The adorable, the funny and the ugly: thoughts on Tumblr

November 2, 2023 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Well, I won’t be going to help my mother today – we’ll be doing that tomorrow – which means I can get work done outside while it’s “warm” today. Yay!

But first, the adorable:

David is so good with the kittens! He’s also a great ball of fluff, and the kittens love to snuggle up to him. At one point, Shadow, here, was completely engulfed in David’s fur, but moved before I could get a picture.

Now, the funny:

As the day warmed up yesterday, the snow on the metal roof of the water bowl house started to slight off – until an icicle stopped it! Yes, that overhanging piece of snow is being held in place by the tiny tip of the shorter icicle.

And now the ugly.

Tumblr.

Fair warning, I guess, that some people might have issues with what I’m about to say next. That’s okay. I’m not offended by people disagreeing with me. Also, a warning for later on, for those who don’t want to hear about war crimes.

I got a Tumblr account, quite a few years ago. Mostly because my daughters got accounts, and it was a way of sharing things and so on. Just another social media account. I’ve got quite a few of them, most of which I rarely go to. My older daughter uses it for her online business, and it’s the source of many of her commissions. Frankly, with her skill and talent, I think she could do much better if she marketed herself elsewhere, but it’s her business – literally – not mine. When I started this blog, I set it so that my posts will automatically share to a Facebook account I created for it, and to the Tumblr account I created under the same name.

At the time we started our account, Tumblr was still a pretty sane. It was a lot of younger people, who wanted something other than Facebook. The joke was that Facebook was all about middle ages wine drinking women. It isn’t, but I know enough of them that I found the joke funny.

In its early years. Tumblr went through the same struggles FB did, with the usual p0rn bots and explicit material inundating people’s feeds. They did eventually solve that one, and things settled for a while.

Social media, in general, is a cesspool. The anonymity of the internet tends to bring out the worst in people. People throw out threats of death, rape and violence at the drop of a hat, as well as vile insults, instead of having actual… you know… discussions about things we disagree with. Limitations on how long comments can be make it harder to hold those discussions, but people don’t even try. Instead of “I disagree with you, here’s why”, it’s “You are a terrible, evil person and deserve to die” or whatever. Twitter in particular used to be really bad for that. It’s why I never started a Twitter account. I probably still won’t, now that it’s X, but since Musk took over, he’s actually done a pretty good job of cleaning it up.

Which brings me back to Tumblr.

Over the past few years, the content on Tumblr has gotten increasingly worse. We’ve got an entire generation of people who have been indoctrinated into far left extremism from kindergarten through university. They can barely read, can’t spell, can barely formulate a coherent sentence, know nothing of history except for revisionist history, can barely do simple arithmetic, and couldn’t logic their way out of a paper bag (there are exceptions, of course, but they are the minority), but my goodness, they sure do think Capitalism is Eeeevil, all white people are racists, and of course, riddled with gender ideology.

Then Musk started cleaning up Twitter, and all the p0rn bots, child s3x traffickers and g00mers moved to Tumblr and TikTok. They were already there, of course. There was just suddenly more of them. Right after the takeover, a lot of leftwing extremists, who think “freedom of speech” is a bad thing, left the platform for Tumblr and TikTok (the garbage took itself out!). For a while there, my Tumblr account was being inundated with new “followers” that were bots and/or p0rn, which I would block and report – hopefully before I saw some animated gif … activity, shall we say.. Eventually, Tumblr seems to have gotten control of that, but not quite. They have this think in the dashboard with recommended Tumblrs to visit, including “live” streams. From the thumbnails, every single one of them I see looks like it’s p0rn. I could report them, as p0rn and sexually explicit material is not allowed, but in order to do that, I have to click on them, first, and I’m not about to do that.

Things have really exploded since Oct. 7. No, not because a terrorist group with the explicitly stated, charter written goal of genocide against Jews attacked Israeli civilians – a war crime in itself. Not because these creatures (I wouldn’t even call them “animals”, because animals would never stoop to this level of degeneracy) murdered, tortured, raped and abducted civilians, degrading women in public and desecrating bodies. Not because they murdered entire families, from infants in their cradles to the elderly. No.

They support the bad guys.

