The 7 Sails of the Facebook Ghost Ship
Of all the various social media platforms that are available, Facebook remains a clear favourite with our kind. Its titanic status and near ubiquitous nature appeal as does the fact that it remains the demographic social media home of the majority of our victims. Facebook is used extensively but there is an occurrence whereby it appears that our once vibrant Facebook page has fallen into disuse. The profile picture never alters whereas it once changed several times a day to allow us to show off the latest snapshot of our brilliance. The timeline remains mournfully empty. There are not posts about our latest achievements and accomplishments. There is no sharing of the latest video we have uploaded or the link to YouTube for the same purpose. The only things that can be seen are the annual birthday well wishes from those reminded by the automated feature on the platform. There are never any replies to these salutations. There are postings from years ago but everything appears to be silent. Your friend request may have been accepted but nothing more has happened and now our profile drifts silently through cyberspace like some ghost ship. Why do we let this happen?
- Bring out the spyglass
Just because there is not anything happening on our profile it does not mean that there is nothing happening. We are using this profile to spy on you and others. We utilise it for the gathering of information prior to the seduction, we use it to keep an eye on what you are doing on your profile page during the devaluation and we utilise it to keep tabs on you in readiness for that hoover. Silent and looming we use the profile to watch you, waiting and calculating our next move. As you churn out the comments, posts and likes, we are watching, that small smile playing across our lips, forked tongue brushing those sharp teeth as we lie in wait.
- Triangulation
“Yes I am on Facebook, you can send me a friend request if you wish, but I never use it. I haven’t in years. I am too busy you see; I prefer to do my living in the real world. It is being with people that matters to me. I don’t need to herald what I achieve on an electronic platform, I let my actions in real life speak for themselves. That is what matter to me. I prefer to be face to face with people, seeing them hearing them speak and watching them.”
An earnest speech designed to impress you and con you into thinking that there is nothing to be wary about with regards to our Facebook profile. We triangulate you with a supposedly dead Facebook profile in order to cause you to admire us for being so “real”. Of the irony. All of it is tripe. Made-up for the purposes of making us sound good. Apart from the last sentence. That one is true though not for the reasons most people would expect. That personal interaction is required because that is where the best fuel is.
- Deterrent
You are less likely to block us if you think we never use our Facebook page which comes in useful for keeping an eye on you post discard for the purposes of organising a hoover. If we are unlikely to use our profile or even read it then you are dissuaded from posting anything there which might upset our carefully crafted façade. Why bother when nobody reads it? By conning you that this profile is never visited you will similarly keep away from it and thus we reduce your chances of interference and also those of your supporters. This means fewer people to tackle online when the smear campaign is rolled out.
- Ever Presence
If there was no Facebook page, then you could obviously never look at it could you? By keeping it and not blocking you, you will keep returning to it post escape and post discard because you cannot help but want to know what we are doing, whether we are saying anything about you. You may not be minded to post anything in accordance with the point above (you do not of course want us to know that you are sneaking these looks) but you will look nevertheless. You always do. You keep returning to it in the hope of some posting, some development and some news. This keeps you linked to us and keeps us in your mind as each day you conduct your obligatory tour of our social media platforms.
- Cover Story
The lack of activity on our Facebook profile allows us to maintain plausible deniability. How can be engaging in flirting online if we never go on Facebook? Look, nothing is happening. Here, check the messages. See there is nothing there and hasn’t been for months. I hate you being so controlling like this; why do you treat me this way? We use it to assume the moral high ground and provoke you into responding to our jibes.
- The Action is Elsewhere
You cannot seriously expect us to lose one of our main weapons in our game playing can you? Whilst our “real” profile may be dormant, the real action is taking place using a fake profile where we are gathering legions of prospective targets, engaging in flattery, flirtation and fabrication as we suck fuel from these individuals and look to identify potential targets for a closer approach to them. Do not think that the fact we use a fabricated profile will stand in our way to converting the seduction to a real-life interaction. We have a thousand lies to legitimately explain away why we did this and the intrigue will make you want us all the more.
- Resurrection
At some point we will crank the profile back into life and the proliferation of likes, postings and comments will begin again. We operate through contrast and this difference between dormancy and vibrancy will be used to our advantage and to your disadvantage. You can rest assured of that. We will suddenly engage with people and allow you to see it, but not engage with you, in order to continue our devaluation of you. We may spring into life and seduce you through the profile proclaiming that you are so special we wanted to tell the world all about you and use our Facebook profile (free from being cluttered with less worthy individuals) about it.
21 thoughts on “The 7 Sails of the Facebook Ghost Ship”
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Thank you for this article. After being disposed of, after discovering multiple online relationships he was having through Facebook and other social media, this describes his Facebook profile exactly. Many articles talk about these very obvious narcissistic moves like multiple selfies and self aggrandizing posts, whereas this makes much more sense, after going through what I have and coming to understand what true narcissism entails. Of course he’s talking to multiple women, but his Facebook page remained a mask of inactivity throughout our relationship. One time he let me post a photo of both of us on his wall, and I quickly realized, when only people I knew were giving it tons of attention, not a soul from his family or social circles, that he had changed the people who could view it on his end to only he and me. After being disposed of, multiple attempts by someone, likely him, to re-friend me with dummy accounts. I think he was successful once or twice, but I caught it later after vaguely abusive texts came out of nowhere. These people live entirely within their heads, and within the fairytales that live inside of the narratives they make with other phony social networking profiles. They aren’t the least bit interested in the people who are actually in their lives, often sitting in the room with them, while they spend their life on a smart phone. It’s a sick business.
