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I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again; Beware of what you share.
When social media was flooded by hurricane season 2017’s coverage, scandals, pleas, and opinions, I ran across the grossest example to date of how careless sharing makes Facebook a little more dangerous for everybody.
A kind, conscientious, cool and popular friend of mine, I’ll call her “M”, shared an image that was just plain, black-on-white text.
I recognized it immediately because not only was it a 100% serious call for empathy and scathing indictment of America’s moral bankruptcy, but I was also able to make the joke “check out this hilarious riff on Hurricane Irma by Jeremy McLellan Comedy”. How could I forget comedy about comedy? So meta.
It was the same image of Jeremy McLellan’s post that I had used, but with Jeremy McLellan Comedy’s name and picture cropped out. It was posted by a modeling agency, with this hot take: “Thoughts?” followed by three ‘thinking emojis’.
Not only was I annoyed that a comedian was getting his wisdom ripped off, I was alarmed by the ethically contradictory action of spreading a good message… by stealing it.
So among the comments of M’s enormous thread from this share, I posted the original and stated plainly how it was stolen.
M responded that she didn’t realize the page she had shared from was the modeling page and questionable, with some emojis denoting sheepishness.
A friend of hers noted that this agency calls them 2x a week asking them to pay $199 so they can get auditions with directors that are ‘very interested in them.’ They then stated suprisingly that they must also be “word-stealin’ philosophers apparently.” Laughing-crying emojis.
Angry react.
“Predators” I post. “I bet there isn’t any sexual assault or exploitation going on in the company either.”
Sarcasm alert.
There’s no telling how many of M’s many friends hit ‘like’ on that page versus how many saw her friend and I had to say about it. Such wisdom and empathy, right? Surely this is an ethical and responsible modeling agency. What a powerful message of compassion.
My danger sense with this modeling agency wasn’t a one-off. It wasn’t a coincidence that this modeling page turned out to be, well, turning out. I recognized this rebranding as “honeypotting.”
Honeypotting on Facebook refers to the action of sharing positive-vibe, cute or easy morality posts that are irrelevant to the content of the page posting it.
The idea is to use easily-popular feel-good posts to gain a larger audience for their end-game. By sharing these posts, the audience builds itself.
The most infamous example of how an abusive charlatan will cast their nets with feel-good posts is notorious con artist David “Avocado” Wolfe’s mass-scale infiltration of everyone’s Facebook feed. He’s a household name that nobody seems to have heard of, except for skeptics.
Wolfe’s M.O. is to post emotional memes and green energy videos— typically just ostentatious contraptions that are basically just infomercials for investment fraud, by the way— to rope in his target audience.
The end-game for Wolfe is to sell you magic chocolate because gravity is a hoax. No kidding- this guy tries to prey on the dumbest of the dumb. A great way to find even more ignorant people is to make people ignorant. This is accomplished with science denial techniques, which he will feed you after you’ve followed him because you love green energy and positive vibes.
In short, if you share a Wolfe video or meme, you are running the risk of:
A: Making people on your friends list dumber, and
B: Putting the already pretty dumb at risk of blowing their money and time on a conman.
The hashtag #DontCryWolfe from the skeptical and science communities seems to be effective; it exposes the worst of Wolfe (his core), and all you have to do is toss it into the post like a grenade and leave. I’ve seen a lot less Wolfe in my neck of the woods since I started doing this.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a snappy hashtag for every situation. I routinely debunk posts from the so-called “Free Thought” Project in my newsfeed. They’re an Alt-Right propaganda outlet guilty of spreading conspiracy thinking— a thought process that’s literally the opposite of free thought values.
They gained traction by getting their target audience to share weed legalization posts.
One of the pages appropriating the name “Anonymous”, which has specific connotations for busting abusive organizations, touts itself as a news source. So why is it posting videos of “just say no” high school speakers talking about respecting your mother before it’s too late?
Probably to get its chemophobia, pharmacophobia, and conspiracy tentacles into your head, and your friends’ heads.
FYI, the real Anonymous split up in 2016.
A good friend of mine and all-around smart woman shared a post of Wolfe’s; it was an Anne Frank quote. I took her to task for it by explaining who Wolfe was, then Googled the quote, and posted it to my own timeline. Wolfe-free.
If you see something you like, check out the page it’s from and make sure it’s something that’s in alignment with your standards and values. You’re not just sharing the post, you’re sharing the group.
I saw a poem I really liked today and instead of even bothering to check out the group who posted it, I just Googled it. Shel Silverstein. I should have recognized the style, but I didn’t, and Silverstein was uncredited. I shared a version with proper credit paid instead.
Find the version of the image, video, quote or what-have-you that doesn’t increase the audience of a dangerous group. They stole it anyway. Steal it back.
This is your friendly neighborhood Satanist reminding you to protect your dumb friends. We all have them, we all love them. Make sure they’re safe.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images