As with so many other things, they’ve redefined things. Evil becomes good. Lies become truth. Wrong becomes right. Even words are redefined. For a group that hates “capitalism”, they don’t even know what it is. Likewise, words like “colonizer”. They only know the meanings they’ve been indoctrinated into. Then, because they live in a very loud bubble, they have come to believe they are the majority, and that anyone who disagrees with them is evil. Not just wrong.

A kicker was when I saw some “art” being shared, purportedly done by an artist in Gaza that was killed by an Israeli air strike. If this were true (and there was no reason to believe it is), this would have been suicide by Israel, and I said as much. There was plenty of warning. Civilians could have left. Or at least, they could have, if Hamas hadn’t blocked their routes out of Gaza, but that’s another issue. Anyhow, I was accused of having “no empathy”.

So now we have Tumblr awash with Palestinian propaganda, with absolutely nothing about what was done to Israel. As far as these people know, Israel just up and decided to commit genocide against Palestinians for no reason. They either have no clue, or justify, the fact that Palestinians supported with Hamas did, and were celebrating and dancing in the streets, not just in Gaza, but around the world.

Which makes being accused of having “no empathy” truly ironic, since these people clearly have no empathy for things like a baby being put in an oven and roasted alive, while the mother was repeatedly raped, and after the father was murdered. Or about how families in their safe rooms (imagine living in a place where you need to have a safe room in your home!) had their houses burned around them. Some survived. Some roasted to death in their safe rooms. Those that tried to escape their burning homes ran out, only to be shot to death by the waiting Hamas. Or the people who got tortured or raped in front of their loved ones, before being executed. There was even a Hamas terrorist that phoned his mother from the home of one of his victims, bragged about the atrocities he had just committed, and was praised by his family for it.

But nooo…. these are not the bad guys. The “zionists” are the bad guys, and the Palestinians that were so happy about what was done to Israeli civilians are the victims.

Tumblr is just oozing with anti-Jew hatred right now – and the people engaging in it actually try to say that “the Jews” agree with them.

Yeah. Logic is not their strong point.

Anyhow.

So I started going something I haven’t been doing for years.

I’m starting to use my Tumblr account.

More specifically, I’m sharing accurate information to Tumblr. Historically accurate, evidentially accurate and truthful information. Yes, I vetted this stuff first, and if something is a mix of both (the best lies have at least some truth in them), I won’t share it.

One of my sources is someone who grew up with the ideology of the region. He knows it because he lived it and believed it. Today, he made a video about a statement made today by the Palestinian Authority – not Hamas – that explicitly stated their intention of exterminating the Jews, complete with koranic verses about it, that was being preached in mosques in sermons. It even showed how these “leaders” are lying to their own people. I shared it, and lo and behold, I actually got a comment (“notes”) on it (I don’t promote my Tumblr account, so I don’t typically get any reactions from there).

I also shared an unrelated video talking about Canada’s insane and bizarre gun “buy back” scheme that got delayed. This is what I got under the gun control video.

As you can see, I don’t have any patience with idiocy.

Note that the person did not say anything to counter the actual claims in the post. They just went straight into an attack on me – and my crops. I doubt they even watched the video to see what it was about. Also “say it to my face” is hilarious, considering they’re the ones that started off attacking me.

As for the video about the PA declaring their intend to commit genocide on Jews?

That’s right. Under a video about how the PA – not Hamas – has made a statement explicitly saying they intend to wipe out all Jews in all the world, I was attacked for not having “real empathy” for people.

Again, I doubt this person even bothered to watch the video. Especially considering how quickly after I shared it, that they commented. Also, for this person to then claim to speak for “Jewish people” would be funny, if it weren’t for the fact that Jewish people were so horrifically slaughtered.

This is pretty typical. They don’t even try to argue their position. They just go straight into the personal attacks. What you WON’T see is any sort of proper argumentation or rational debate. It’s all pure emotionalism and pure, unadulterated hate. These comments are pretty mild. I’ve seen much worse, elsewhere.

I didn’t bother screen capping the rest of my response, which was a bit of a history lesson. Which is probably talking to a wall, but I don’t expect people like this to have the cognitive ability to process the information. Someone reading it might, though.

