• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, May 7, 2013

Oh, what a tangled web we weave in pursuit of love! Or maybe not that tangled; actually, just stupid. Ahem. Oh what a stupid web we weave in pursuit of love! One Cheryl Nelson, 52, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, has been arrested and charged with stalking herself on Facebook in an attempt to frame her ex-boyfriend’s new love interest.

According to MLive.com, which first reported this sad episode, the would-be Michigan Machiavelli used the personal details of her ex-boyfriend, one Kevin Haarsma, to set up a fake Facebook account from which she then posted threatening messages to her own account, supposedly from his new girlfriend, over a period from November 2011-October 2012.

In August 2012 she reported the threatening messages to the police in an effort to -- well, I’m not quite sure what. Get a restraining order against the woman? Even though this wouldn’t prevent her from continuing to see Nelson’s ex-boyfriend? Who knows.

Anyway, the plan clearly wasn’t too well thought-out, since the police quickly honed in on Nelson, rather than her rival. After Haarsma countered with stalking accusations of his own, police obtained a warrant to search Nelson’s computer and discovered it was the source of the messages. And the tawdry jig was up.

According to MLive, Kent County Sheriff’s Detective Jason Russo said Nelson confessed that she concocted this quarter-baked plan because she was still in love with Haarsma. She is being charged with false reporting of a felony and unlawful posting of a message.