He was a liar, but she remains a fool.
A friend of mine was seeing this fellow who could be best described as a 'cheating, lying sleazebag' if one was inclined to be polite about it. She's a sweet girl, but her taste in men is simply dire.

Not content with the other girls he was seeing on the side, the sleazebag boyfriend decided to use a popular social networking site to find even more and started by scouring his friends' lists of friends for likely targets.

Well, he didn't examine the details hard enough. The girl he chose happened to know the friend of mine he was dating. Naturally, she told us all at once, forwarding his rather too 'friendly' emails just in case anyone doubted the guy was a lying slut.

I'd like to say she dumped him on the spot, but she really isn't that clever. I'd also like to say that her current boyfriend is a charming, classy guy worthy of her attentions, but that wouldn't be telling the truth, either.
(louveciennes , Volvospotter, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 21:20, Reply)

Charity fancy dress
I did a rather well known charity bike ride dressed as a member of the opposite sex and I looked surprisingly good! I set one of the photos as my facebook picture and was shocked at the amount of homophobic comments I got from one of my 'friends'! It was an educational experience.

Photo is still there, I think it looks rather good and nobody else has taken offence to it.
( thistle, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 21:15, Reply)

Human pets, or something like that
When I was really bored and lonely at the beginning of my erasmus year in Barcelona, I spent a lot of time on Facebook as I was homesick. One of my friends invited me to an application, one where you can buy your friends and random people over the internet. There were some real weirdos on there. One guy from egypt used to send me 30 odd messages every day, on the application and to my account. I learnt a lot about privacy settings and the power of the blocking button very quickly.
(timewarper, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 21:14, Reply)

I've had
many random people sending me messages saying they are coming to my uni in september and would i be able to show them around? usually i am helpful to incoming international students, having been one myself and knowing how hard it is. but it's always the 30 year olds that send me messages.
(timewarper, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 21:11, Reply)

Years ago I went on a safari in Africa
and spent a while going round looking at all the wildlife etc.

Well yesterday there's this friend request from someone I've never heard of, saying they met me on safari. I click their profile and see they've got hundreds and hundreds of friends. They also have a very long neck.

That's a social networking giraffe, that is.

What?
(Stu Moo winner of five nobble piece prizes, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 21:06, 2 replies)

Mypsace....
It's slightly redundant now and I only really use it for updates about local bands, but I once received a highly disturbing message from a man i didn't know.... detailing all the perverted things he wanted to do to me.... i can't remember most of it as it was a few years ago now, but i remember something about splitting me in half.... it made me feel ill.

Myspace was full of nutters.
(timewarper, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 21:05, 4 replies)

I was added by this guy (a stranger) for some reason
here's his profile - www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=833470650 - or if you aren't on facebook here's a gif - www.b3tards.com/u/ae10d0b5921f53eef1bc/muggsy.gif
I challenge any of you to find a bigger prick.

Edit: A photo (don't worry, that's not his penis)


( Zuowan, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 20:58, 16 replies)

Two lovely sisters
A friend of mine has two lovely sisters (which stir the old tingly feeling in my conkers whenever I see them) called Lindsey and Annette.

Anyhows, a good few years back they started work as barmaids at a nightclub called Gaff's.

One evening, a few days into their employment, they had been serving drinks drinks for a few hours when the boss and the bar manager came over looking severely pissed off.

He duly took them to one side and proceeded to roast them over how they had been charging the wrong price for shots and loosing them money and that they should get their coats and leave.

The girls were very upset about this having explained that they were only charging the price that was on the board.

Later on, the bar manager went to cover the bar and realised that the prices on the board were wrong and that it wasn't the girls mistake after all.

He went to the boss and explained this and, realising the mistake, the boss said "They can have their jobs back; Lindsey will work in Gaff's..."

"...and so shall Annette work in Gaff's".

I'm so, so, sorry. I just have a boring life. I don't do social networking sites because I'd only attract other sad individuals.

Click "I Like This" if you want me to die horribly (and see the video of my death on YouTube).
( brown-wings Made with three kinds of butter, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 20:53, 2 replies)

Why, you young whippersnappers!
shakes fist
I'm too old to use Facebook. In my day, if we wanted to get together, we just grunted at each other and ambled down to Lascaux to put up a notice on the wall.



Sigh, I really do feel this old these days....
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 20:47, 1 reply)

The Jeopardy Version
Does anyone want to write a backstory to this one? I really can't be bothered.

Slow-Chelle Nit-Wanking Goth
(sheps, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 20:45, 1 reply)

Way back in the hazy past...
...of 2002 or so, a friend and I made a website for people from our old school. The idea behind it was that we could all stay in contact with one another, without relying on the shite that was Friends Reunited.