So Tumblr is a cesspool, and it’s gotten much, much worse of late. The things my daughters are being exposed to is bad enough that it’s affecting our relationship. I’ve even seen one daughter sharing “art” that was essentially p0rn featuring surgically mutilated bodies, under the guise of a particular s3xual identity. Recently, I was telling a daughter about a Mary Pickford movie I’d just watched, that had a particularly well done and moving scene involving the death of a child. I mentioned the name “Jesus” and my daughter had a visceral reaction of disgust. Keep in mind, that my daughters were strong Christians, based on research, evidence and logic. But reason, evidence and logic holds little sway against emotionalism. One of the first things the “gr00mers” and indoctrinators do is divide their targets away from their loved ones, and that means viewing them as the “enemy” and shunning them. We used to be able to talk about anything, even when we disagreed. Now, they just walk away or make snarky, gaslighting comments. I’ve considered deleting my Tumblr account, but that wouldn’t actually solve anything. It’s gotten to a point where my husband and I are seriously considering blocking certain sites, using parental controls (ironic that we never needed to consider this when our daughters were younger!), but that won’t solve the problem. Just cause new ones. We’d have to cut of the internet completely, and that would end my daughter’s online business, end this blog, and end a primary means of communication (we’d have to cut off the data plan on our cell phones, too. Though we do live in a cell phone dead zone, some signal does still occasionally make it through and, of course, would be an issue anywhere we go).

So what, realistically, can we do about it? Not a whole heck of a lot that will actually be useful.

Well, hopefully, things will improve. Right now, am about to go outside with my daughters to get some physical labour done. We all need to spend more time outside, and less time on our computers.

The Re-Farmer

Morning cuteness, and recovery begins

June 24, 2023 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, the cuteness!

Decimus contentedly nursing one of her babies. The other three put themselves in the cat cave.

Bringing Decimus and her babies indoors has had an unexpected benefit.

I can now open my door, and leave it open. Not overnight, and I prefer it closed if there isn’t anyone up and about to hear if there are problems, but open nonetheless.

Before bringing her in, if I was in my room, I was constantly opening and closing the door to let a stream of “safe” cats in and out. The cats that Marlee, Butterscotch and Nosencrantz were okay with, and that generally did not try to attack Nosencrantz. It basically came down to Turmeric being the only one that could not be allowed in the room, because she would go straight for Nosencrantz, and Tissue was touch and go. It took her a bit longer, but she would start stalking Nosencrantz and was generally really high strung.

Once Decimus came in, some of the usual cats would come into the room, see her and the babies and suddenly leave! After awhile, they stopped wanting to come in at all. Cheddar was pretty much the only one that was calm about it, but even he doesn’t want to come in as often anymore. Leyendecker still acts like he wants to come in, but as soon as he sees Decimus and the babies, he might sniff a bit, but usually wants out again, right away. Especially if Decimus is out of the cage and lounging on the carpet nearby.

Decimus actually wants out of the room. She wants to wander around the house and explore. I don’t think she has discovered the upstairs, yet. Since we want her to be able to go back to her babies quickly, the door gets left open.

The other cats still aren’t sure about her, but she so obliviously ignores any hissing or growling, sniffing and stalking, they tend to back off. Or get really startled when she walks past them and rubs her body against them on the way by. It’s like “I’m threatening you! Why are you hugging me?!?”

With the kittens in my room, pretty much none of the cats try to come in when the door is open. They might go through the doorway for a moment, look around, then leave. Even Turmeric won’t go much past the door. There was one time she’d come in and was under a stool, so we didn’t notice her when we closed the door. I discovered her when I heard a sudden cat altercation (I can’t really call it a fight) between Turmeric and, I think, Marlee. I dashed over (as much as this broken body can “dash” anywhere) to open the door and Turmeric ran out with her tail puffed out like a bottle brush! She hasn’t tried to come in, since.

Which means that now, after months of having to keep my door closed to prevent cats from going after Nosencrantz, I can now keep my door open again. All thanks to a tiny little mama that is completely oblivious to the curiosity and/or aggressive behaviour of other cats.

It also means that Marlee, Nosencrantz and Butterscotch can leave the room on their own, if they want.

None of them have bothered. Even Marlee, who sometimes does decide she wants out, has shown no interest in going out that door.

