Who Is Catfishing Tegan and Sara Fans?

A new documentary by Erin Lee Carr cracks open the bizarre catfishing case of indie pop star Tegan Quin, one half of the Tegan and Sara duo with her identical twin sister. As the Daily Beast reports, Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara, delves into the 16-year-long ruse by a mysterious hacker who first started impersonating Tegan online in 2008. The duo became popular in the early 2000s, when stardom didn't contend with social media, and Tegan often hung out at the band's merch table after shows to interact with fans. "It was such a part of indie and punk culture to bro down with the people in the audience, to go sell merch and have a beer with your fans after the show," Sara tells Billboard.

This accessibility helped build a tightknit fandom with their predominantly LGBTQ community of music lovers, one the impersonator exploited. By 2011, the hacker, dubbed Fegan, or Fake Tegan, had somehow obtained a trove of personal files from the twins, including photos, digitized passports, and unreleased music. Tegan and Sara eventually became aware of someone impersonating Tegan online on message boards and interacting with fans—sometimes even developing online sexual relationships. The documentary attempts to peel back why a person would go to such lengths to impersonate someone without financial gain, reasons that include the addictive compulsion to have "power and control over others," writes Nick Schager of the DB.

Tegan tells Billboard that she hadn't planned on going public about Fegan, fearing she would agitate her catfisher. In the film, she and the director track down a strong suspect named Tara, an obsessive fan who writes wildly inappropriate Tegan and Sara fanfiction, but they ultimately come up with no definitive answers. While filming the documentary reconnected Tegan with fans, some of whom recounted their relationships with Fegan, it's a far cry from her days at the merch table. "If we're being truthful and honest, then I have to say that I'm afraid of our audience," Tegan says. The documentary premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and is now streaming on Hulu. (More catfishing stories.)