posted on Mar, 1 2016 @ 11:07 AM
I recently opened a Facebook account, just to get news feeds, nothing else. Used a nice fake name I like, a nice fake birthdate really easy to
remember (7/7/77), uploaded a pic of Indiana Jones as my avatar, and added a lot of tech/news/nature/astronomy feeds, etc.
It took about half a day for it to recommend someone I may know. I had no idea who it was. I was postings lot of comments on different articles, so I
figured it was someone who decided to visit my page.
The next day I had 10 people it recommend as people I may know.
My wife started a Facebook account too, about a month ago, and just has a few friends and family she connects with. She has her friends list set to
private, so that no one can see it.
I frineded her, and immediately every single person on her friends list popped up as possible people I may know, even though she set her friend list
to private.
I sent her a couple of pictures of flowers and what not, and then decided that her friends might not realize it is me and wonder what is going on,
lol. So I just took her off my friends list. I didn't start the account to chit chat anyway. More as a news aggragator. Which I find it is very good
at.
Then I thought I'd try something. I would like and share public all the posts I found interesting. And I by this time had quite a huge newsfeed going
on.
I liked and shared and liked and shared, even though I have no friends. I just figured, people are visiting my page, I might as well share things I
find interesting so they can see them too.
Then the weirdest thing happened. I went to sleep, and woke up the next morning, and had 28 friend requests from people all over the world I had no
idea about.
So I started to see who they were, and most o them were artists, and writers, etc. So I thought, why not, I'll let them see my newsfeed, and accepted
about half of them. And then I got more friend requests. It was pretty amazing. People from Italy, France, the UK, South Africa, Australia, Brazil,
Mexico, US, Moracco, Pakistan, Russia, Germany. I mean just everywhere.
Then I got a guy from New York, Brooklyn who friended me and actually im''d me, and we had a nice conversation for about an hour. Really nice guy who
just got a divorce. He saw a post I made on an Ars Technica article, and something just clicked that he liked I guess.
So now, I'm up to 68 friend list, who are total strangers. And have another 15 requests I haven't got around to check on.
Facebook sure makes the world a small place. And I've even had comments from several famous people, Tim Mcgraw, Rebba Mcintire, oh, and even had a
conversation with the voice actor of Kaiden Alenko (Raefal Spage), in Mass Effect (a video game). And shared a short story with him, a fan fic I made.
We met on a Mass Effect fan page on Facebook.
From the Mass Effect fan page I've gotten several friend requests too. One of which is a nice Siberian translator that knows like 10 languages and we
chat.
I realize if I didn't start that page the other day, just because, I never would have met any of these people.
A couple of rules I have while posting, even though I don't use my real name. I will not post anything political. I'm neutral politically anyway, so I
am not into politics. I think that draws a lot of people, especially internationally, knowing I do not have a strong political bent. The very fact
that it is absent from my posts shows that.
I will not post or repost anything that is defamatory, or that contains foul language. I don't use it my day to day life, and see no need to do so
online either.
I look for bright up-building videos, pictures, blogs, news articles, pictures, to share, on all strata of subjects. And it seems to be drawing a lot
of people. Every time I open Facebook, I have two or three more people wanting to add me as a friend.
It's the weirdest thing.