On Friday, January 19, 2024, Los Angeles Times movie and TV columnist Glenn Whipp wrote, “Oscar nominations arrive bright and early Tuesday morning.” At 1:15 a.m. the next day, a Wikipedia user created a sockpuppet account called “UraFibber.”
According to Wikipedia, a sockpuppet is “a false online identity used for deceptive purposes.” The account holder made 40 total edits, all to “Nyad (film)” and all focused on the 2024 Academy Awards. He made six on January 20, then five on the 24th, the day after the Academy announced the nominations. He made the remaining 29 on March 9 and 10, the day before and the day of the Oscars.
To put UraFibber’s 40 edits in perspective, he made almost twice as many edits to “Nyad (film)” as any other editor. The Film Creator ranks second with 24. As of last week, The Film Creator had made nearly 27,000 total edits to 5,874 pages.
Discospinster edited “Nyad (film)” three times yet added more text to the entry than anyone else, mostly by restoring sections that UraFibber illegitimately blanked. As of last week, Discospinster had made over 470,000 total edits to 284,476 entries.
“Nyad (film)” total no. pages
edits edits edited
UraFibber 40 40 1
The Film Creator 24 26,988 5,874
Discospinster 3 474,310 284,476
Fig 1. While Discospinster and The Film Creator worked toward Wikipedia’s goal of becoming a reliable, user-edited “sum of all knowledge,” UraFibber filled the “Nyad (film)” entry with misinformation and gibberish. For more detailed “Nyad (film)” statistics, see XTools.
Illegitimate blanking is a form of vandalism that Wikipedia describes as “removing encyclopedic content without any reason, or replacing such content with nonsense.” UraFibber deleted the “Nyad (film)” awards table twice without explanation. Other editors replaced it each time. He removed Richard Roeper’s Nyad biopic review three times. Other editors restored it three times. Discospinster summarized the reason for the restoration: “Unexplained removal of sourced content.” In other words, vandalism.
A possible explanation: Roeper hints at the truth about Nyad. “Let’s get the controversies out of the way at the starting line,” Roeper writes in his opening paragraph,
and acknowledge that the Oscar-bait film “Nyad” brushes aside the questions involving legendary marathon swimming Diana Nyad’s history of sometimes embellishing her accomplishments, as well as the questions some still have about Nyad’s 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida at age 64.
If UraFibber is who I think he is, he doesn’t want people to know the real Diana Nyad.
Plumping The Truth
In one of the Nyad biopic’s most glaring fictions, Diana (Annette Bening) tells a group of children and their parents that she could swim the English Channel “in seven-and-a-half hours, even in the cold.” (audio clip)
The “Nyad (film)” entry initially addressed that error with precision and brevity:
The film inaccurately portrays [Nyad’s] ability to swim the English Channel in 7+1⁄2 hours, overlooking the rarity of such a feat and her multiple failed attempts.
UraFibber injects that simple statement with so much filler that it becomes unrecognizable:
[The film] also inaccurately portrays her completing a swim of the English Channel, which official records show she never did, and gives her the extraordinary English Channel crossing time of 7.5 hours, which would make her time 10 minutes faster than the current record-holder for fastest swim by a woman (or lady, per Channel parlance), American Peggy Lee Dean.
Another editor later corrected “Peggy” to read “Penny.” One significant error remains: Dean’s record fell in 2006 to the Czech Republic’s Yvetta Hlaváčová, who crossed in 7:25.
I suspect UraFibber knew all that but used the mistakes as camouflage.
UraFibber Names Names
Before UraFibber began editing “Nyad (film),” it didn’t mention Steven Munatones, Evan Morrison, nor the Marathon Swimmers Federation (MSF). The World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA) — the current director of which is suing Munatones for breech of contract— appeared once.
By the time UraFibber made his final edit, the villainous WOWSA was everywhere. The good guys — Morrison and the MSF — appeared multiple times. But Steven Munatones soared above everyone as peacemaker, script advisor, and disrespected founder of an ungrateful organization. In a March 9 edit, UraFibber wrote that
Steve Munatones, founder of WOWSA, had been trying to push for ratification of Nyad’s swim and was consequently restructured out of his own organization. Munatones had served as an advisor for the film Nyad starring Annette Bening and Jodie Foster and, along with Evan Morrison of the Marathon Swimming Federation, had encouraged the marathon swimming community to embrace Nyad in order to bring more visibility to their sport.
A few minutes later, UraFibber suggests that WOWSA wrongly accused Munatones of vandalizing its 2022 Nyad report:
In September 2023, the World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA), which was founded in 2008, revisited a 2022 investigation and report on Nyad’s 2013 Cuba to Florida swim that they claimed had been “vandalized” by WOWSA founder Steve Munatones and declared that they could not recognize the swim.
But no one has accused Munatones of damaging the report. The thousands of Openwaterpedia entries he did vandalize are a different story, but that episode had no bearing on WOWSA’s decision regarding Nyad’s crossing.
