Facebook? Maybe not.
About 10 years ago, I did give it a try. I slowly accumulated “friends” and never posted a single thing. And then I was hacked.
Goodbye, Facebook.
I didn’t miss it. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t remember why I joined in the first place.
And that was that … until I helped start moorandmore.net last year. I am always looking for ways of promoting our little website. It’s free for readers and it has some interesting articles and outstanding contributors if I do say so myself.
So I came up with the brilliant idea of using Facebook to reach more readers. After all, I had become more social media-savvy (yeah, right) … I had actually learned how to move pictures off my phone and on to other places (at least part of the time) … and I was sure that Facebook had become a lot safer place to be during the decade I was away from it (hmmmm).
And away I went. I had a nice picture taken of me and some of my website buddies (and real-life friends) for my profile page and started accepting new friends. I have more than 300 of them now — and some of them I really know.
Then I would occasionally post a little preview about the new stories on moorandmore.net. An accompanying picture seemed to make it an even better sell.
I don’t know if all this was helping the website, but I felt that this old dog had learned at least one new trick.
I wasn’t pushy. I only asked to be friends with a handful of people. I don’t like to ask. OK, there was the time that I got Friend Suggestions mixed up with Friend Requests and accidentally asked a boatload of people to be my friend.
Some of them even accepted my invitation.
Looking at my Friend Requests can actually be kind of fun, especially the ones sent by young women who are in swimwear and are from places like Warsaw, Poland and Cabo San Lucas. Noooo, I’ve never befriended any of them!
The Friend Suggestions are even more interesting. I look through them and find real buddies who haven’t bothered to request me as a Facebook friend. I get halfway offended, even though I haven’t asked them, either.
Then last week while looking over my recent Friend Suggestions, I came across a very familiar face — ME!
A little younger, a little leaner and maybe a little more handsome — or less ugly.
But it was definitely me. My picture was the same one I used with my earlier Facebook account, which I assumed I had shut down 10 years ago. I don’t know, maybe the person who hacked me back then has kept it going.
The profile for the other me says that he and the current me share 33 mutual friends. They might be surprised at that. I know I’m surprised at that. My face ain’t that great.
The other me doesn’t appear to have been all that busy over the last decade, except apparently duping some people into becoming his — my — friends.
I might have to rethink being on Facebook again. There’s at least one too many of me out there.
This whole misadventure has made me feel like a Facebook fool. Make that two fools if we’re counting,