Hopefully, that will change and I can start leaving my door open when I’m asleep, too!

In other things, I was up way too late last night, after finally being able to recover my original, personal Facebook account. It was stolen on May 2, and I’ve been going through it to look for damage done. My total friend’s list count had gone down, which was no surprise. I knew that quite a few of my friends that joined me on my new account had either unfriended or blocked my original account after the thief had DM’d them to try and scam them, or they had interactions with the thief when sketchy posts were being made from my account. I also saw a lot of new names I’ve never seen before. So far, I’ve been leaving public posts to let people know that my account was recovered, and that anyone who got a friend request or message from my account after May 2, it was not me, but the thief. This morning, I found the blocked list and unblocked a lot of my friends and family, but saw a whole bunch of unfamiliar names, too. I suspect these are people the thief had successfully scammed, or people who called them out as a scammer. I don’t know what to do about these new names, yet, but once I unblocked the people I knew, I posted another public message that they would finally be able to see, too, explaining the situation.

It’s Messenger that is really going to take time to deal with. The thief was very busy there! From the looks of it, a lot of the thief’s attempts to contact people simply got ignored, which likely means they had already clued in that my account was stolen. It’s the ones that I see had actual conversations that I will have to go through and assess the damage done under my name.

I’m glad I didn’t give up trying to recover my account, but I can sure see why so many people do. So many people were reporting my original account and scam posts being made from there, it really should have been shut down long ago. Since I couldn’t see any posts being made from my original account, due to privacy settings, all I could do was report the profile as imitating me, until the thief changed the public name and profile picture. Then I kept reporting it as a fake account with a fake name. I was reporting it as close to every day as I could, as well as repeatedly going through the recovery process. Then I would use every feedback option I encountered to explain the problems I was having. I would also post updates on my new account, tagging Facebook, telling people on my friends list what was going on, as well as the occasional public post, in case people who knew me were trying to look my up to see what was going on. As frustrating as it was, I fully intended to keep it up as long as I possibly could. I simply was not willing to accept that someone out there was scamming people under my name, without doing something about it.

I don’t have a lot of time to spend on this, and I want to be thorough about it. If that means directly contacting people to let them know that they had been dealing with a stolen account and not me, I want to take time to do it right. So that means I’ll still be using my new account a lot, still. Especially for direct messages.

It’s a pain in the butt, but I really want to repair as much damage done under my name as possible.

The Re-Farmer

The heat continues, and the FB saga continues

June 5, 2023June 5, 2023 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Not a lot of progress outside, today, and only partly because I went out this afternoon.

It’s past 5:30pm as I write this and, according the the weather apps, we’ve cooled down to around 27C/ 81F or 29C/84F, though we most certainly reached higher than 30C/86F today. The high predicted for today was “only” 27C/81F

When I got home, just a little while ago, I saw this reading.

Since we are no longer bringing the transplants indoors overnight, I’ve been leaving the sun room doors wide open, to keep it cooler. There’s a ceiling fan helping things out, too. The thermometer is reading 38C/100F, and it really did feel cooler in the sun room than outside!

We’ve been feeding the outside cats earlier in the evenings, so they can get the food before the racoons clean everything out at night (though a skunk or two will show up any time of day), so I did that after unloading the car by the house, then parking it in the garage.

I tried to get a picture of Adam, but he was camera shy, so I caught him as he was jumping off the cat shelter roof. (It may be hotter up there, but the skunks can’t climb to it.) I haven’t seen Driver in Ages, but Adam has been hanging around, and I’ve been trying to pet him. I’ve managed to touch him, but he really doesn’t like it and goes away to eat somewhere else.

The problem is, I’m starting to think Adam is female. With the long fur, it’s hard to be certain without being able to cop a feel, which none of us has been able to do, but I would expect to at least be able to tell if there are some boy parts under that fur.

*sigh*

Which means that two of the white and greys we were unsure about turned out to be female, and now the two remaining black and white’s that we thought were male are female (I was able to confirm with Decimous, but she has not allowed me to touch her, since that one day I was able to scritch her neck and ears). One of the grey tabbies we couldn’t get close to also turned out to be female.

