In the past few years, I have seen and read about a lot of crazy shit happening on Facebook. From stalkers to crazy people to love affairs to divorces. But nothing could have prepared me for this bizarre-ness.
It seems some dead people have started hitting like buttons on Facebook for things that they never cared when alive.
Last month, while wasting a few moments on Facebook, my pal Brendan O’Malley was surprised to see that his old friend Alex Gomez had “liked” Discover. This was surprising not only because Alex hated mega-corporations but even more so because Alex had passed away six months earlier.
The Facebook “like” is dated Nov. 1, which is strange since Alex “passed [away] around March 26 or March 27,” O’Malley told me. Worse, O’Malley says the like was “quite offensive” since his friend “hated corporate bullshit.”
Here’s a screenshot:
There was another dead person getting suddenly very interested in “Republic of Tea”. Maybe they don’t serve that thing “up there” perhaps.
Emma Kumakura, a game designer in Palo Alto, Calif., was outraged to see her friend Alice Mizer Stewart, who had passed away in March, shilling for a tea company.
Emma took a look at Alice’s profile and it appears that she did, in fact, like The Republic of Tea. Nevertheless it’s kind of disturbing to have people liking brands from beyond the grave.
Not just that the dead folks have suddenly got active, but even alive people have been “liking” stuff that they don’t like. Worse, they don’t even remember doing so! A guy who has never bought a car in his life suddenly found that he had liked Subaru.
I asked E.V. if he’d pressed the “like” button for Subaru, and he replied:
Then he said that he went to his profile and “unliked” Subaru. I asked, shocked, wait, you mean Subaru actually went and “liked” themselves for you, without your knowledge?
Now, what’s up with Facebook and Likes?
Apparently, there is a racket going on at the Facebook. This guy thinks it has something to do with “Sponsored Posts”.
Nevertheless, in August I decided to give Sponsored Posts a try to promote Sensitive Skin. That’s when the weirdness began.
Strange Results From Sponsored Posts
My number of post views did indeed go up, according the statistics provided to me by Facebook. But these likes didn’t seem like “quality” views or likes. I was getting likes from folks in South America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Comments were posted not only in languages I couldn’t understand, but in alphabets I didn’t recognize.
This was suboptimal — not to mention extremely weird — for a literary magazine written in English.
Then I started noticing something else. “Sponsored Posts” were popping up near the top of my newsfeed, and some of them made no sense.
So, please do check your Facebook “Likes”. Who knows what you may be “Liking”, and what mess these likes can put you in with your spouse or friend!
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