Admittedly, it wasn't an excellent site, though it had promise. We had a few different schools signed up to it, in the end, divided by year group. Users could make their own groups, with individual forums; they could send messages, and upload their own photos, with comments.

In fact, fuck it, we'd made Facebook.

Of course, we were lazy bastards and didn't bother to keep working on it once the first implementation was there. We talked about it a couple of times in the pub, but never took it anywhere.

In hindsight:

Fuck.
( gone, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 20:24, Reply)

I'm a pea roasting whore and I don't care
My worst mistake would probably be joining facebook, don't get me wrong it's fantastic for keeping in touch with the people you choose but I think the search facility should be eradicated.
The amount of times I've been to my old haunts only to see people that had added me for me not to accept, it was extremely awkward on one occasion.
I generally just add people now, that 'block applications from blah blah' button works.

Oh and the bloody poking....



;)
( XLVII .uk, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 20:07, 1 reply)

Not me, her
The girl my ex of 3 years cheated on me with decided to add me as a friend on facebook. Needless to say it didn't end well. Why can't facebook have the option of adding people as "mortal enemies"?!
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 20:07, Reply)

Ooooh I have a real one actually!
I met the current missus through a dating website (mock all you want). I generally find a good ice breaker is to talk about the freaks she might have encountered on the site, seeing how most of my female friends who appear on profile sites get harrassed by all sorts. She told me a couple of tales:

One guy said: "Hey, you're so f'in hot. I'm gonna wank into a jiffy bag and post it to you so you can inseminate yourself and have my baby".

And another said: "You're going to tell me where you live and I'm going to come and fuck your brains out. If you don't I'll find out where you live, kill you and rape your fucking corpse".

And they say romance is dead.
(GONEism, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 19:57, Reply)

Another one...
About 5 years ago I worked in a fairly well-to-do seafood restauraunt that was rennovating and needed some new menu borders designing. I remembered that a guy I went to uni with yonks ago was always drawing beaches, sea views that sort of thing, but we hadn't spoken in about 5 years and had completely lost touch. So anyway, the old facebook comes to the rescue, he seems pleasant enough, and sure enough he is using his talents as a graphic designer and jumps at the chance to design our new menus. He asks what I want, I reply, just something with cockles and mussels on , that sort of thing. Anyway, he e-mails some stuff over to me, which I can't open, no probs he replies, and sends them over as jpegs.

And that, is my sea-shell not-working gifs.

(Gets coat)
(sheps, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 19:51, 3 replies)

A friend in southern California
is an IT geek of sorts- that is, he knows just enough to be able to fool people who don't know any better into thinking that he knows what he's doing. In his defense he's learning at a pretty good rate and does take lessons from his errors, but nonetheless he has gotten his jobs over the years more by bold lies than by shading the truth.

One company he worked for had four buildings in a complex. It was the mid 1990s, and networks were not that common yet. Still, this company wanted to be ahead of the curve, so they hired him to network the buildings.

I give Jeff credit- he ran a load of lines between buildings through the pipes that were in place for the internal phone lines, until he had a bundle the size of my thigh that he ran upstairs to a router that was hooked into the biggest machine he could build at the time. It had a couple of very large drives for data storage, one serving as a mirror for the other, and they used Novell to run it. The thing ran, and the bosses were pleased.

That is, until there was a thunderstorm. A lightning strike somewhere nearby was apparently enough to get through those cables and blow the router. Suddenly a couple hundred machines were isolated, and the files they had been working on were pretty much destroyed.

In retrospect what he should have done, of course, was to have a server in each building and have those networked together with a central machine that simply acted as communication with the others. He figured that out later, but at the time he was up to his ass in alligators dealing with pissed off people trying to save to a network that had gone up in a puff of acrid stench. He tried to send an email to everyone explaining what had happened- but he was trying to send it across the network.

D'oh.

He was sacked shortly thereafter, but he learned quite a few lessons from his SoCal networking gaffe.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 11 Sep 2008, 19:51, 3 replies)

Was that social networking or...

so sorry....

am not really...
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 19:39, 2 replies)

Putting a picture on my profile it would seem.
I've had to make my flipping profile picture viewable to friends only. Why? I'm now bombarded with messages and friend requests from blokes who think I'm hot. Those of you who know what I look like will be aware that I'm not. At all. I'm now a magnet for crazy guys on social networking sites too :(
(ToysForBigBoys would spread her legs for Nick Clegg., Thu 11 Sep 2008, 19:31, 6 replies)

Speaking of nerdy
There used to be this one fella who hounded me on Faceparty, and not in an amorous way. To make matters worse he fucking well insisted on calling my by my username (TheGaffer1983 - shit I know), rather than my real name, which was listed on my profile.

