Facebook - The Digital Front Porch

First picture I posted of me and Daisy

People make fun of Facebook friends who post pictures of their dinners, their dogs and cats, or the first snow falling on their patio. Yet, somehow, these are some of the most popular posts on FB. I can post a profound piece on politics or religion that I think is earth-shaking and get a couple of thumb's up. But I post a picture of Mama's mashed potatoes or the dog napping in my lap and generate dozens of likes and comments. Why are people interested in all that mundane stuff. Why do I get 95 "likes" for a picture of my wife laughing her head off while we're taking our anniversary picture.

I think it's because these posts are like an invitation by a friend to come by the house. It's an spontaneous kind of intimacy with friends and neighbors that we've somehow lost when we quit building homes with decent front porches.

Oh, I occasionally tweak a liberal friend and get into a running debate over something Trump did or some comment I made disparaging some beloved tenet of progressivism. And we've had some tub-thumper arguments, but hey. Back in the olden days, we used to do that sort of thing with a Coke in hand with friends on the porch of the local grocery and gas station with a bunch or other old geezers looking for a fight. 

Facebook has taken over the role of the old front porch. In exactly the same way that we used to talk about our cars, our grandkids, or the latest backyard project we have going, we post pictures and comments about our personal lives on Facebook so people we know and like can feel like they are keeping up with us.

I occasionally bump into an old friend or family member that I haven't seen in a while, and as we talk, I realize that we are taking up threads of conversations leftover from posts we made on Facebook or other social media. "How was that trip to Cancun?" you ask, having seen the 44 pictures she posted of the trip. "I see your granddaughter is really sprouting up."  You can say that because grandma has posted 157 pictures of the kid documenting every day of the child's life since birth. A lot of millenial precious snowflakes make fun of us older folk for posting the stuff that we do, but hey, at least we don't post hourly selfies showing who we are with at the moment, where we are standing and what we are wearing.

I try to post interesting things, but I'm also guilty of having posted more than my share of cute doggie pictures over the years. I still occasionally post pictures of my dog Daisy even though she's been dead a year and a half. Facebook even helps out by suggesting that I repost old pictures I posted five or six years ago. I am often surprised how many of those old pictures are of me and the dog.

You can criticize Zuckerberg all you want for his liberal bias, but the boy does understand the appeal of the digital front porch he's created. If he and his minions can just stand to not try and tell us all what we can talk about on our own porches, Facebook could last forever in some form or another - or at least till the world comes to an end (a subject about which we can also debate on the "porch" with several dozen of our closest digital buddies).

Facebook posts don't have to be profound. Social media is the digital successor of front porches, Saturday night jam sessions down at the VA, the town square, the pen pal, and the sister who calls you on the phone and talks for two hours. So I'll go on posting my dog pictures and my latest do-it-myself project photos and I'm not ashamed! If you want to look at the couch I reupholstered myself or the cigar box banjo I built or me playing with Jellybean, you're welcome. If you'd rather look at selfies of your friends, then there's a place for that too.

Tell you what; I won't make fun of your selfies if you won't make fun of my photos of homemade pizza!  Okay?

© 2017 by Tom King

Don't Give Them a Thing!

Have you noticed lately the number of Facebook and other social media posts that ask you not to "share" them, but to cut and paste them into your status. There's a reason for that and it's not a nice one.

There's no reason to ask a friend not to share a post if you are an honest person. I never demand a person cut and paste a post of mine in order to pass it on. Why would I?  If you share a post, the person who receives it can trace it back to you, then back to me as far as it goes if you are patient. People who demand you cut and paste don't want the original to be traced back to them. There are several reasons for that.

