The rise of fraudulent Facebook groups
I have written before about the fetishistic egotistical trends within the Facebook community, most noticeably the tendency to create groups with the sole purpose of amassing as many members as possible. Such tendencies are part of a larger cluttering of the social network that seems bent on flooding you with so much information that Facebook is rendered almost useless.
More disturbing, though, is the uptick in the number of fraudulent groups that have grown in popularity. Last year, a person who claimed to a be a man named “Brody Ruckus” created a group that told potential members that if they joined en mass, then his girlfriend would agree to a threesome and invite another girl to join them for some coital activities.
As I reported soon after the group was created, Ruckus was a fraud, and his/her/its lies were most likely attempts to sell music through a company called Ruckus Music.
He did have some short-lived success, however, and he has paved the way for a profusion of other fraudulent groups.
A few days ago, a group called “If 1,000,000 People Join I Won’t Put My Dog To Sleep!” was created by a person supposedly named “Mark Talon.” Before I even quote from him, let me prelude his atrocious grammar with an old-fashioned “[sic].”
“My dog just recently bit someone and he’s only a few months old….,” Talon writes. “They are suing, I can’t afford to pay for it, so I was offered that if I put him to sleep i’d pay a lot less…. I don’t want to… So I asked advertisers that if I came up with 1,000, 000 people how much could I get…. They said they would give me enough to pay the whole lawsuit amount and to be able to put him through the best dog training!”
His affinity for exclamation points only increases in intensity further down the page. It’s mere child’s play to debunk his claims. Firstly, there are no “advertisers” that exist in the group, other than the advertisers that go through Facebook’s channel, which have nothing to do with group creators. His grasp of the legal system is laughable at best — his summary of the lawsuit against him is like a 7-year-old’s reenactment of Law & Order. And the cherry on top of the icing? His facebook profile picture was blatantly taken from a Busted Tees website.
But though investigating these things might provide one with some pleasure, I knew that this group was a fake after reading the first paragraph. What worries me, though, is the popularity of the group.
As of this writing, the group has over 200,000 members, meaning that its existence is being announced to millions of news feeds. A simpleton with the grammar of an elementary school kid has seemingly risen through the upper echelons and become a social powerhouse. Now, consider if this imbecile actually did want to promote some commercial product with a simple link near the top of the group. He would be unstoppable in creating thousands of page views to whatever site he linked to. He has become a PR company’s dream.
Which leads me to this question: Why should fraudster PR companies bother with sites like Digg and Reddit when Facebook is obviously much easier to game? The founders of Digg devote a significant amount of time to finding ways to oust fraudulent diggers, so perhaps facebook can become a new haven where they can thrive.
UPDATE: It appears that the group has been taken down. I’m guessing that Facebook employees didn’t like the fact that this guy was fraudulently claiming that its advertisers were somehow cooperating with him.
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lol, a lot of us have joined so that we can post about what a fake this douche is. we’ll leave soon.
how pathetic is this?!!!
society is made of epic fail
i see no proof that the kid was lying in this article.
show me some facts and i might change my decision
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i added “mark” as a friend on facebook to see if his group was a joke and to congratulate him for tricking 200,000, soon to be 1,000,000 idiots. he has no friends except ones from his “save my dog” group. lol, whoever created “mark” and “musket” is not the biggest idiot/genius on facebook. I can name about 224,000 bigger idiots right now.
some facts? the dude claims in the very beginning that the dog got his name from eating six (6) Three Musketeers bars. He says he then took the dog to the vet. That is all fine and good in itself. Yet, how do you take an unregistered dog to the vet without anyone at the vet asking questions? The first thing the vet would look at is records for the animal and when the town/city/state doesn’t have any that would raise a lot of red flags.. Then, he goes on to talk about how the dog didnt have his shots and he infected a business man. If he brought the dog to the vet, shots would have definitely been one of the things discussed as the dog was still a puppy and that is when dogs get vaccinated.
You are doing God’s work.
Finally, it’s down! Every time I would tell people it was a fake, I would get attacked by dozens of dumbasses in the group who were like “well what if it is real like omg we might save a dog!!1 U just dont care about dogs!” I just can’t believe how stupid people are!
I know the guy whose dog it is through a friend. Now that the facebook group is shut down, it is going to be a rough holiday season for my friend Mark. He loved that dog so much, and now it is going to be put to sleep.
Hey guys this is mark. And yes it was all just an elaborate hoax to fuck with mark hurkowitz from College humor. You can all email me. If you don’t believe this is really me. I can recall anyones email… hahaha I fucking got 310,000 people before Facebook shut me down. It was great I am a simply genius. Haha to prove this is actually me…
Anyone that got a response message from me email me and you will find out….
Im currently working on my next big hoax of a facebook group! Ill see you all there!
wow. that was either really fake or really stupid. mainly because you can get sued for slander and such acts as that on the internet. so if its fake, thats… kinda funny, but if the guy was really that fuckin stupid, u are really going to get sued u dumbass.