever. Kaycee Nicole passed away May 14, 2001, at the age of 19.
The friend that John found in the most unlikely, or perhaps likely, of places is now – utterly and completely – gone. He cannot believe it. He is wracked by grief, crumpled into a ball so tight that he can’t breathe.
Just like Kaycee had before him, he channels his grief, and anger, and sadness,and love, and lust for life into a blog:
When a 19 year old friend dies, you get to thinking about death.
Actually, I did quite a bit of thinking about death when she first got sick.
I remember talking to her on the phone. An 18 year old girl faced with death.
I didn’t know what to say.
It’s all gonna be okay, just didn’t fit.
It all seemed so unfair.
I am thankful that she fought so hard and shared so much during her final months. Part of me thinks ‘Oh, how tragic!’but the other part of me says, ‘What a full life!’
If everyone could produce as much love in their 50, 60, 100 year lives as Kaycee did in 19, then this world would be in pretty good shape.
I believe Kaycee’s life was exactly as it was supposed to be. She lived fully and inspired thousands to do the same. I know my life is richer, my appreciation for life more profound, and my tolerance for taking things for granted has decreased.
To give that gift to thousands of people? What a worthwhile life! We should all aspire to making so much of our existence.
So am I sad? Of course. I cried when she first told me she was sick. I cried countless times during her sickness. I cried when I told her goodbye. And I cried when I heard she died.
But I am also relieved. She felt so much pressure to hold on. She endured so much pain and discomfort. Her strong soul imprisoned in a weak body. She was ready to die. And she did so with a profound grace.
So many of us are afraid of death. Even though it is the one known thing in our future, we still approach it with fear. We run from what is inevitable.
Kaycee fought as much as she could, but accepted her death, as well.
I like to think of death as a doorway. We can be dragged through the doorway, clawing at the ground. Or we can wave a sad hand at the life we will miss and walk though to the other side.
Either way, we’re going through the door.
Kaycee walked through with the grace of a warrior. Giving us lessons, even in death.
Matthew Haughey, the founder of Metafilter, grieves along with them, so sorry for his friend and for the online community as a whole.
And other users post, too, penning tributes to Kaycee along John’s lines on MetaFilter. She brought them hope when they needed it. She inspires them to live a life well-lived, to go out and see as much as they can. Her journal, so often, came into their lives when they most needed it. They will miss her terribly.
To John, it is all proof that his original concept has worked — that the internet is a mechanism for connection and love. CollegeClub – and the internet, it would seem – has for all intents and purposes, succeeded. Investors be damned.
Saundra Mitchell, as it happens, never used CollegeClub, or heard of Kaycee Nicole. Into the early 2000s, she continues to spend her time writing, and building her online journal. She continues to dream of being a real, live writer while caring for the people around her.
On the morning of May 17, 2001, she logs onto her frankenputer to find a message from Becky, like there is most days. Becky’s message includes a link to a recent post from CollegeClub. It is the post from Kaycee’s profile, stating that she has died.
“Do you follow Kaycee?” Becky asks, quite benignly.
“No,” Saundra responds.
Becky links to a post by Kristin, a blogger on ThreeWay Action, talking about Kaycee, and her tragic death.
Saundra squints slightly at the post as she makes out the words — and then goes back and reads the first few entries on Kaycee’s blog. She, like so many others before her, goes through the story of diagnosis, and remission, recurrence, and ultimately, death. She reads Debbie’s overlapping tale, the heartbreaking chronicle of a mother so hell-bent on keeping her daughter alive.
But, then.
Something catches Saundra’s eye on the screen of her frankenputer. A photo of Kaycee on her blog from a few months back. In all of her other photos, Kaycee has blue eyes. But if Saundra squints, she can see that, in one particular photo, Kaycee’s eyes are not blue. No — they are brown. And, if she squints just enough, Saundra can see the telltale sign of Photoshopping — the image distorted just so.
Breath whooshes through Saundra in a gasp. Her hand almost shaking, she picks up the phone.
Within hours, Saundra calls four local newsrooms in Newton, Kansas.
“Hi, my name is Saundra Mitchell,” she begins, mostly to incredulous, slightly frazzled-sounding reporters on the other end. “I am wondering if you might have heard of a young woman by the name of Kaycee Nicole, who recently passed away?” she queries.
She speaks to the managing editor of the Newton Kansas Newspaper, a newspaper with a headline that read on May 18, 2001, “Shhh, longtime local librarian retires!” They aren't talking about a huge community here — at the time it is around 17,500 people, by Saundra’s investigation into the census.
