Five years ago would you ever have thought that it was necessary to join a social networking site because if you didn’t you would feel disconnected from your friends, unaware of what events are happening and therefore will be left out of them, and worried that you weren’t going to know the latest on your “friends” life? Seems crazy right? I would never have thought that would be the case today, and it is with a site known as Facebook. Five years ago I also would never have thought that my fascination with tabloid stories of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears being hounded by the paparazzi, would lead me to become somewhat of a stalker myself. Sadly, I’m not the only one who has bought into the voyeuristic culture of today’s world.
Facebook has become the premier networking site of choice for youth all across the world. The reality is this; tabloids are still in existence today because people are interested in other people’s lives. This is not a good thing. Facebook is pretty much a tabloid. The newsfeed on your profile, the homepage that screams headlines of what the rest of your Facebook Friends are up to, it’s all a sick fascination with other people and aspects of their lives which you otherwise would never know about.
Here’s a crazy story that pretty much scared me into writing this article, a wakeup call if you may. I had joined a group called Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is a Goddess on Facebook, and a few girls on that group became my “Facebook Friend” (hereby known as FF!). We would analyze Aishwarya’s beauty over other famous, beautiful people in the world. One day I became FF’s with another girl on the Ash group. Let’s call her J. I added J because she and I argued against a random person that said Ash had plastic surgery. I also added her because she was strikingly beautiful as she had green eyes and a face that rivaled international actresses today. I complimented her on her beauty and we gossiped about how silly other people were for thinking that Ash had plastic surgery!
I pretty much stalked J's page for weeks, she had the most amazing life! She was a hybrid of Megan Fox and Nadia Bjorlin, had the luscious locks of Priyanka Chopra, and a booty that was a better version of Kim Kardashian’s. She had a gorgeous boyfriend (they’re the non-white version of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to say the least), the best clubbing outfits and a huge rock on her ring finger. How did she get that rock? Oh don’t worry, I know that story too! Her and her boyfriend went on a trip to a tropical locale and he proposed to her. The ring was hidden in her dessert and he had made her the most artistic 3-D scrapbook I had ever seen to propose to her…*sigh*. Too good to be true, right? How could a girl’s life be so perfect? I was totally jealous! My other FF had also added J unbeknownst to me. She too thought J had a wicked life, and showed J’s page to her older sister. Enter the “kahani mein twist” (twist in the tale). She told me that her sister had met and worked with this girl, except the girl’s name was M not J. She lived in a different place than J’s Facebook profile stated; she was a different age, and therefore all her friends that wrote on her profile about the awesome party they ALL went to, weren’t real either.
I immediately vetoed this possibility. Why would someone go through all this trouble making such a detailed fake profile page and profiles for fake friends, only to proceed to have fake conversations with themselves? This had to be investigated thoroughly. I went through each and every picture looking for clues. Sure enough, I found them. License plates of the country that the real M lived in were in J’s pictures, phone numbers on banners in the background that advertised a restaurant with a different area code than wherever J claimed to live, a cake with the wrong candles on it for J’s supposed age - with the name M written on it! I realized that not only was J a total weirdo who likely found a hot girl off some other networking group and created a Facebook profile that tricked me into hours of stalking, but I wasn’t far behind on the weirdness scale. I basically knew EVERYTHING about this girl through the pictures she had posted, and I had enough time on my hands to investigate the validity of J. I still kept J on my friends list because I was oddly fascinated at the amount of energy and time he or she put into their fake world, and I was super curious and wanted to eventually find the source from where she was getting her pictures from and let the real girl (M) know what was going on! Over about a year, I looked at pictures she posted, read her descriptions on things and eventually added more and more “evidence” to my growing list of reasons as to why J was really M. I had gotten M’s real name, her father’s name and her age from my FF’s sister, however, try as I might, I could not find the profile from where J was stealing all of M’s pictures.
Until now. I found M! I found her facebook profile (she wasn’t using her real name of M but a nickname, which is why I couldn’t find her before). I couldn’t view her actual page but I could view her friends, and creepily, I recognized a bunch of them off of J’s pictures, and on J’s their names had been slightly changed from the original version. On J’s page, her “friends’” friend lists were all un-viewable, but on M, each friend had their own friend list that was viewable and had multiple mutual friends. Too hard to fake. I added a guy of M’s friends, so that I could check to make sure that this was 100% the real girl. He added me back, and I was surprised to see that most of my hunches and observations were correct. This was the real girl. What now though? How do I message someone I don’t really know and tell them, “hey, msg me back because your identity’s been stolen and faked to the max by some other girl”?. I mean, how am I supposed to say HOW I know that she is the real girl and not the fake one? “I creeped this other girl’s facebook page for a year after finding out from someone else that she was fake. I know your bf’s real name because I read it off a cake in a picture?!”. God, life is so complicated. I just think this whole situation, is creepy, weird (including my part in all of this), and seriously fascinating. To see the extent that the fake has made her profile look real, is crazy! She literally is having conversations with herself. It’s really quite sad. Now that I know the “real” girl (M), I wonder who the fake actually is. What kind of person does this? Is she an agoraphobic that has no real life of her own? Is she just a lonely teenager that wants to feel popular?
This may not be the kind of identity theft that can ruin you financially, but it’s just as scary. Unfortunately, Facebook stalking and internet identity theft is a common phenomenon. After surfing MySpace, I found five girls with the exact same pictures, but the names of their profiles were all different. That was with minimal effort on my part.
Who is a Facebook stalker? More people than you would realize. Have you ever seen someone in the mall or a party that you’ve recognized, only to realize you saw them on your friends Facebook profile because they have a picture together? Do you know where your ex boyfriend or girlfriend went on vacation? Yep, you’re a Facebook stalker. There are things that you can do to protect yourself from stalking, being stalked and from having your identity stolen. (I totally need to follow these rules as well!)
1.) Only add people that you are friends with in real life.
2.) Stop posting a million photos on Facebook, or at the very least make sure that all of the albums aren’t viewable by everyone on your list. Your real friends know what you look like, they don’t need to see 20 pictures of you in various club gear if they’re not in the album themselves. Benefits for yourself: When you go out, you will actually enjoy yourself rather than spending your time taking pictures and making sure they’re “facebookable” (meaning: do I look hot enough and do I look like I’m having tons of fun?). Another benefit is that you will also get more usage out of your closet! Fewer pictures posted of your killer outfits are a good thing for your closet, and your wallet!
3.) Delete friends that you haven’t talked to within the month. Even if they know you in real life it doesn’t mean they deserve to be your FF. Benefits for yourself: When you stop caring about friends that don’t mean anything to you, you will have more time for your true friends.
4.) Get rid of your wall. People only post on it because they want other people to see what they’re saying, and if they really want to say something to you, they can message you, or call you! Walls often reveal information that is potentially deadly, as do clicking the “Attending” choice on Facebook events. Why do you need to advertise where you’re going to be or what your plans for the weekend are? A little mystery is always good, and the less information you give unseen Facebook stalkers, the safer you’ll be!
5.) Make sure your profile is limited and is viewable only by your friends!
6.) Do not, I repeat, DO NOT post pictures of yourself on other groups. For example that hot pic of you in your sari that you recently posted on the group “UK Desi Girls are the Hottest!!”… Do you really need strangers commenting on how good you look? Self confidence is good but asking for compliments really isn’t necessary.
Prevent yourself from ever being in M’s situation, the girl who I “know” so much about, and yet she has no idea that a J exists, or that there’s a blog entry written about her.