Anyway, he was obsessed with talking technology with me. I am pretty sure he's the sort who may have tried to stick his todger in his computer at some point. He kept going on about some "netware" laptop he'd got from some pivate firm of students and how this made his laptop super amazing and better than mine, blah blah blah. I pointed out that my admittedly cheap laptop was at least brand name and would last longer. In fact, Gateway, the company making it, would probably be around a long time too. He got rather uppety at this point and replied,

"So shall netware, KING gaff!"

Oh god, I can't stop now. It's like a sodding virus...
(GONEism, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 19:14, 3 replies)

This will be my worst QOTW answer,
Faecebook has always been for me a window into a previous life. Ten years ago I was a scamp of the first order, I drove a nifty car, I had dyed hair and did very silly things while seriously enjoying myself.

There has always been a core of friends who I still keep in contact with but with all things folk fall by the wayside and are consigned to the designation of "People I have met". These friends have photos - said friends upload photos, tag me and my past and present life collide like Princess Di and a Parisian tunnel.

There was no major reaction to all of these revelations but a certain part of me was irritated that who I was met up with who I am. I found with unease that I disliked my hedonistic youth meeting my now respectable and carefully cultivated adulthood.

Social networking is a laugh but reveals too much, no pun, no reveal but just my view on it.
(SpunkyMcSpunkbubble Diddled your nubbin on, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 19:11, Reply)

Nothing of any real importance
As primarily I'm not a fan of social networking. I like the other kind.

Online I've been with B3ta for a few years now (I think this is one of the sites I've been lurking about on the longest), occasionally I'll go to slashdot for a bit of discussion or late at night when I'm drunk I'll act like a dick on 4chan.

I try to keep information about my identity fairly limited though, and I don't think you'd be able to trace my lurkings on other sites that much. I tend to keep my online identities separate and fairly isolated from IRL.

This is why I don't 'get' social networking. Somehow these sites are trying to build up a picture of who you are, who you know, your likes and dislikes - even from a marketing point of view this is scary stuff. And who the heck knows exactly how far this will be used?

While I had a facebook account for a year or so (it was only to exchange e-mail contact details with someone) I wasn't prepared to put anything ore than a vague indicator of who I was forward and the account therefore stayed in the background without any further action. I closed it a couple of weeks ago though.

Anyway - back to the topic. It's not quite a gaffe, but it's about all you'll get from me.

Last year I was made up as Underworld were due to play in the UK. I'd acquired tickets and a few of my mates had made plans to go and see them live.

A couple of days beforehand one of my co-workers approached me in the corridor.

"Are you going there Friday?"

Wait, what? I'd not said anything to my colleagues as they wouldn't know who Underworld are. I was also fairly certain that I'd not spoken to this lass in ages.

"Oh yeah - getting the train up at six, going to be a grand night"

She looked puzzled.

To cut to the chase, some of my former school colleagues had decided to have a school reunion - maybe 20 years after they'd left - and had been discussing it on one of been discussing it on Friends Reunited.

I thought carefully about it, and decided that a night of reaching for the lazors in the company of Karl Hyde and Rick Smith was far more preferable to drinking John Smiths shitbeer in the company of people I'm happy to never speak to again.
(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_ =o.o=, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 19:11, Reply)

damn
man, this QOTW is gettin all nerdy
(Master of Muppets, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 19:00, Reply)

I think this is a good chance to spam a lovely link
My musical rant about Facebook to the tune of Kate Nash's Foundations

There we go.
(__, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 18:53, 4 replies)

I don't need Facebook friends
I have real-life friends. I have a real-life friend with over 700 e-friends, and I always ask him, "How many of those 700 odd could you phone for help if you needed it?"

The answer he usually gives is about five. Yet when I ask him why he has so many e-friends, it's to keep in contact with them. I don't understand.
(Jeremy Paxmans Itchy Gusset, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 18:23, 1 reply)

I once once employed in the fishing trade
And I was boasting about how many large fish I had caught that day with the latest fishing implements. The supervisor turned to me and said of the woman who was also with us:

"So shall Annette, working gaffs."
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 18:14, 1 reply)

Smarties
In 1998 I started work having had a small break of 6 years since dropping/being kicked out of college. I got a job as a very junior (as in seems quite bright but never had a job so we don't want to pay him much) software developer. I didn't know a great deal about computers, I'd picked up everything I knew from playing games on the Amiga and a 16 week long C++ course that the DHSS sent me on. What I'm trying to say is: the internet was an entirely unknown and infinitely exciting strange new world to me.