Saundra has been unable to find any obituary listed in the newspaper for Kaycee, and the editor verifies that there are no obituaries or death notices printed in the paper that are not archived in the online version.
The editor concedes that the story of a 19-year-old girl valiantly fighting leukemia, then succumbing, would have most definitely crossed his desk at some point.
Huh. Odd. Saundra thinks.
She calls around to three more local newsrooms — each reporter or editor confirming the same thing that the first editor had: they have never heard of a young woman by that name who died of leukemia.
“This is a small town. If there was a young woman who had died of cancer, we would have known about it, and we would have written about it,” they each repeat.
The same is true for the funeral home directors and morticians that Saundra speaks to: they have not buried a Kaycee Nicole, and if one existed in their towns, they would know about it.
She even tries the post office, though they won’t tell her anything, as she is not a government official and does not have a warrant.
Her mind reels. Could Kaycee be from somewhere else and have lied about her location for personal security purposes?
Painstakingly, Saundra makes a list of each and every person she speaks to. She continues to click back through posts of Kaycee’s, and finds that she often makes old music references — to the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. Is this odd, too, or just the result of a young woman who spends all of her time around her doting mother?
Saundra stares at the message that Becky has sent her, and writes back to her, detailing her findings. She copies and pastes the messages to Rob Hudson, an online acquaintance and semi-famous blogger with a degree in music. Perhaps he will know why Kaycee is referencing these old songs, she thinks. Have these songs recently been remade, which could explain her old-timey music taste? She also copies and pastes the same message to Patrick Cleary, her best web journaling friend.
Each writes back saying that what they are seeing is… strange.
And, just when she thinks she might lose her nerve, Saundra types out a post on her own online journal. She titles it, “Your Guide to Faking a Life and Death Online” and begins it:
So, your hit count isn't as fat as you'd like it to be. Or perhaps you've become bored with yourself, but still love blogging, journalling, posting to your favorite message board, what have you. Don't fret, dears, you don't have to stop just because your life is empty and meaningless. You always have the option of creating a completely new you (or two!) to maximize your online experience.
As she clicks post, her stomach lurches, and she thinks she might be sick.
It’s not long after that Saundra receives a message from an online blogger by the name of Acridrabbit. The message responds to her recent post: “Would it be okay if I posted a link to this on Metafilter? Fair warning – you might get a lot of hits,” the blogger asks.
Saundra stares at the message.
She’s filled with the very real dread of the controversy that she might have just created. Could she be wrong? Could she just have subjected a deceased young girl to undue scrutiny and caused her family pain in the process?
But, then, Saundra thinks of the voices of the journalists and the funeral home owners on the other line — their southern accents filled with sincerity.
And, so, she writes back to AcridRabbit, “Go for it.”
In a MetaFilter post, Acridrabbit writes:
Is it possible that Kaycee did not exist? This is a really delicate thing here. Please be really thoughtful about this. I promise I am not trying to stir the shit without cause. There are some people who are wondering whether Kaycee was a real 19-year-old leukemia patient, and whether things actually occurred the way they've been reported online. More inside, friends.
Let the games begin.
Bloggers on Metafilter — or MeFites, as they colloquially call themselves — react almost instantly to Acridrabbit’s post. They use the forum created by Matthew Haughey to spread out across swathes of the internet, their tentacles reaching far and wide. The most anonymous of sleuths, they examine posts, they check dates and times and photos and music. They examine, liken themselves to detectives with houndstooth jackets, pocket watches, and magnifying glasses to boot.
The posts crescendo in overwhelming cacophonies of conflicting thoughts. From the first post, just simply “Wtf?” to allegations that, if she is fake, John Halcyon Styn could be behind it all.
I hope she’s fake, some say, so that a young woman will not have died. Some point to a domain name of kayceenicole.com purchased by a woman named Audra Lee. Could that be who is behind it all? But, then, Randall van der Woning had written the previous year that he had tried to purchase a domain name for Kaycee, and it had already been purchased. So perhaps this Audra had purchased it then?
A nurse writes in to say that she has spoken to Debbie, and that her symptoms and description of Kaycee’s ailments seem so in line with what a teenage girl with terminal leukemia would be experiencing — there is simply no way she is fake.