1. They could be lying and don't want anyone to find out who started the lie.
2. They want to be able to remain anonymous because the post could be considered libelous. (much better that you get in trouble for it than them).
3. They want to see how far it went. They can cruise your friends list to find out which of your friends are willing to take the extra step to cut and paste. 
4. Those who cut and paste are likely more gullible, trusting or easily excited by inflammatory posts and less likely to check the source (which by cutting and pasting, you prevent anyone from doing). 
5. They want to make a list of trusting and/or gullible people who will do that little extra. This identifies them as easier marks for a potential con.

Do you cut and paste friends' posts to your own status because you don't want to hurt their feelings?  Do you get a lot of friend requests from Facebook people of the opposite sex (or same sex if you are gay) who have only a few friends and post mostly provocative selfies?

They've likely identified you as someone who is more easily manipulated and more likely to go along with a con. 

My advice.  NEVER copy, cut and paste! Just don't do it. There is no good reason not to just share a post or at least I can't think of one. If anyone can tell me a good reason why hitting the "share" button is unacceptable as a way to pass along an interesting post, please explain to me why cutting and pasting would be necessary or better as a way to pass along a post or important message.  There's a comment box at the end of this article. I will respond.

© 2017 by Tom King

Why I Don't Share Sad Pictures

If you have a Facebook page, you get a lot of posts of pictures of sad children, people with horrific injuries and disabilities, and other assorted tragedies followed by "instructions" from the person who passed it to you.

Like: You care about this sad child but not much
Like & Share: You think her life is precious
Scroll down: You think she is ugly

Then, of course, there's the instructions with a threat:

• Share if you love Jesus. Don't share and you go to hell (or have no heart or don't love Jesus or are a cruel unfeeling person).
• Ninety nine percent of you won't pass this along, but I will know who my friends are.
• Send a copy of your share to me so I'll know who my friends are.

 There are all sorts of versions of this ploy but they all have one thing in common. They want you to share, like or, even more fun, cut and paste this mess to your own timeline. There is a reason these people do this kind of thing and don't you want to know what it is? Well, let's look at why people do this first.

WHY PEOPLE POST THIS STUFF:

1. GUILT - Somebody sent this to some trusting kind-hearted person and that person felt bad not passing it along as their friend asked them to. Don't get mad at them. They're probably new to Facebook or don't fully understand how it works and it seems a small thing to do. These folk are victims. They don't start this stuff.
2. MEANNESS - Some people get a sense of satisfaction and feeling of power from seeing how many people they can manipulate into liking and sharing their phony posts (and a horrific number of these posts are phony believe me). This person does this to make himself feel superior to the rest of us. I prefer not to aid him in this perverse form of digital masturbation.
3. POLITICS - Some political true believers feel that creating hysteria, guilt, sadness or anger serves their political ideology's purpose and besides people are stupid and can be controlled by these types of propaganda stories and photos.  Besides, they believe that the ends justify the means.
4. RELIGION - Some people think God needs a better public relations agency and have nominated themselves to promote God and improve his image among the rubes by making up stories of miracles, tragedies, angels and atrocities that can somehow be solved by cutting and pasting a phony story all over Facebook. Of course God will one day have something to say about falsehoods being propagated in his name, but believe it or not some people who call themselves Christians have failed that admonition in the Bible.
5. INSECURITY -  To some sad souls, when people like or share their posts on Facebook, they feel somehow validated as a person. Many of them suffer from borderline personality disorder or narcissism or some other condition that compels them to seek approval. If they don't happen to be terribly talented or successful, they seek approval by demanding that people like or share their posts, no matter if its coercive or bullying. So long as they get likes and shares, they feel validated.

I got one the other day that said, "I know who will share this and who will not!"  My first thought was, if you know already, why not just send it to those who will pass it on and save the rest of us  some time and Facebook news feed space.