We may be getting a lot of humidity with our heat, but still no rain. The predicted storms either never materialize in our area (my mother’s town got quite the deluge, though!), or the predictions get pushed back another day or two. It never really cools down during the night, either. I’m glad I got a deep watering done this morning, including the Korean pine planted in the outer yard. We’re getting no rain at all.

This afternoon I went to town to meet up with a friend from high school who is in the area for a few days. We ended up having lunch in the shade by the beach. It was so much more pleasant with that breeze coming off the lake! There were even a few sail boats out, and one brave soul in the water, which would still be quite cold this time of year. We had a fantastic visit – and I got to update her, in person, about what happened with my stolen Facebook account. My thief has recently changed my profile name, so at least people won’t be getting confused about that anymore. My profile picture also got changed; apparently, I’ve lost 30 years, about 150 pounds and now dress like a skank.

I’m still bashing my head on the wall with Facebook’s recovery process, which is just broken. oftne, literally. Of all the ways to try and recover my account, there is one that should actually accomplish it effectively. The steps are to first find my old account while logged out of any other accounts I might be using. Then, since I can’t log in using the thief’s email address, I select “try another way”. Then there’s a screen where I can say I cannot access the thief’s email address that is now associated with my original account. It then goes to a screen that explains they will ask for an email they can reach me at, send me a code to that email, then get me to submit proof of ID, which would be checked by a human, to recover my account.

The first time I went through this process, I got the code, but when it was time to confirm my ID, it went to a broken page. I’ve gone through processes that took me to that page many times, and it is usually broken.

Only once did I get to input my email, though. Now, when I get to that instructions page and hit next, it takes me straight to the “submit ID” part – which should be the last step, not the first. I’ve submitted my ID before, and the next page says to expect an email from them… but what email would they be using? I’m logged out of any account. I’ve told them I cannot access the email that shows up with the login for my original account. Would they still be contacting the thief’s account, anyway? I have no idea, because none of this seems to go through a human (even though this part is supposed to be done by both a program, and a real human).

So I continue to report my old account every day. I can’t report it as “imitating me” anymore, but I can report it as a fake account. And I know people still on my original friends list continue to report the scam posts the thief is making from my account. It’s rediculous.

It also makes it so hard to reconnect with people. They have every reason to ignore my friend requests (if I can even find them, or am able to send a request when I do) and the messages I try to send, explaining why they are getting a friend request from me. The friend I met with today told me she had been talking to other mutual friends about the strange posts coming from my account, and these are people I’d sent friend requests to. Requests that must have been declined, because when I find their pages again, I no longer have the option to send a friend request. Hopefully, now that my friend and I have been able to talk in person, she’ll be able to pass on to our mutual friends, which account is really me now. I was also able to explain to her exactly what happened that lead to my account being stolen, rather than hacked, because I did something stupid while distracted, and thinking I was helping a friend.

Facebook’s tech support is such a disaster.

I think scammers count on FB being so useless at recovering accounts, and users giving up because of it, rather quickly. From what I’ve hear from others who have lost their accounts, they basically just started new accounts and moved on after a very short time. I’m thinking that, at some point, I’m going to wear the system down and get some action taken – even if it’s to delete my old account, which would be preferable to having my thief using it to scam people! If it weren’t for that, I would have moved on from trying to recover my account, but… well… it’s not like I have a name that is shared by a lot, or even a few, other people. My married name is one of a kind. I’ve done curiosity searches on my name, and the only things that come up are directly related to me. So someone out there doing scams under my name is causing more direct harm to me than if I had a more common name.

What a pain.

Bah. Enough of that!

Time to go back to coping with this sticky, humid heat we’ve been under!

The Re-Farmer

Exhausted, and Facebook thieves.

May 24, 2023 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

This is why I’m exhausted. At least physically.

It was too windy to start taking down trees, though from a direction that allowed me to take the transplants out. So instead, I started mowing the driveway and outer yard. The inner yard really needs a mow, too, but not as urgently as the outer yard. That and I had the gate open for a prescription delivery, so that gave me a chance to mow all the way to the road, which is behind me in the picture above.

You can really see how far I had been able to scythe and mow the grass last year, and where I couldn’t. I was basically mowing old hay with fresh grass growing through it, which meant constant back and forthing in small sections to get it done.

