The Seven Sails of the FB 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?

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.