So I started hunting down people who were at my school for e-fun (names changed a bit to protect their miserable reputations):

John Henderson
In a word: turd. In a few words: spiteful, cowardly turd. Had tried to be "nasty" to me in the past but merely managed to amuse me with his patheticness. What really riled though, well a bit, is that having done the software course, I sent speculative job applications (begging letters) to all of the software companies in the area. I didn't get many replies but of the few that I did get, one was from him. "Dear Stopmeandslapme, I was most interested to read your CV. Unfortunately we don't have any positions suitable to someone with your unemployableness" or something like that.

I got myself some dodgy email addresses, I would always use the name of another boy from school so as to add to the confusion/suspicion. His company, naturally, had a crappy website with email addresses of everyone who worked there, so I sent him a few daft CVs. And I sent his colleagues daft CVs to "forward to John who knows me". The company website had his picture which I played around with in Paint Shop Pro to email to his colleagues.

Example "John Henderson Landscape":


Simon Cock
He was (how can I put this without using the word "cunt"? I can't) a cunt. Bit of a bully. Google, Friends Reunited, 192, these were my tools. He said where he was working on Friends Reunited so I did a search on his name and his company name and bingo! His e-mail address. Now, previously, I had set up a punk group on Yahoo Groups (before it became Yahoo Groups, click if you remember what it was called before Yahoo bought it). I then spammed various punk websites, well, rather less subtle, newbie remember, I gleaned lists of email addresses from message pages on punk websites and signed them up without giving them a choice. Can you still do that?

The group was quite active in those early days, many people were fine with the fact that they had suddenly started getting e-mails from other punk dudes. There were a few begging to be unsubscribed but they eventually managed to find the unsubscribe link on the emails. All was rosey until the troll to end all trolls joined the group and started to get abusive. The arguments were legendary, I was congratulated by people at gigs who enjoyed reading the mayhem. We had death threats, peoples details being posted on websites accusing them of being paedophiles, my own details ended up on a anti-fascist website with some guff about me being a prominent Neo-Nazi using technology to wreck anti-fascist sites. All good fun.

Using one of my dodgy email addresses I created a group just for Simon. Signed him up to it and sent him little daily snippets from the troll. "I've asked you to debate calmly with me but you won't, you've insulted me, you started it", that type of thing, nothing abusive, just random nonsense. He said "I don't know who you are but I don't want to be in your group, please unsubscribe me". He was ignored. He DEMANDED to be unsubscribed. He was ignored. He worked out how to unsubscribe. I resubscribed him. This went on until I got bored.

Peter Brookswank
I needed another victim, someone weird, someone with a peculiar name that I could find on Google. Tried a few. Aha! Can't be too many people with that name around. A Smarties lid collecting fansite? Could it really be him? I seem to remember he collected Smarties lids at school but surely he hasn't carried that through into adulthood? He had. The following email exchange occurred:

Me (as S Hunt): "Hi Peter, saw your email address on www.sadbastards.com. I too collect Smarties lids, I have over 180,000 of them"
He: "Wow, 180,000. You must have been collecting for ages. Would you like to trade?"
Me: "Sure send me your wants list and I'll see if I have any of them"
He: "silver L, orange q, purple m, blah, blah"
Me: "I have duplicates of most of those"
He: "Great, what do you want in return?"
Me: "Just send me a picture of your penis"

No reply.
Never heard from him again.
Well not under the name S Hunt anyway...

Footnote:
The abusive guy in the punk forum was not me! After MY details appeared on the anti-fascist site, I had had enough and handed over control of the group to Dave out of Riot/Clone (namedropping!) who was well respected in the punk scene and didn't take any shit. The group fizzled out after that as people were only there to argue with the troll.
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 18:00, 8 replies)

Kim Adams
A while ago me and a mate hatched a social experiment, find a picture of an average-looking girl online, make up a fake profile on Facebook , leave it dormant and see what happens. There were only 2 rules;
1) We weren't allowed to initiate contact with anyone.
2) Rip the piss out of anyone who messaged.

Fake Kim Adams now has 53 deviant and lonely friends, most of whom don't seem to understand that someone who regularly posts "doesn't exist" as her status updates and tears it out of them whenever they message her might not be all she seems to be. I might put some of the messages into a book one day.

Just a couple to whet your appetite;

"hey saw ur profile and wondered if u fancied a drink some time ! im james from xxxxxx just back from uni for x mas ! x"
"Sorry but I'm on at the moment and bleeding like a stuck pig."

and the african student , who despite me saying "Sorry, but I'm,like, a really big racist, like in the BNP , the KKK and everything, I don't think it would work :( " and , "you aint one of them africans like who is pretending to be the lawyer of the late president mbangwa who has $50,000,000 to give me if i give u my bank details ?" still wanted to meet for a drink.

Teh Interweb isn't safe !! Go outside !!!
(sheps, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 17:57, Reply)