Don't be angry with your friends who get caught up in this - they've been manipulated. Ironically, the nicer your friends are, the more likely they'll get caught up in what is essentially group bullying, and do so quite accidentally. Most pass this stuff along so their friends won't be angry with them for not passing it on. Some of these posts say directly that they will be hurt if their friends don't pass it on, so the guilty feeling person passes it along quickly, quite forgetting that the manipulative bullying part goes right along with the shared post and then sounds like it is coming from them - your nice friend whom you know and trust. The next person who gets it knows it's from a nice person, but is afraid they may be in distress or something and passes it along too - in order to please the friend they trust.

FIND OUT IF IT'S TRUE. That kid with cancer who is holding up the hand lettered sign asking, "How many 'likes' can I get?" may have died 15 years ago and someone dredged up his photo from some still bereaved Mom's Facebook photos and the Photoshopped it. They simply add the fake sign and turn it loose on social media with the admonition, "He didn't get one like. People are so cruel. Like and share if you care." The person who made this thing laughs every time it comes across his news feed and makes a note of who the "sucker" who fell for it this time is and marks them for further "research" to see if there's a con they can pull on them.

So, basically, it's done just like tyrants, dictators and cult leaders have done throughout the ages, dragging innocents and those who are vulnerable, trusting or naive into their web of lies. The originators are pretty much evil people. I don't know of a single person on my lengthy friends list who sits around making up these things, but plenty of nice God-fearing people pass this stuff on to me BECAUSE the are nice people and don't want to hurt the feelings of a dear friend who probably passed it on BECAUSE they did not want to hurt the feelings of a dear friend - and so on.

Another thing these liars do is denigrate hoax debunking sources like Snopes. If you've fallen for the "Snopes is bad" hoax, there are others you can use. Check out a great list of them in this article from TechRepublic.

WORSE YET: When you follow these things back to their source, you find some of the most heart-rending posts come from the most despicable people. I've found pornographers, Nigerian swindlers, lonely-hearts con artists and scary cultists at the origins. They care nothing about legless children, Down's syndrome kids, lost children, the poor, or the various outrages they promote. They're collecting names as their stuff circulates through social media. Some of it is salted with viruses and trackers. Others just get off on how many suckers they can get to fall for their lies.

THIS IS MY POLICY ON THIS STUFF:

1. Unless the post is original with you, I won't pass it along unless I can check the original source and it's legit.
2. I only pass along stuff I think is special and that I agree with and like a lot.
3. I never cut and paste material from a post so as not to enable the disguising of a naughty person. These guys demand you cut and paste so people like me can't backtrack and find out who started it. When you cut and paste, you mask the original person who may well be a person from the opposition political party or a cult writing fakes stuff to discredit your side.
4. I check the website of the original person. If it's nothing but share if you care posts, I block them if possible and if they are on my friends list, I banish them.
5. I am careful who I accept as friends. I go to the person's website who is requesting a friendship. If there are only a couple of people on their friends list and nothing but selfies or share if you care posts, I ignore them. I don't delete the friend request because they can't send you another friend request later if the old one is still up and that reduces the chance of accidentally getting one of these parasites tangled up, not only with yourself, but with everyone on your friend's list.
6. Finally, I always check amazing news stories first by backtracking and checking the originating website. If it's thetruthshallsetyourfree.org or trumpnews.com or exposingthelies.net or something like that, I take it with a grain of salt. There are many unfiltered phony news sites out there and the outright lies they tell are stunning in their audacity. And don't be fooled by the sites which include a tiny little disclaimer on the "About Us" page that says they are a satire site.  Satire is supposed to be obviously false and funny. If you can mistake the stories they tell for actual news, then its not satire. It's lies.

IT IS NOT A SHAME TO BE CAUGHT BY THESE PEOPLE:  All it means is that you are a good and trusting person. That's why I like you and have you on my friends list in the first place. Jesus never said, "Thou shalt never be fooled."  He did, however, say, "Be wise as serpents and gentle as doves."

I posted this to help my friendly doves to understand the mysterious and evil ways of the serpent. Let's be careful out there. 

