Red-faced after ‘following’ latest internet hoax
Nope. Dollar Tree is not closing all its stores by October 2017.
Yep. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is still alive. So is Tiger Woods. And Michael Douglas.
Whew. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are not being discontinued.
There. Now we’ve gotten the latest assortment of Facebook hoaxes out of the way.
Most of us have learned by now — through agonizing experiences and utter embarrassment — that much of the information we encounter on the Interwebs is fake. And still, in an excited moment over seemingly juicy news, we might find ourselves hitting “share” before checking the legitimacy of sources (you mean Abcnews.com.co is not ABC News?) or the validity of the facts (you mean Ulta Beauty wasn’t bought out by Sephora and is therefore not giving away gobs of free face goo?).
While I say “we,” I really mean y’all. Because, of course, I’ve never done such a foolish thing — wary, watchful me with the journalism degree and two decades of reporting on my resume.
At least, I had never done such a thing … until last week.
A Facebook friend posted an ominous warning: She was being followed on the social media platform by strangers!
Just learned something new.
If you go to account settings, blocking, block users, and type in “following me,” without the quotes, you might be surprised just who is following you. I had multiple people on it that I had no clue who they were. They are blocked now. I had to block them 1 at a time, I don’t think there is a way to do it all at
once.
Even though I only post cat, cooking and cocktail pictures, my paranoia set in!
Oh no! People could be seeing my nonprivate stuff on a totally public page!
Somehow I had managed to ignore previous scares (“In response to the new Facebook guidelines, I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details contained in my personal and business profiles … per the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, aka the Berne Convention. For commercial use of any of the above, my written consent is required in each instance and at all times). This time, however, I felt the burn … or Berne.
Instead of hearing my inner alarm bell going off, I just heard Maxwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” (and yes, he’s still alive, though there were death hoax posts about him too).
Immediately, I went into my account settings. Maybe not immediately. Is that under the arrow on the right side? Or the question mark? The little Facebook “f” on the left side? Eventually I clicked around until I landed on “Privacy Shortcuts” and “How do I stop someone from bothering me?” Never mind that no one was actually bothering me. I had to put a stop to this!
When the blocking search bar appeared, I entered “following me” and couldn’t believe what I saw. Names and names! And more names! Impossible to pronounce names: “Daw Mee Nge,” “Abhishek Meena,” “Bj Mehjabin,” “Mehenaz Tabassum!”
Well, I’d show them! And Leo Ley Robles Metica, too! I’d block them all one by one. Each time it would double-check, for example, “Are you sure you want to block Ya MeloDy II?” Ya! Ya, I did!
I might have warned others, but the whole process took so long — easily 30 minutes — and I got distracted.
Finally, Mee and Meena and Mehjabin and Mehenaz and Metica and Melo would no longer be following me!
Do you see the pattern there? I didn’t at the time, but ThatsNonsense.com would later clarify it for me once the hoax rumblings began.
Typing “following me” doesn’t produce a list of followers, the site says, “but rather a list of users associated with the words you typed into the textbox — in this case the words ‘following’ and ‘me.’ This can mean those words appear in a user’s name, introduction or any of their About Me sections.” You follow? In other words, what it mainly produced for me was a list of random people with the letters “M” and “E” in their names.
Here’s hoping you’re smarter than to be “following me.”