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It started with a simple text message from a threadbare Facebook friend I’d accumulated since joining Facebook. 

Perhaps the 2010 movie Social Network I watched on our three-movie-flight back from Australia in 2012 piqued my interest. I joined but in 2015 I was all in when my daughter began posting photos of our grandsons. I was reluctant to add many friends but I softened up. 

“Peonie” (not her name) texted me she’d been hacked after her Facebook had been infected by my Facebook. 

I was aghast to have infected someone through Facebook. Peonie told me Facebook/ META had been very helpful cleaning out her hackers. She offered to give me the Meta help line to help me rid my account of hackers. The next day I messaged her back and told her I’d like to contact them. 

If your skin is already crawling and you want to scream “Don’t do it Harry!” you’re too late. I have a grayed-out messenger screen to prove it. I can’t even look at anybody else’s Facebook page from my phone or computer. 

We will be OK. My better-technical-half contacted Equifax, Experian and TransUnion to make sure our credit and financial accounts were not compromised. Then she sent the warning to all my visitors currently viewable if you visit my page. 

FYI here are things you should not do if “META” wants to rid you of hackers. Don’t use messenger. That’s where I was sent the photo ID of a blonde woman with a Meta badge. Of course it was texting, because her Indian accent would have given her away but I should have paid more attention to typos that suggested her English was as sloppy as my French. 

She needed confirmation of my identity – I want to bite my fingers as I type this – and I sent her photos of both sides of my driver’s license. The next day on Reddit we read of other people locked out of their Facebook accounts. There was nothing that could be done. The only good news is that my license didn’t have my social security number on it. I’m sure that detail will be taken care of by President Musk’s DOGE. 

After I realized the abyss, I’d fallen into, I kept the phishermen on the line for comic relief. I told META I had to go to choir practice, which was true. I asked if we could continue the next day. Because there was more damage to be done the helpful fraudster told me to text her at 8:30 the next day. 

The next day she, he, it, asked me how choir was. I told them it had been an ordeal because my car slid into a snowbank and I had to wait hours in a storm while tow trucks pulled people out of the snow. Bangalore, India doesn’t get many of those. 

I also explained that I was now painting my home office and was in no mood to let her connect me with the Central Intelligence Agency. Yes, the CIA! I told her she’d already assured me I couldn’t go to jail, although suddenly she implied jail might be an option. They kept sending me texts every couple of hours and I kept putting them off. Whatever else they wanted they didn’t get. I hope!

Ah, cell phones. I’ve let myself become addicted to what I call the Komodo Dragon algorithm. I’ve seen the 12-foot reptiles swallow all sorts of prey on “Reels,” Facebook’s equivalent of Tic Tok. 

Algorithms have deduced what I will watch. They also figured out what will raise the hackles of people who rarely vote. Mostly its based-on confirmation bias. It tells them what they are afraid to hear or want to hear whatever will get them off the couch to cast a misinformed vote. It’s a proficient way to lie. 

Trump’s new owner, the illegal immi-grant, multibillionaire, Elon Musk, flooded the Internet with disinformation to infrequent voters in the seven swing states. He spent a quarter of a billion dollars doing it.

His success has all the other billion-aires lining up to fill Trump’s bottomless pockets. META’s Zuckerberg gave a paltry million for Trump’s inaugural fund. Upping the ante Amazon’s Jeff Bezos cut a $40 million check to Melania to shoot a biopic about her. Musk has already collected for buying Trump the Oval Office. He’s in charge of dismantling America.

How America will recover I have no idea. As the Chinese maxim says It’s a curse to live in interesting times. 

I saw a little Pandora in the terrible Trump election. I think that had Trump lost, MAGA would have doubled down deeper into delusion. I think the only way for magats to settle down is to let them see what their hero does to America. It’s coming to pass. Damn the hackers. Damn the lies, Damn algorithms and Damn cell phones. 

I’ve been watching my fellow Duluthians at restaurants heads down, eyes sucked into their cellphone screens. It’s like a Twilight Zone script but so odd that people in the 60s would have laughed at it. But seeing is believing. As for a me, I now have one less ap to help me ignore friends and family. I am actually relieved.

Speaking of internet addictions, I recommend the free Netflix documentary Buy Now. There are worse ways to drain our bank accounts than by having Facebook hacked. Filling our children’s growing brains with the jagged micro-plastic waste from big oil is definitely worse than cheating old farts like me out of our life savings. 

Harry Welty tries to remain composed as the world burns all around him at: lincolndemocrat.com.