It’s one of the craziest documentaries I’ve seen.

Manti Te’o stood atop the college-football world in 2012. Mesmerizing fans with his tackling prowess, the Notre Dame linebacker had also captured hearts. Why? His grandma and girlfriend both died—on the same day. His success was the feel-good story of the year. Everyone, it seemed, was rooting for Te’o.

There was only one problem: his girlfriend wasn’t dead. That’s because she was never alive.

Netflix’s Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist recounts the bizarre story. Among the fascinating questions the documentary (perhaps unintentionally) raises is this: is the plausibility of trans identities a uniquely digital phenomenon? As Brett McCracken explains in a new article, when it’s an unquestioned assumption that “my online identity can be different from my embodied identity,” it’s no big leap to then assume “my gender identity can be different from my embodied identity.”

McCracken’s analysis is good news for a confused age. Because after all, “reality on God’s terms is so much better than fantasy on ours.”