This will need to be raked up so it doesn’t smother the grass below. I am quite happy to have it for mulch!

I mowed until I ran out of gas a second time and then just stopped. I was physically done for the day! Thankfully, today was a cooler day – as I write this, we’ve reached our forecasted high of 18C/64F – making it much more pleasant to work in. That’s about average for this time of year. The next couple of days are supposed to be in the 28-29C/82-84F range. The record high for today is 30C/86F, but the record low is -3C/27F, so I’m not about to complain!

Before I started on the mowing, I had to head into town to get more cat kibble. We ran out of outside cat kibble awfully fast for an 11kg bag. I had gone into town a couple days ago and looked for some, but a 9kg bag was almost $44, so I figured I could wait. This morning, however, I finished off the bin for the outside cats – and that was after adding the last of the kibble from a bag for the inside cats. They still have enough in a bin to last until I can do the big shop, plus wet cat food, but there was no more spare for the outside cats.

While I was in town a couple of days ago, which was Victoria Day and a statutory holiday I completely forgot about, my daughter gave me her wallet and asked me to pick up some hoagies for her.

I wasn’t able to do that.

The entire section was completely empty!

I was also finding other sections strangely empty – until I thought about it and realized that the empty shelves were basically all for BBQ/picnic type stuff, including certain condiments. I’m thinking some organization was having a big first BBQ of the year and cleaned out the supply!

So I went to a different store today, hoping to find kibble at a better price. The same brand name 9kg bag was even more expensive, but they did have a house brand that was a reasonable price.

While I was there, I went ahead and looked to see if they had any hoagies. They had lots, but…

… I just about had a heart attack over that price! Those bags aren’t any bigger than the ones the other store normally carries.

Yes, the labels on this brand say Smokies. We call them hoagies.

No, I didn’t buy any.

Yikes!

While I was there, I ran into someone that I know that works there, and he started asking me if I was moving.

Yup. My Facebook thief was at it again, with posts listing items for a moving sale. The same post they’ve sent out at least twice before, that I know of.

I’ve had friends send me screen captures of all the stuff I’m supposedly selling. I had sent a friend request to this person from my new account which, understandably, he ignored. Usually, it’s the friend request from someone already on your friends list that is the fake! So I told him what happened, and asked him to report my old account and any strange posts like this. He then told me that he started to suddenly get Messenger messages from someone on his friends list that were very odd. Asking for help, much like the message that fooled me. He’d been ignoring them, since this was someone who normally never communicates with him, but suddenly he was getting all these messages asking “why won’t you answer?”, etc.

I had also had a chance this morning to talk on the phone with a friend from where we lived before moving here. On seeing strange posts from “me” about giving away a PS5 because I caught my “boyfriend” cheating me, she actually DM’s “me” to ask if I was okay, and what happened with my husband. The thief tried to pretend to be me and said “I” got a divorce because “I” caught my husband (no longer a boyfriend? 😄) cheating on me. It became pretty clear this was not me, and she asked for my husband’s name and where did she live, only to have the person start playing a guilt try, saying things like “why are you asking me all these questions”. So I was able to clear that up with her, too.

When I was outside mowing, the pharmacy delivery driver arrived, and we talked for a while. He saw the “moving sale” I was supposedly having, too. I asked him to report my original page and any posts from it. By this time, because people were getting confused with my new account and old account (my new account’s name was almost identical to my old account) I had changed my display name a bit. Hopefully, people would still recognize that it’s me, but not get mixed up with the old account.

One of the things that I noticed about the screencaps of comments people are sending me, is that there are people showing interest in these items “I” am selling, but I have no idea who they are. They are not on my original friends list. Either they got added after my account was stolen, or the thief is using other stolen or fake account to leave comments and make the scam post look legitimate.

It might be working.

As I was writing this post, I got a message from another friend, with screen captures of someone commenting about the PS5 giveaway, saying he’d take it and offering to pay for shipping. This was an online friend I’d already reconnected with, but not someone I know in person, so I quickly sent him a message, explaining about the screencap of his comments. I thought there might be several possibilities: either he really did think this was me (even though I messaged him about my stolen account after sending a friend request), he knew it wasn’t me and was trying to play the thief, it was being posted by a cloned account, or his account was stolen, like mine was.

