I've noticed there seem to be a lot of the '[insert scary/sad/shocking story here] now you've read this you must share this post/send it to your friends/do X or Y will happen to you' type posts on FB recently. The sort that are obviously complete rubbish but still seem to send people into a panic to urgently repost and send a copy to all their friends, tag everyone they know etc etc. Or the 'type A in the comments and B will happen' followed by hundreds of comments of people doing A then getting confused when nothing happened.
Seeing post like this has become a particular bugbear of mine because I just cant understand how educated adults with children, good jobs etc who generally seem to be reasonably intelligent seem to fall for these things every time? I know I can unfollow people etc - I have already done it several times as my newsfeed used to be full of such posts, and I can easily just not bother with Facebook. I'm just wondering if there's anyone else out there who thinks the same? Do people genuinely believe these posts and not think to question it or do people just blindly repost without thinking twice? I find it rather bizarre to be honest.
This is an example of something my friend posted this morning;
'Hello Just doing what everyone else is doing. Fixing my blocked posts. I wondered where everybody had been! This is good to know. It's ridiculous to have 503 friends and only 25 are allowed to see posts.
I ignored this post earlier because I didn’t think it worked. It WORKS!! I have a whole new news feed. I’m seeing posts from people I haven’t seen in years.
Here’s how to bypass the system FB now has in place that limits posts on your news feed. Their new algorithm chooses the same few people - about 25 - who will read your posts. So hold your finger down anywhere in this post and "copy" will pop up. Click "copy". Then go to your page, start a new post, and put your finger anywhere in the blank field. "Paste" will pop up and click "paste". This will bypass the system.
If you are reading this message, do me a favor and leave me a quick comment...a "hello," a sticker, whatever you want, so you will appear in my newsfeed‼️It WORKS!! I don’t know how many friends I have. I just want to see all of your posts that I have been missing.
We shall see.....hello. 😊
Might as well have a go . Because all I see now days is advertising rubbish'
Within half an hour 15 people had commented 'hello' and reposted and it just made me wonder - did none of them even stop to wonder how posting a few lines of text would even effect their account settings? I just can't see the logic behind it. These are normally people I would consider intelligent.