Raising Hell On Facebook

Maybe it's me, but there are times when I think that most people are idiots. This is one of those times.

The first time I logged into Facebook today was from my cell phone while I was out. The screen said I had a message from someone whose name did not ring a bell. When I clicked to read it, I saw a list of message recipients that seemed endless. It's bad enough on a regular monitor (see screen captures after the jump), let alone this list, one name at a time, on my cell phone's small rectangular screen.

When I finally got down to the bottom, there were a series of replies -- on Facebook, you see all the replies to a message because you can't just reply to one person on the list. You have to reply to them all. The message originated, as it turned out, from the Phoenix Hellraisers flag football team, promoting...something. I've forgotten what. Whoever runs the team's Facebook sent it to every one of their FB friends, including me. (I know people who either are or were part of the team.) Right now they have 2,208 friends. A few minutes ago it was 2,210. I also unfriended them earlier in the evening.

Unfortunately, the replies keep coming. The "conversation" has gone basically like this from almost the beginning, and similar replies (including some duplicates) just keep coming...

Remove me too!

Remove me from this, please! Thank you...

Remove me as well

Omg. I have kept quiet all day, but enough is enough. Faggots!!!! Shut the f--- up!!!!!

Lol

The only way to make it is to stop replying... so STOP REPLYING!

So stop!!! Dyke!!

Stop

STOP!

STOP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What is this

And on and on and on...

You can delete it from your list of messages, but it just keeps coming back whenever another person replies. I'm not sure if the original sender can delete it (which would stop any further replies) or not. You can report it as spam, for what good that would do.

It amazes me that someone would be stupid enough to rile up all of their friends this way. I rarely send messages through Facebook. If I do, it's only because it's to one friend, or a few, and it doesn't need to be broadcast on my Wall. Then again, I'm not an idiot. (Well, not usually.)

An Apology And A Little Randomness

I owe this guy Luis an apology for what I wrote about him being sort of an idiot in this post about the "Privilege Denying Dude" site and its improper usage of a photo, which I then used here. He didn't delete his comments, and they didn't just disappear. They were marked as possible spam and were awaiting action on my part in the Blogger dashboard's "Comments" tab. Sorry, Luis.

If I owe any of you an apology for something, let me know. ;-)

While I'm writing something, here are a few brief items...

• My $18.00 jury duty check finally arrived in the mail today. I still never called to find out the result of the trial. I'll probably keep forgetting. It would be nice if these court records were listed online somewhere. Then I could remember it at 3 am some overnight and go right to the website and find out if the defendant was found guilty or not.
• Also, while tonight's "Glee" was quite enjoyable and had its interesting moments (despite the complete absence of Sue Sylvester), the outcome of Sectionals was so utterly predictable that it was disappointing. I understand why it turned out as it did, but there was no tension at all, and that took away from the moment.
• Finally, this week the new comic books come out on Thursday because of last week's holiday and my current plan is only to buy one book, so I may write about that and last week's six books in a single post. Or maybe I won't combine the two weeks into one. I'm flexible that way, y'all.

Today's DJT (Dumb Joe Tale)

I was looking at the current statement for one of my credit card accounts, and saw a $25.00 transaction listed that I didn't have a receipt for and had no memory of. The statement listing said "PNL Advertising" followed by what turned out to be a phone number (there was a 0 in front of it so I didn't realize it was a phone number). I called the credit card company and the woman I spoke to said it was for "books, or a newspaper or magazine" based on the info in their system.

Still didn't ring a bell. If it was a book, if I didn't buy it in a store (such as Borders) I bought it from Amazon. The magazines I get in the mail (Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated) were obtained by redeeming Dividend Miles from US Airways. The last payment I made for my Daily News subscription was in June and the payment covers delivery through mid-December. I did not authorize any auto-renew option. For a moment I thought that might be it, thinking the "PN" in "PNL" might stand for Philadelphia Newspapers. But the "L" threw me off. Also, it referred to advertising and I didn't take out any ads. It made no sense. I asked if there were any more details about it, because if I knew where the store was where the transaction occurred (if there was a store) it might jog my memory. She found an address -- in York, Pennsylvania. I've never been to York in my life.

The credit card rep said I should call the number on the statement first, and gave me another number to call for disputed transactions if I didn't get it resolved. I called the number and got a voice mail that said, "If you're calling about a credit card transaction for PNL Advertising please call..." followed by a different number. I started to really get agitated, thinking that this obviously was a scam. But how? The card has never been stolen, and I haven't even used it lately except for a couple of transactions in September that were done online.

The voicemail continued: "If you're calling about a credit card transaction for Philly Dealyo..."

I hung up the phone, feeling incredibly stupid. Remember the half-price B-52's ticket I bought? Yeah. That. D'oh.