Later, UraFibber creates more confusion when he attributes a separate 2022 report to the Marathon Swimmers Federation. He says that MSF subjected Nyad’s crossing to an “extensive analysis” and concluded it was an “assisted” swim. But MSF never analyzed Nyad’s endeavor, extensively or otherwise. Nor did the organization ever adjudicate her crossing.*
*That’s not to say that no one in MSF hasn’t committed to analyzing Nyad’s feat. In October 2023, MSF co-founder Evan Morrison said he’d uncovered new data:
I am compiling documentation, including items that have not previously been published. It’s a massive amount of material. When I am done, I will publish it to the MSF website, just as I’ve done for hundreds of other swims over the years. (Facebook, archived)
Two weeks later, he added: “It’s thousands of files, over 80GB total, with more coming in each day. It’s going to take a little while to process and format for public consumption” (ibid). That was well over a year ago. We’re still waiting. If proof of Nyad’s crossing existed, we’d have seen it by now.
Nothing Up My Sleeve: Peggy Lee & The ECA
Before UraFibber began injecting “Nyad (biopic)” with nonsense, the entry mentioned the English Channel once. That’s one more time than Nyad swam it, so once was plenty.
By the time UraFibber makes edit number 40, the English Channel appears six times, four of which involve a nonexistent organization he calls the English Channel Association (ECA). For example:
WOWSA judged Nyad’s swim by documentation standards established by the English Channel Association, which [w]as founded in 1927. According to NyadFactCheck.com, Nyad made three failed attempts to swim the English Channel, a struggle that was depicted in the 1978 documentary celebrating her ambition in the face of failure, “Courage to Succeed.” The English Channel Association posts no record of her attempting the swim.
If UraFibber were editing “Nyad (movie)” to improve rather than sabotage it, he would have cited the primary source, Nyad’s 1978 memoir Other Shores. The film Courage to Succeed documents only two attempts. Nyad describes all three in her book.
UraFibber further suggests that the ECA — or any English Channel organization, for that matter — publicly lists failed attempts (they don’t) and that NyadFactCheck is inaccurate because Diana doesn’t appear on the nonexistent list of a nonexistent organization.
In a postscript, he adds that Nyad’s humility may have led to her absence, i.e., “perhaps because she did not seek recognition.”
He tops off this masterpiece of meta malarkey a few hours later by removing the statement because it’s “conjecture.”
Calling the CSA the ECA (when he links to the Channel Swimming Association, so he knows the correct name) or calling his former coach “Peggy” could happen due to exhaustion or intoxication. More likely, they’re clunky attempts at misdirection, like calling himself “UraFibber.” The person who created the account seems to want to help Nyad while calling out her dishonesty (see below). Who would do that?
Only one person: Steven Munatones. He can defend himself by saying he’d never create an account called “UraFibber,” load it with mistakes, and write about Nyad’s deceit. But anyone who knows that 7 hours and 30 minutes is ten minutes faster than Penny Dean’s 1978 record also knows her name isn’t Peggy, that her record fell almost 20 years ago, and that the English Channel Association doesn’t exist.
So, what was Steven trying to accomplish? Why did he put so much effort into sabotaging “Nyad (film)”? I asked, but he’s not telling. Maybe he did it for one of the reasons Diana Nyad lies: She can get away with it.
On the other hand, Steven has engineered similarly absurd schemes before, like
- Vandalizing over 3000 entries of his own Wiki to make Diana Nyad one of the top three swimmers of the 1970s.
- Sending a packet of documents to the International Swimming Hall of Fame to prod them into ratifying Nyad’s crossing — without telling them he wanted them to ratify her crossing.
- Claiming that WOWSA oversaw and ratified Nyad’s crossing after publicly stating that “Diana’s swim was off-the-grid with no organization regulating it” (article/timeline).
- Claiming that the Florida Straits Open Water Swimming Association, a fictitious governing organization he concocted in 2014, oversaw all of Nyad’s crossing attempts from 2010 through 2013.
- Claiming that he completed a Tsugaru Channel two-way after he swam two single crossings 41 hours apart. (The rules say you get 10 minutes.)
- Anointing Miyuki Fujita as the first Tsugaru triple-crosser without telling her. (No one has completed a double, much less a triple.)
- Claiming to complete a Catalina free solo (archived version here) without providing documentation, then changing its Openwaterpedia entry to say that “Michael Chavez” had done it (while leaving all the photos and videos of himself).
Getting His Clauses Into It
If you still doubt UraFibber’s identity, check out these two sample paragraphs. The first comes from “Nyad (film)” via UraFibber:
According to a 2014 Openwaterpedia entry, the Florida Straits Open Water Swimming Association (FSOWSA), which did not exist at the time of the swim, was established to set rules and standards to ratify Nyad’s 2013 swim to Cuba, but according to one of the leading marathon organizations, the World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA), founded in 2008, there is limited evidence that FSOWSA exists.
