It all happened one early Monday morning. I did my daily meditation and study. Drank my green drink. Then I opened up my phone and knew something was off when at least 100 Facebook messages popped in.
“Someone’s hacked your account!”
“Do you need a loan for illness?”
And the best one: “There’s another Kisma out there and she sounds Russian.”
I knew something went upside down in my social media life as I slept. I took a minute, grabbed a breath, put life in perspective and started investigating.
It seemed that someone grabbed my profile image and timeline cover. They then created another account with my names in a slightly different order and started to RE-FRIEND all my friends and then send them messages asking for disaster relief.
Oh, and I might add the new “Kisma” had insider information for a government bond that was going to provide huge returns— my friends simply had to wire me money to get in on the Ponzi scheme.
Ugh.
With a full day of clients ahead, there wasn’t much I could do aside from placing big, bold posts on my real profile page that I did not need any medical assistance nor was I all of a sudden brokering bonds.
In fact, I told them there was a copy of me and to block that person and report them. I did the same.
I reported to the Facebooks, again and again.
24 hours later here’s what happened:
My real account was shut down and I was out. Sent to the Siberian equivalent of social media– no where to be found on Facebook!
And the somewhat more frightening issue is the FAKE Kisma was still up and running.
Oh yes indeed, she was still trying to raise funds, ask for gift cards, harass my friends and feed off of multi-tasking entrepreneurs, friends and family who didn’t pause and wonder why a friend was friending them again.
Insert: Robot me had like 20 friends and had been on Facebook for about five minutes. Real me had over 4,000 friends and I’ve been active on that account for nearly ten years.
Facebook chose to keep the 5 minute me.
My email inbox showed a reprimand from Facebook saying a friend had reported my account as pretending to be someone else, therefore I was shut down and disconnected from our virtual society, quite possibly forever.
Part of me was a bit nervous as I do promote my business on Facebook through various ads and content creation.
Another part of me had a smile on my face—“this should be interesting”, I thought to myself.
Peace. Quietude. No weird cat videos.
Life started to look and feel really fulfilling all of a sudden. There would be no one to compare myself with and therefore I would never feel that “not enough-ness” again!
I’d never have to answer a message again and all those tags or invites to groups I get daily would be a non-issue.
“Social media hangovers” would be a thing of the past…
So I decided I would ride the revolution for a bit. Daily I reached out to Facebook and re-reported my counterpart who was continuing to operate as me. I was doing my due diligence and letting it play out.
I also felt a bit lighter and had more focus on the work at hand. My posts over on Instagram became more courageous and authentic and all of a sudden I found myself not giving a dang about what anyone else thought.
Freedom from Facebook was feeling alright.
48 hours later the robot me was shut down.
24 hours after that I was invited back in by Facebook. Of course I had to prove it was really ME and issue identification. I was just about to upload my photo and decided to wait.
Pause. Was I ready to be back in the game of Facebook?
So many things had been revealed to me during my hiatus, that perhaps I needed to revisit my purpose for this platform.
If I were to log back in, in what way was I going to show up?
I took a few days. Then a few more—had my assistant post in my groups that I would be back, but not just yet. 😉
I even got emails from people saying they missed me on Facebook. This startled me and brought to mind this realization:
Facebook allows us to be mission driven with messages and content that do good in the world. It’s up to us to hit “unfriend” or “unfollow” when something is not suitable to our psyche.
And, I found myself missing everyone. I missed my sister’s kids and my clients’s posts. I wanted to get back to providing content to my tribe.
And I definitely wanted to post photos of my Boston Terrier Leonard.
I even missed some of those crazy videos that pop up.
So, I went ahead and clicked on log back in.
“Welcome Back, you’ve been missed.”
Thanks Facebook. I do believe we’re friends again.