Fakers

They used to say "on the internet, no-one knows you are a dog". Which kind of meant anyone could be anything, even themselves, if they really wanted to without being shot down immediately.

Things were kind of fun then.

There were a few trolls, but you could mostly ignore them. There were a few correctivists, but you could mostly ignore them.

Social media doesn't seem very sociable to me. People aren't themselves, or even a more interesting version of themselves. Everyone is scared of saying the wrong thing and being humiliated by the next shaming fad.

The other day I was notified that I had a new follower on Twitter. People don't often follow me so I took a look. It was a woman that I had met the previous week, so I assumed she was interested in my film club and had actually looked me up... which she said she would, but people often say that and then don't.

So I sent her a message with details of that week's film.

And got a puzzled response (what?)

It turns out that it wasn't her. It was a student in the Ukraine. Odd, I thought. She seemed quite chatty and I wasn't busy so we exchanged a few messages.

All seemed fairly normal until she mentioned that she was a big gamer and wanted to meet me inside one of her games. He next message had a link in to download the game.

Which sounded a bit suspicious.

I didn't click the link. I googled the game instead. It didn't sound like the sort of thing she would be into... given the little information she had told me about herself.

Then, of course, I realised that this wasn't a free game. She was just trying to get me to buy the game. It was marketing.

When I mentioned this to a friend (a little smug that I hadn't fallen for it) he said that she probably wasn't even a real person. It was probably a "chat bot" that just tricks you into thinking you are talking to a person.

Smugness evaporated. I was fooled by a bot.

For a few minutes I thought I had found a friendly voice out there in the big world. That's what the internet is good at, right? But it was a trick. To try and get some money out of me. Which made me really sad.

The next time someone follows me on Twitter, I probably wont even take a look. I've already stopped looking at Facebook because I don't understand why it shows me the posts that it does... and there seem to be a lot of ads on it now.

Which is probably a good thing. Talk to your friends in person... and their dogs.