December 10, 2018

My silent war has begun

Silversnake Michelle against the machine of social media, rock
FIRST ACT: SOCIAL MEDIA

First act: social media. The elimination of everything defacing relationships, love and art.

Things happen for a precise reason. Yes, it is. I had been brewing for some time to give up with Facebook and Instagram, the hottest trending social media at the time. But I was still a long way from making my final decision. Maybe for fear of losing a certain thing. Don’t know exactly, but I think it’s a feeling that everyone knows well.

Just like you’re getting away from a social forum and you’re losing a piece of yourself. Just as if a part of us was there. Everyone complains about socials, but then we find a thousand excuses not to break away. Why?

The answers are so easy, so simples: “I don’t wanna lose all of my contacts”, “Facebook is an essential tool for my business”, “It’s so useful to really understand people”, and so on. They’re just runaround sentences because we can’t admit to ourselves the “real” truth. Which is that we can’t do without it and that we are unconscious slaves to it. Besides, we enslave ourselves to what we are afraid to lose.

Well, far from this long and controversial foreword, let’s set out the facts! On 2 October 2018 I received a verification request on my artist’s Facebook page “Silversnake Michelle” (now a former page because all I could do was delete it). I read this message from my smartphone and I was directed to a Facebook’s support page where I was supposed to enter my login credentials.

Unfortunately, I should have realized right away that this was a “phishing” attempt. Later, when I logged in to Facebook from my Notebook, I noticed that a private profile named “Page Review” was the real message sender instead of Facebook’s support team. I searched for this profile, founding at least a dozen of this. I immediately reported a feedback and blocked it from my personal profile. Then, without my permission, my page’s profile picture was changed to an Islamic State’s (ISIS) flag. In a few minutes Facebook promptly disabled my profile for standard’s violation with violent and offending contents.

I promptly reported this to Facebook (and to the Italian Cybercrime Police also) writing that my profile had been hacked and, even though I changed my password, I was no longer able to control my artist’s page.Just a few days and Facebook enabled again my private account. I tried to regain control of my artist’s page but no dice. The page was prey to hackers. Most of my pictures were removed and replaced with those of a Vietnamese young girl. I once again reported to Facebook’s support team about profile’s hacking and that the young girl was pretending to be me. And do you know what they told me? “Everything’s fine with us. Page meets our standards.”

I kept reporting the problem about this profile. I’ve gone so far as to try to permanently delete my “unrecognisable and ravaged” artist’s page, but no chance. The operation was regularly cancelled by hackers. And you think that “the almighty Facebook” ever answered me to try and solve the problem? Forget that!

Moreover, would it kill you Mr. Zuckerberg to check the true identity of my artist’s page since it was a blue tick verified page, and you could have easily figured out the problem? Forget that twice!

That’s what happened in a nutshell.

It was a feeling of violence and helplessness. Just like a home burglary. An abuse. Someone who came into your life with muddy shoes and soiled your good work.

Disappointed and confused, I didn’t get help from anyone but my friend’s inner circle. They have done their best to report this problem to Facebook as much as possible, receiving few or no answers, except for some useless automated responses. And what role did Facebook play in all this?

From leading to antagonist.

And yet I’m still waiting for a sensible response from Facebook’s team.

But now that I’ve finally deleted my artist’s page and disabled all private accounts…

What a sigh of relief! I feel free, free to exist and ignore other people’s business (after all, you know what? No one gives a damn about you, about your poor and empty lives, about how many times a day you hit the head!!!).

I’m finally free to devote myself to my life and my art in a true way. And I don’t need any unsociable social representing whoever. People while shutting up will gain in decency.

We see the world through a screen, losing dignity and creating a thick network, full of virtual contacts mocking us with the illusion of being “someone” in this great age of the “mass-loneliness”.

I went back in time, to really look at the world, to go out and hug my son while I run joyfully in the rain, without thinking about how the hell am I going to take yet another picture to share. That’s because that moment and that feeling are mine, mine alone.

And to anyone who asks me “Don’t you miss Facebook?”, I tell them “What’s Facebook?”

Silversnake Michelle against the empty blu world
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