Leaving your Facebook account logged on at public places might have dire consequences for the subscriber; from losing friends to losing lovers and upsetting close relations, the list is endless!
My first experiences with the prank, dubbed ‘nelsoning’ by many at the University of Botswana (UB), left me confused.
I was only grateful that my other half did not see the post that day!
I left my Facebook account logged on and a prankster who noticed this posted on someone else’s wall, something to the effect that I was not impressed by his kissing skill the previous night!
Immediately, my Facebook friends and those who know me had questions as to why I had kissed the man and why I had to tell the whole world about it.
It was confusing receiving a phone call while lying in my UB room, “So you kissed Francois, how was it?”
“I did no such thing!” was my defence, as you would have guessed.
After waves and waves of phone calls, something stirred in my mind.
This was not normal; something was wrong.
Then it quickly dawned on me as to what might have happened since there was intermittent mention of Facebook.
I figured out that my idle Facebook account met idle hands to misuse it.
Luckily as I said, no important people saw the update and the people who saw it mostly were familiar with the craze! That moment would soon be forgotten and my life went on.
This, however, does not stop me from imagining what would have happened had my partner seen that post!
This was back in 2008; fast forward, and two years later, the not so funny practice still dominates!
To many, it’s but a joke to add humour to their lives; dangerous humour, I might add.
The surprisingly popular practice was dubbed nelsoning after Nelson Direng, a student at the UB, became the first ‘victim’ of the practice after he had fallen asleep at a computer lab during an all night session.
His peers collaborated to negatively change information on his profile, his pictures and posts.
This became a vicious cycle; everyone wanted to pull the prank on the next person and, somehow, I too fell into it and got a taste of the prank.
It is not funny, believe me.
Anyone who dares to leave their Internet accounts logged on will soon find out.
Although the hoax started out amongst a group of friends who were only being funny, the practice has gotten out of hand so much that even the worst pranksters themselves complain that it has gotten to a very serious and dangerous point that might cause irreparable harm.
I know one of the pranksters, a friend who belongs to the circle who started the practice. He got a taste of his own medicine after someone posted on his status update that “I am coming out of the closet and accept that I am gay”.
He was so beat up following that particular statement, especially because his Facebook friends believed it was actually him who had written and were encouraging him on and consoling him!
“Good for you, pal! I am glad you can stand up for your rights,” one posting said to him. “I have always known you to be level headed and brave. Go have your fun without shame; you are a free Motswana and I support your right to choose.”
Another friend, who literally begged me not to mention his name, admitted to having used someone else’s Facebook identity to hurt them.
“I honestly did not know who the person was,” he said, with genuine regret. “I was at an internet caf├® and found the account active. I simply went through it and identified people I thought were close to the owner and said things to them, leaving no clue it wasn’t the owner who sent the offensive messages.”
What hurt him the most is that he had no idea what happened to the people involved and wished he could intervene and anonymously apologise or something.
It does not help that we use Facebook just as we use our personal diaries.
We treat the internet too casually and do not hesitate to say our deepest secrets to our computers.
Some people’s entries are so personal one sometimes wonders if we have all not gotten carried away with cyberspace, an invention that has already destroyed families, marriages and professions through “social networking”.
