A three year old blog chronicling the life of a woman called Layne Johnson has been revealed as a fake. According to the Mercury News, the Plain Layne Weblog had thousands of readers who were drawn by her polished, witty postings about "her relationships, her travels and her adventures at 'Minicorp', the nickname she gave her high-tech Minnesota employer".

Layne not only kept a blog, she commented on other people's, created profiles on social networking sites and exchanged emails and instant messages with fans.

At the beginning of June, however, the blog was suddenly taken down, and now the man behind it, Odin Soli, has admitted that it was a fake, saying that he created Layne as an experiment in 'interactive fiction'.

In a telephone interview, Soli said the character helped him deal with the pressures of his own life, including the rare disease that is killing him. "I honestly don't know if I could have kept going if I didn't have this character to pour my life into," he said.

The deception has left Layne's fans struggling with a complex set of emotions, from anger and betrayal to respect for the writing and a con well done. And it demonstrates how easy it is for the Internet to foster intimacy among total strangers.