The sleuths find the Swenson family home page, where Debbie has posted about her young family with a few pictures and a poem written by Debbie herself. Every detail matches — a young family moving to Kansas in the late ‘90s — except for the fact that Debbie’s daughter on the site is not named Kaycee, but instead Kelli. There is no mention of anyone named Kaycee. And there is also no mention of sickness. They find that the CollegeClub account is linked to Kelli’s name, not Kaycee – and that someone had logged into Kaycee’s CollegeClub account three days after she had died.
It keeps going, and going, and going. The MeFites debate each morsel in minute detail.
Randall van der Woning screams above the noise to voice his discontentment. How could these people even posit such a thing?
STOP! STOP!! STOP!!!
this is deplorable. it's making me sick to my stomach!
i have spoken to kaycee on the phone, as well as her mother, numerous times. i can assure you kaycee was quite real.
there are many holes in the theory in those heartless, sickening articles. someone clearly does not have all the facts, and the conclusions he has jumped to are ludicrous.
has it ever occurred to anyone that kaycee nicole was her first and middle name? that we left out her last name deliberately when we started this blog as a measure of protection for her and her family?
that she lives is kansas, but NOT newton, and that there was a reason for having a p.o. box there as opposed to her hometown?
kaycee was a wonderful human being. her mother is devastated by this loss.
it's not bad enough that i have lost someone so close and so dear to me, but now you are asking me to prove it?
as far as i am concerned, all the cynics can go to hell.
posted by bwg at 11:30 PM on May 18, 2001
Randall’s post only furthers the fears of Saundra Mitchell, who has been watching incredulously as the MetaFilter thread blows up. She hadn’t slept much the night before — her mind churning with the possibilities.
But, part of her also feels affirmed by this onslaught of posts — knowing that she was right to question Kaycee. With each new post, each new thread, there is one more conviction in her — and others’ minds — there are things that just aren’t adding up.
And, so, uncertain where else to turn, Saundra does what she does best — she puts pen to paper. She writes another journal, this one entitled: “All Satire Aside” and writes:
Let me first say that all I have is proof that certain events didn't happen the way they were reported. I don't know who made up the stories, I don't have any evidence as to what their motives might have been, and really, I don't care. What I do care about is the fact that there are a lot of people hurt, and grieving over somebody that I'm fairly confident in saying doesn't exist. That's not fair to them, to prey on their emotions. And it's not fair to people uninvolved because it just makes it harder for the people who are telling the truth about their lives to be believed.
John Halcyon Styn stares incredulously at his screen. He is at home in that same small Victorian house that he had walked out the front porch of some years ago. He looks at the thread on MetaFilter.
How could they?
How could these sick people be so tactless as to accuse a grieving family of such a horrendous crime?
Impossible, he thinks. This is his community, his small world which he has created around himself.
He thinks about the BurningMan music festival, which he had recently attended with his brother. Back then, in his chemically-enhanced optimism, the world had seemed so large and full of possibility – enhanced by this new cyber-connected ecosystem. Every single person seemed intertwined in that moment — their life force, their blood, their digital footprints now so large that they could conquer the world.
How could you deny this beautiful young girl her right to share her life with that world?
John knows that there were always, of course, the nay-sayers and the haters who questioned Kaycee, and, shockingly, her very existence. So many users on MetaFilter had questioned Kaycee Nicole that, a little while back, Matt Haughey had discouraged questions about Kaycee on the platform.
Almost a year before her death, on Oct. 3, 2000, one of those guileless human beings had posted on another site, teacosy.net:
I am not posting this with the intent to be inflammatory. Just so you know.
But seriously - what makes you think this site, or this girl, really exist, or that the story is true? If you were near death, would your first priority be setting up a blog? And do you think that, if it was true, that this girl would have the energy to be posting entries?...
Randall van der Woning, ever aghast and hurt by the implication, wrote back at the time:
regarding the post from notflaming...
the world may be a sick place, and perhaps your bad past experiences have clouded your judgement. i'm sorry to see you have become so cynical.
but let me just address a few things here:
1. kaycee does exist, and her story is true. many of us know her, and a few know her personally.
2. she is not near death. she is fighting cancer. she is very much alive. more alive, in fact, than most people i know who are healthy.
3. kaycee did not set up her blog. i did, to help her out, as a place for her to vent. and yes, she makes time to write. there is not a whole lot more for her to do in isolation right now but to write.
4. kaycee does not need money. in fact, she is totally against anyone donating funds to her. money will not heal her.
5. kaycee does not pretend to be ill for gratification. if you had read her blog, you would understand that she is gratified by life.
i spend a great deal of time talking to kaycee and her mother on a daily basis. i am acutely aware of her day to day trials; her highs and her lows.
kaycee has simply made a choice to look at the good side of life, regardless of her circumstances. she is truly extraordinary.