It turned out he’d been tricked!

I’m so glad I stopped working on this post to message him right away, because while we were chatting, the thief contacted him and asked for $61 for shipping.

And this is why these scammers steal accounts. Some people actually fall for their fake posts, and send them money, thinking they are sending money to someone they know.

He responded by telling them to F off. Then he sent me the response he got to that…

“You sound skeptic from your last message, that very wrong if you think am here to play you or just trying to take advantage of you. When I know how people work hard nowadays to get money, I will never think of taking someone advantages over you and playing you, please take that out off your mind that is really awful thing on the earth that I will never think about doing.”

As if that weren’t enough, while I was chatting with my friend that sent me the screencaps, and the guy who almost got scammed, I got a message from someone I don’t know, but we have a mutual friend (I have my settings so that “friends of friends” can contact me). They saw the moving sale list and were interested in the 55″ TV and wanted to know the make and model number. How they ended up DMing me to my new account, instead of my original account, I don’t know, but I’m glad it worked out that way. I told them about the stolen account and asked them to report it. When I found out about the other person getting the message about sending money for shipping, I let them know about that, too. Not long after, they let me know that they told my thief that they were reporting them, and the thief took the ad down.

So it looks like, when they make these posts and tag people on my original friends list, the posts show up on their profile pages, and their friends can see it, too. Which would explain the people I don’t know being able to comment on “my” posts – they’re commenting through someone else’s page. The farther removed the viewers are from the stolen account, the easier for them to be tricked, since they don’t know me and wouldn’t recognize that these are not things I would normally post. The friend I talked to on the phone this morning told me she had gone looking through my old profile page, trying to figure out what was going on. She noticed that a lot of things that she saw me sharing in the past (I hit the share button a lot!) were gone, leaving only innocuous posts about Advent or other holidays. Even the posts she saw before, like the one where “I” was giving away a PS5 because of a cheating boyfriend were gone. Those ones get reported so much, Facebook might actually be taking them down, too.

You’d think, with so many people reporting the account as hacked, me reporting it as stolen from me, and even my finally being able to send in proof of ID, Facebook would finally clue in that there’s a problem with this account. But nope. Even with the ID part, where it says the identify confirmation is done by both automated systems and a real human being, did not seem to work. They seemed to think I was trying to recover my new account, not my original account. You have to be logged out to go through this process, but you still start from the “recover your account” stage, where I would have found my original account (which I can do because I got a notification telling me what my primary email address had been changed to, but was never able to use the “if this wasn’t us, click here” option) and gone from there.

It is such a mess, and Facebook has been so incredibly useless. If it weren’t for the fact that someone is actively using my account, pretending to be me, while trying to scam people, this would be the thing to drive me off Facebook completely.

While going through all this, I am hearing from SO many people who have had their accounts hacked, stolen or cloned, or had strange messages from people similar to the one that fooled me.

With Facebook being so useless about recovering accounts, it’s no wonder. The scammers are having a field day.

Which all leaves me with another level of exhaustion. I am wasting so much time dealing with this.

The Re-Farmer

Sneak peak, and I am such a friggin’ idiot

May 2, 2023 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

I spent much of the day working on the old kitchen garden. We reached highs of 16C/61F, almost no wind, bright and sunny. It got ridiculously hot, and I had to stop for a couple of breaks in the middle of it. That, and my phone kept going off with notifications that I wanted to check.

Battle On!

April 5, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We had some wild activity outside our window this morning! All 7 deer showed up, and they kept chasing each other around. Even Mama was chasing her own twins away!

I got some video that I will actually put together into one larger file to upload later. For now, here is some of what we got to see.

Meanwhile, we have also managed to get a Facebook account going for this blog. I’d tried last night, using the blog’s email address, and it wouldn’t accept my phone number to confirm the account. It wouldn’t work for my husband, either. We finally had to abandon it and start over.

If you look at the side bar, you’ll see where you can now follow us here on WordPress, on Instagram and on Facebook.

And if all goes well, this post will automatically upload on Facebook, like it does on Google +. You can find us on Pinterest, too.

Little by little, we’ll figure this out!

The Re-Farmer

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