© 2017 by Tom King

Scammers from the Special Hell

There was a possible woman named Leona Niemann contacted my wife on Facebook Chat today. She started out by telling Sheila she had "great news" for us. Sheila, a Facebook neophyte and very trusting soul called me to ask if I knew who this woman was. Having caught my share of scam attempts in the past, we led this person along to see if my suspicions were correct.

My wife is very kind and trusting. She doesn't have a lot of defenses against liars, cheats and swindlers. When I describe Ms. Niemann as a "possible" woman, it's because she has a brand new account with no personal information, started just two days ago. The avatar picture is a shot of a harmless looking older lady with her husband as an avatar. Red Flag #1. The avatar was posted two days ago. Red Flag #2 

"Leona Nieman is very likely a skinny Nigerian kid renting time in an Internet cafe' or "she" is a pasty 19 year-old high school dropout sitting in his Mom's basement and trying to scam bank account numbers from people who are under stress or in pain. This person needs to be unfriended by everyone on "her" list. You can bet the picture avatar isn't real. There isn't any information about her on her page. 

She started out her scam by starting a chat saying "I've been trying to get in touch with you for several days. I have some great news!" Red Flag #2.  A lot of details are hinky too when she describes the great news.  She calls it the "Facebook Powerball Grant".  The name works on three psychological hooks:

(1) Facebook - Everybody thinks Zuckerberg is so rich he needs to give his money away to everybody like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett (also popular free money scam names)

(2) Powerball - Sends visions of huge free winnings based entirely on luck.

(3) Grants - The idea of grants plays on the commercials of Matthew Lesko, the skinny guy on TV in the puce suit covered with question marks telling people there was all this free money out there that was being given away. Matthew did scammers a huge service with those commercials.

Then she tells you that she saw your name on the winners list when UPS delivered her award. Red Flag #4. Was that piles of cash in canvas sacks that were delivered to her and did a list of all the winners come in with the packing slip? UPS would never accept such a delivery. It is such an obvious come-on, but the people they target are usually people they believe to be inexperienced or fragile.

My wife's response was classic Sheila. The scammer had got several of our Adventist friends on her list and tried to portray herself as "one of us", but made the mistake of using the abbreviation OMG. Sheila said no Adventist would use God's name in vain and on the Sabbath too! Then we unfriended her.

Such people a "Leona Neiman" (whoever the phony name refers to) should be consigned to a special level of hell. Preying on older people, people suffering trauma and people who are merely trusting souls  places one in a very close, personal cooperative relationship with Satan.

Just sayin'

Tom King © 2015

P.S. I want to post a clarification. The Leona Nieman account I wrote about above is a hacked account of a very nice lady from Keene, Texas. There are two identical accounts in Leona's name on Facebook If you check the account, you'll see that one has fewer friends and was set up on Nov. 11. I've contacted Leona and the hacker who now knows we're on to him. If "Leona" contacts you with some "great news" about you receiving the "Facebook Powerball Grant", they're trying to scam you and it ain't Leona

Facebook Guilt Trips & True Friendship

I get tired of the guilt trips people on Facebook keep trying to put on people who are supposed to be their friends. It's all about love people and about understanding what that truly means. If you have "friends" who never "like" you or send you Farmville bunnies, don't get all in a snit and delete them because they aren't "true friends".

Instead, ask yourself, "What have I done to be a true friend to them?"  Do I send them stuff designed to make them feel guilty and force them share my stuff or say nice things to me so I won't delete them? That's not friendship. That's blackmail and incredibly self-centered. 

If that's what your friendship is about, then delete me, but know this. I won't delete you because you don't have time to read my 5 blogs or my interminable Facebook posts on politics, religion and banjos. If I make you smile once in a while or feel better, then that's fine. It is what I intend to do. I don't need you to pat me on the head for it. My self-esteem is quite intact, thank you.

Just read and enjoy and perhaps smile a little - it's all guilt free.

With love and understanding,

Tom