John wholeheartedly agrees with Randall — both then and now. Kaycee is extraordinary — the most wonderful of warriors. He is sickened by any implication otherwise. He turns off his computer, shuts out the world, and decides to go to sleep.
Three hundred and nine posts on the same thread in a weekend. The MeFites have almost outdone themselves. The screams are loud enough that they seem to jump off the screen, demanding action.
The public outcry gets so loud that a tearful Debbie Swenson calls Randall van der Woning in Hong Kong early in the morning of May 19 and tells him that Kaycee is not her daughter, but the daughter of her daughter, whom she has raised as her own.
Could that be the truth?
No — as any good sleuth knows, you have to go back to the source to find your answers. And so it is that one of the MeFites, Dan Engler, clicks on the photo of Kaycee in her basketball uniform. Dan examines the mascot and the tiny insignia just barely visible on the shining gymnasium court behind her.
In the photo, Kaycee wears a school basketball uniform emblazoned with the No. 10 — her youth and beauty are so apparent in the photo that it almost makes you blink. Dan enlarges the photo to find a lion’s head on the floor of the gymnasium, and his fellow MeFites track the mascot to be from a high school women’s basketball team in Oklahoma – the Lady Lions.
He finds the team’s roster, and as fate would have it, the No. 10 does not correspond with the name Kaycee Nicole.
No, no, no — No. 10 is a young woman named Julie.
Julie is just a person, she could be anyone. But she is not, as fate has it, Kaycee Nicole. She is someone else entirely.
Another user on CollegeClub types Julie’s full name into Google, and finds the young woman’s user profile at the college she attends in Oklahoma.
And, there, next to her player profile is that exact photo: the one purporting to be Kaycee.
Finally! The MeFites shake their fists triumphantly. And so there it is: the final proof, revealed. A stolen identity. Or, rather, a fake name, and a stolen picture. Each internet user can hardly believe it — there is no such thing as fake web identities. Why would someone do this?
But still, the truth drifts, half-believed, half-denied. Only one person can end the speculation — Debbie — and she does, at last, with a post of her own:
Her name was not Kaycee and she was not my daughter, but I loved her as if she had been. And I grieve her loss.
The blog was about the lives of three people who suffered, one with breast cancer, one with leukemia, and one with Liver cancer. Each were strong, vibrant, and loving individuals. Each were real. Each died much too soon.
I am to blame for wanting to tell their stories. I am to blame for weaving the lives of all three together. I chose to share their voices as one rather than three separately. I wrote their thoughts, their humorous sides, their struggles, their fears.
If you knew each of them do not for a minute doubt you knew the real person. It is only within these blogs that I tried to convey their silent voices.
I alone bear the shame for what I have done, but it was not done for any reason other than sharing the love for life they gave to those they loved.
I would like to clear up some falsehoods that have been spread around: there was never a paypal account, there was never an amazon wish list, if donations were made they were not made to me or any other person, if anyone asked you to contribute to a trip, or a fund of any kind it did not derive from this blog.
Randy (bwg) only posted what I sent to be posted, so I am the only person who is to blame.
If you sent something it was passed on to the appropriate family.
My intentions were good, but that does not begin to excuse me for what I have done. My only desire was to share their triumphs and tragedies in a way that showed their strength, the strength of their families. Those were not false. What they went through was real, I felt a great need to tell the stories of three courageous people who wanted nothing but to be well and live happily into their prime.
What I did was wrong and I apologise for it. I regret any pain I caused but I do not regret putting their thoughts out to be read.
There were more and deeper parts to their lives, I did them a grave disservice.
I carry the shame for my actions. The last thing I would like to say is I'm sorry.
The real *Kaycee* is the true author to her poetry. It was her nickname and she was the last of the truly beautiful who those of you read grew to love.
I was not her birth mother but I loved her with all my heart.
There it was — the truth, hiding in plain sight on the very screen that built the lie.
John Halcyon Styn learns the truth, aghast, like everyone else. He is crushed. How can the cynics have won? How can this beautiful young woman who he got to know so well possibly be the result of a delusion at the hands of her purported mother?
He doesn’t know what to believe anymore. The story has splintered; the truth feels just out of reach. And yet, even in that confusion, John realizes he still has something to say — something that matters more than the facts themselves. So he writes one final post:
It seems like I should be spiritually destroyed, but oddly, I don’t feel that way.