You are welcome.
NoNarcsNoMo.. you have absolutely nailed it wth this description. Mine did exactly the same thing.. he had a long term relationship with a ‘friend’ on another fb account, plus his other one with his IPPS who lives with him. When i caught him out on his lies, he blocked me on all of these profiles as well as instagram and Viber.. what a sick mid ranger he is.. his life revolves around his phone and his multiple relationships. Just last week i had a notification from youtube thst he wants to share videos with me…this is after nearly a year of no contact.. i said to myself is he serious?. They simply are sick..
HG is there any way we can find the fake fb account/s of our exes? Do they use a profile photo of them and just create a fake name? The fb account of my ex has indeed gone dormant post final discard and he has an awful profile photo posted which I assumed is meant for me to see and react to when I peek and for any of my own allies to see when they peek on my behalf (it’s a heinous photo that only makes me look bad for dating him lol) — but isn’t that the photo that would appear on tinder? Again, that horrible profile photo and abandoned account lends even morecredence to what you wrote about them starting a fake account for prospecting … While we were dating, he was very very active on fb but it was mostly all triangulation activity; special personal flattering messages for anyone else BUT ME — ugh — fascinating what you write but it still drains me lol, thx, FFL
It is more usually the case that a fake photo and fake name will be used. Invariably you will need them to come to you and any profile which is not immediately recognisable has the potential to be your ex. If you engage, you may well notice similar topics of conversation and writing style that allows you to gauge that is more likely than not your ex. In the instance you describe this has been done in order to draw fuel from you.
Facebook was never special for any of my exes. I moved to tweeter and have forgotten my facebook account.. I sort of miss facebook but with the blog, tweeter and whatsapp ( which I am also behind reading group chats from school and family) facebook fell into oblivion.
Its an interesting description HG to see how facebook can be used in other ways. 😘
It’s interesting but in my experience the N’s have not admitted to using facebook at all. Maybe they had false profiles they didn’t tell me about
Wow, exactly how it was with me. I stopped bothering at the end, because he would never like or comment on anything and stopped reading my messages. Then he’d pick a fight, and block me. I know I’ve been unblocked, briefly, over this past year, but it always returns back to the default setting.
His profile was (and remains) scrubbed clean after discarding me. Is such “fear” and paranoia really a narc thing? He truly seems to be afraid of me. Not that it matters, but posts like this sure help to make sense of things.
We do not fear you, but we know that you are trying to unseat us, dethrone us and engage in all manner of awful treachery. That is why we must remain alert and apply our manipulations so that we are always in the driving seat, one top, one step ahead and so forth.
My Narc rarely posts to FB anymore and keeps a squeaky clean image of being family oriented with the rare public posts (i.e. at a sporting event with family members holding his goddaughter). He’s most active now on Instagram. During a Hoover last fall, before I really understood all of this, I went to his page and liked one of his photos. The next day he made his Instagram page private as I had not yet clicked to follow him. Periodically I’ve checked and he posts frequent pictures and has added tons of contacts. You can still see numbers, just not the actual posts.
What’s funny is I think what prompted that particular Hoover was I had created an Instagram page to explore if it was something I wanted to invest in. One of our mutual friends that followed me, liked my first photo. He texted me not even 24 hours later.
Wow, how painful ! Were you already separated when he made the instagram private?
Yes, this was post discard and following a Hoover. Before I even knew the difference that there are benign hoovers and malign hoovers. I just remember thinking at the time, “huh, you want to hear from me but don’t want me to know what’s going on in your personal life?”
As an aside…he made a fb cover photo with this exact photo and added a poetry quote over it for me.
Preemptive of your asking…”
Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old. ”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Again, another example of exact words he said, written here.
So it’s misdirection…while we’re looking at your REAL (or your main) Facebook account to see what you’re up to, and seeing what appears to be a lack of activity, you’re flirting with somebody new on a fake Facebook account we know nothing about. You have us looking left, while over on the right, that’s where the action is. It’s a good trick, but not a new one. Magicians (and gypsy pickpockets the world over) have been using this trick since the dawn of time. You’re not special, you’re not some bright, shiny new penny.
You were doing so well until your last sentence Cara!
HG mine never posts anything on FB never really has not for years . He changes his picture about once every 2 years . But does acquire new friends on there quite frequently, both male and female ( and yes I do stalk his FB lol since finding out all of this about N ) I have blocked him from everything so he can’t see anything of mine ? Would that bother him ?
Why do you stalk him Lisa?
Would it bother him that you stalk him? No. He knows you will be doing it anyway because that is how you respond and this will provide him with fuel.
Would it bother him that you have blocked him? Yes because that it is a criticism, a slight to his desire to always be in the know. That would have wounded him and would have caused him to seek fuel to heal the wound.
HG he will always seek fuel whether he’s blocked or not and you can’t wound someone that feels nothing . Appliances can not wound people . I am not wounded by my washing machine 😬
I actually blocked this time hoping he would Hoover but no such luck, I think he’s gone for good this time
Timely posting, HG. I already knew all these lies. Fool, that he is. But, mind you many remain clueless On this front. His errors of late in this arena, will catch up soon enough.
Fakebook, indeed.