I was catfished by Danica Patrick on LinkedIn (a cautionary tale)

First… spoiler alert... it wasn’t the real Danica Patrick . I wish. It was either a bot, or someone posing as her. But at the time it seemed 100% legit. Stay tuned for the disappointment, as well as the cautionary tale, so this doesn’t happen to you!

A couple weeks ago I checked recent profile viewers and was absolutely shocked to see Danica. For those of you who may not know, Danica Patrick is an absolute walking badass. Her resume transverses everything from being chosen NASCAR’s most popular driver, to Indy car racing, yoga advocacy, biohacking, fearless podcast hosting, entrepreneurship, fashion design, vintner… the list goes on. Truly a renaissance woman!

Breaking barriers in the world of professional racing was just the beginning of her incredible journey, and listening to her open-minded and explorative podcast (Pretty Intense) is an interesting experience. Only other person I know at her level of glass ceiling-breaking badassery (add to dictionary LOL) is my good friend Martha McSally, the first US female fighter pilot and squadron leader.

I'm a former NASCAR junkie who evolved into an esoteric yogi person, loves good wine, high horsepower, biohacking, podcasting, and waking up every day wondering what is the true nature of this holographic simulated reality we incarnated into. So it was easy to have an ever-increasing level of admiration and respect for Danica as she shares these same interests. Only she executes on them at a global level.

So, back to the catfishing. Seeing that “Danica Patrick” viewed my profile, I was shocked. We had met very briefly at a biohacking conference a couple years back, and have a couple of mutual friends in that world, and NASCAR, but never expected her to even know who I was let alone find my profile, although I do follow her on here.

Clicking on her picture in the list of profile viewers took me to a page that looked legit at first glance. My heart raced and head spun a bit. Whaaat??

Next step was to message her, and unbelievably I got a reply a few minutes later. Here's the first exchange, although I redacted a bit.

I responded, and mentioned some people that we both know, and "she" replied again but did not respond about our mutual connections. I shared about trying for months to get her on the podcast I hosted for Microsoft internal (to no avail), but she didn’t mention that either. We continued to exchange messages in LinkedIn, but each response from her was not related to anything I was sharing about racing, friends, biohacking, etc. Just more general random things.

At this point I called one of my sons and conveyed the utter disbelief that I was finally getting to have a conversation with Danica Patrick. He shared my shock and enthusiasm.

Then… in her next message she asked for a picture. I literally laughed out loud! Excuse me?? Like… hey, there are a couple on my profile page. Such a weird request from a LinkedIn chat.

Going back to the profile page I messaged her from, and looking more closely, I saw beneath her prior experience description for NASCAR a couple listings for her time “serving in the US NAVY”!! Including the ships she was deployed on.

Red flag raised. Stop the race. Fake profile!!

I froze in a moment of simultaneous disappointment and exacerbation. Catfished. WTAF! Well… you’d think something like that wouldn’t happen on LinkedIn, but here it was. And therein is the great lesson for paying attention to details in profile pages. It matters.

Returning to the chat window I messaged “So… you’re not really Danica Patrick”. The response came quickly “Why would you say that?”. At this point a warning window popped-up from LinkedIn that her messages may contain malicious content.

I immediately reported whoever or whatever it was that was impersonating Danica to LinkedIn. About a minute later I tried going back to the profile page and it was already gone. Back to the chat window - the fake Danica user profile thread was likewise removed from LinkedIn. That was quick! I apparently wasn't the only person who complained.

So may this be a cautionary tale that if someone you have held in high regards for the last 20 years, and follow, suddenly appears in your LinkedIn universe it may be nothing more than a bot or an attempt to… well… go figure. It’s a mystery how the fake Danica profile ended up viewing mine.

I called my son and sheepishly explained what really happened. He expressed his condolences. And here I thought the universe finally provided a direct way to have a conversation with her. Psych!

Gentlemen… turn off your engines.