More than anything, I feel surrounded by love.
Take Kaycee out of the equation: You have a community of people who loved together, hurt together, learned together and consoled each other.
My inbox is filled with messages of love.
Instead of hugging each other over the death of a 19 year old girl, we are consoling each other over the death of a belief. Instead of helping each other to keep Kaycee’s spirit alive within each other, we are helping each other keep our faith in humanity alive.
Users call on Debbie to be prosecuted; others call on her to be forgiven. MeFites even reach out to the FBI, the real investigators with the real houndstooth jackets and pocket watches and investigative skills. The Peabody Police Department in Kansas turns the case over to the FBI’s field office in Kansas City, who reportedly looks into the case, but since Kaycee wrote that she didn’t want financial contributions, they can’t find any real reasons to prosecute Debbie.
Still, Debbie tells the New York Times reporter that comes calling that she believes that Kaycee has been more hopeful than harmful. "A lot of people have problems," she says. "I know I helped a lot of people in a lot of different ways."
As that reporter, Katie Hafner, wrote at the time, “She could be right. So compelling was Ms. Swenson's creation that powerful online connections were made among those who believed in the Kaycee persona and among those who pulled it apart.”
Saundra Mitchell. Courtesy of Saundra Mitchell. Matthew Haughey. Courtesy of Matt Haughey. John Halcyon Styn. Courtesy of John Halcyon Styn.
So what really happened? Theories abound. And with them, speculation, conspiracies, and half-remembered truths.
Some say Kelli Swenson, Debbie’s real-life daughter, invented Kaycee Nicole back in 1997 or 1998 — a harmless fantasy created on a GeoCities page, like so many other online alter egos of the time. Back then, there was no talk of cancer or hospitals, just a teenage imagination at play. To give her creation a face, maybe Kelli used photos of a high school basketball star — the girl who would unknowingly become Kaycee.
Then, perhaps, her mother discovered the persona…and took it further. Maybe she was drawn to the attention, the sympathy, the feeling of being seen. Maybe it began as grief, or loneliness, or love warped by isolation. No one knows for sure.
Some believe Debbie was simply a lonely woman in Kansas reaching for connection — and the internet, still innocent to words like hoax, catfish, or Munchausen, gave it to her. When you’re standing on a new frontier, it’s easy to admire the view and miss the rattlesnake at your feet.
And under that one snake, there would turn out to be a den. Over the next twenty-five years, more stories would follow: Belle Gibson, the Australian wellness blogger with “brain cancer.” Amanda Riley, the influencer with “Hodgkin’s lymphoma.” Each one built on sympathy, each one diagnosed later with the same condition: Munchausen by internet.
If Munchausen is an epidemic, then Kaycee Nicole is patient zero.
Experts, sleuths, and digital historians all point back to one woman — one story — as the first public case. Kaycee Nicole.
It’s a tale as old as time for John Halcyon Styn – and for CollegeClub. Capital continues to dry up. Investors grow ever-more skittish. The company that went through two rounds of funding, got acquired twice, and, of course, connected millions of people across the U.S. closes its doors. The website goes dark in the early 2000s. Employees pack up their desks and scatter back into the world. No more sleeping under conference tables, no more volunteer hosts, no more marketing built on the promise of connection, love, and universal peace.
And yet. There’s still the internet. The spark that drove them — the belief that people could find one another through screens — doesn’t die. Not even Kaycee, and the revelation of the lie she represented, could extinguish that.
Because the question remains: who was really to blame? The woman who built the lie — or the world that made her need it? Was John foolish to believe, or just early to a kind of faith the internet would come to demand from all of us?
And when Facebook, MySpace, and Instagram soon arrive, when connection becomes currency and confession becomes content, the pioneers of CollegeClub look at it all and think, with bleary-eyed certainty: See? We weren’t wrong. We just came too soon.
Somewhere in Kansas, Debbie Swenson carries on — as the world she built online fades quietly into pixels. When she dies on April 3, 2020, in Peabody, Kansas, at the age of 59, some part of the truth dies with her.
But on the internet, nothing ever really goes. The story lingers — cached, copied, reassembled by strangers decades later. And maybe that’s the real illusion: that anything, or anyone, can ever truly disappear. Twenty-five years on, the questions remain the same. We’re still reaching for each other through screens, still chasing truth through connection, and connection through lies.
Mimi Lamarre is a New York-based journalist and writer. She works for CBS News, and is a graduate of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Virginia.