The second paragraph is one Munatones stitched together for Nyad’s Wikipedia entry on August 15, 2019:*
Most of the questions raised by experienced marathon swimmers worldwide remain unanswered is a claim by the Marathon Swimmers Federation. As of 2019, the swim has not been ratified or authenticated by the Marathon Swimmers Federation, but it has been long recognized since 2 September 2013 by the World Open Water Swimming Association that wrote the rules of the attempts and provided the onboard observers.
*Openwaterpedia’s Admin account made the edit. The account’s user page says that Admin is Simon Holliday, “a Hong Kong based open water swimmer.” It’s not. Given Admin’s edit history, the account can belong to no one but the man who also calls himself Pool Noodle, Jolyn12, Michael Chavez, UraFibber, etc.
In each example, Steven cobbles together a clunky patchwork of incompatible clauses. In neither paragraph does he seem to know what he wants to say. If he does know, he either can’t or won’t say it clearly.
Literally 100% Pure Nonsense
Early on the morning of March 10, Munatones added (to “Nyad (film)”:
Nyad believes if she had been more engaged with the marathon swimming [community] before attempting the swim, she might have avoided the high level of controversy she faced.
Having established a decades-long legacy of lies by the 2010s, trying to engage with other marathon swimmers wasn’t going to help. She knew that, so she didn’t try.
If she seriously wanted to temper marathon swimmers’ suspicions, she could have enlisted crew members who knew the sport, observers who knew how to observe, and camerapeople to film the entire crossing. Not lying about the crossing afterward would have also helped.
She opted instead for flattery, though about a decade too late. We learn from Steven that, around the time Nyad premiered, Diana told Time magazine: “Marathon swimmers are a special breed; it’s a grueling sport, and they suffer.” (See the “Notes” section for more on Time).
UraFibber/Steven elaborated:
The sport is filled with people who have committed impressive athletic feats, swimming day and night without stopping, exposed to extreme weather and dangerous marine life.[46] Literally hundreds of them have written books[67] and had documentaries[68] made about them.
To verify his “literally hundreds” of books statement, Munatones links to a WOWSA article that lists 101 books by less than 100 authors, not all of whom are open water swimmers. As a source for those hundreds of documentaries, he links to an article listing eight swimming-related films, four of which document marathon swimmers.
Then he makes excuses for Nyad:
But Nyad, who with a decades-long career in broadcast and print journalism[69] “is perhaps the best known athlete in a sport few people know . . . with even fewer media-savvy representatives.”[46] The benefits she enjoyed from her elite media connections, combined with her false statements about her achievements, triggered antagonism in a community that is filled with accomplished athletes.
Maybe that’s Steven’s racket: Litter the “Nyad (film)” entry with excuses for its subject’s abhorrent behavior, blame at least part of that behavior on other athletes, prove his objectivity by calling himself UraFibber and admitting that Nyad lies, and toss it all into a gish gallop of garbage that draws attention away from a simple truth: The Nyad biopic glorifies the greatest charlatan in marathon swimming history.
Notes
Time for the “The Deeper Story”
Steven often uses Alice Park’s November 2023 Time Magazine article, “The Deeper Story Behind Netflix’s Nyad,” as a source for UraFibber’s edits. Park’s piece is the same one that includes, “Marathon swimmers remain divided over whether the swim was ‘unassisted’ or ‘assisted'” (they don’t) and “[Nyad’s] a touch self-centered.”
Park swallows all the BS Nyad feeds her. I address some of that BS in “All The Lies She Could Not See: TIME’s ‘Deeper Story’ Behind NYAD.” For instance, Nyad tells Park: “One thing I wish I had done earlier, and regret not doing — I didn’t dive into the marathon swimming world, I didn’t write blogs.”
Nyad began blogging no later than July 2010 and stopped no earlier than 2016, likely posting hundreds of times. But it’s impossible to get an accurate count because she deleted all her posts.
In my first pass at Park’s article, I missed a lot, including Nyad’s lies about putting on her stinger suit (she got much more help than just “with the final inch of zipping it at the back of the neck”) and her claim that “she was never told that she needed to provide documentation” to get her swim ratified:
UraFibber Wasn’t The First Account Munatones Used To Flout Wikipedia’s Rules
Since 2008, Steven has edited Wikipedia using another username: Munatones. Many of that account’s edits violated Wikipedia’s Conflict of Interest guidelines. For instance, he added his name and accomplishments to pages, and he spammed entries with links to his own sites. He created an entry for himself, a big Wikipedia no-no. The “User talk:Munatones” page covers all that and more.
In June 2008, he added swims he claimed to do in Japan. But he included no sources, and Wikipedia frowns on unsourced material. Other editors eventually removed everything.
- adds Tsugaru double – DAJF removes it.
- adds Yonaguni – DAJF removes it.
- adds Mt. Fuji lake swims (and includes Lynne Cox) – DAJF removes it.
- adds Lake Biwa swim – unnamed user removes it.