With the recent fear of giving out personal information over the web and simple ignorance of those who willingly give their information, it baffles me of people’s thought processes with a certain trend I am seeing on Facebook.

Often times than not, I have witnessed on the Newsfeed, or as I like to call it, the Gossip Wall, creation of certain events relating to loss of cellphone. This trend is running rampant like a plague.  The scenario is explained in the following. Those with enough friends on Facebook have probably seen this before or even participated, not knowing what you were doing.

Susie, through random happenstance, or for you Calvinists out there, was predestined to dropped her phone on the pavement… shattering its will to function and or chances of sentient life or future important SMS messages. (like omg!!!)

Susie, is disheartened. Her Chocolate/iPhone/Sidekick/RAZOR is gone forever! Data erased. All her phone numbers of friends and loved ones, gone forever in the aether. What is a girl to do?

Susie, through memory of what her friends have done in the recent past, recalls a quick fix. Facebook! Rather than go through all 2,342 of her friends pages and inserting cell phone numbers, dorm room numbers, former ex boyfriends’ numbers (so to not pick up when they call her, of course)… she creates an Event!

Susie is on a roll. She’s brilliant, she thinks to herself. Why, she’ll create an event called LOST CELLPHONE! And in the description she explains the predicament, possibly in all caps as well, after all CapsLock is CRUISE-CONTROL FOR AWESOME! In this she pleads for all her friends to post their phone numbers proudly and clear to see on the events page. Soon, the friends gladly/ignorantly help. They have minutes to spare. They were just Facebook stalking anyways.

Susie unfortunately, is clueless about the possible harm and repercussions this is causing on her fellow man. Let’s for a moment list a chain of people that this is affecting.

Susie’s immediate friends and family are now posting numbers, thus appearing on their Newsfeed.

One of Susie’s friends, Anna, has now posted her number on the Event page. Anna also has a large amount of friends, two people of which happen to be Carl and You. This event appears on a select amount of Newsfeeds on Anna’s friends list, depending on varying slider settings of those friends and influx of feeds draining onto their Newsfeed at any certain time. Guess what? Both Carl and You are two of those people.

Susie does not know Carl. You do not know Carl. Anna knows Carl, though only in passing. He was this shady guy she might have said hi to in Algebra back in high school. She really doesn’t remember him all that well. “But hey, he went to Generic Public High School with me, I’ll add him. No harm done right?” Wrong. Carl, for this story, is in fact, a danger to this internet community, triggered all by Susie’s thoughtless act of omission. Carl (not to mention You) can now see in full view this event and every public response to said event, i.e. their precious digits. Some of these people, while they thought only allowed a certain number of people access to their private phone number on their profiles, now have it exposed for the Carl’s of the world to see. The implications, awkwardness, and any other problem this causes is scary. Thankfully, because of reading this blog entry, You know better and won’t publicly post your number. Because if You do, Carl has your number now. Way to be Susie, way to be.

Just something to think about the day your cell phone falls in the toilet.