This week, I’m looking at two fictional characters shaped by the collective unconscious of the internet. The first is “Robert Thibodeau,” a serial killer terrorizing Facebook so hard that people have to share his image. The second is Elon Man, the heroic, fictional version of Elon Musk whose daring deeds are recounted nightly around the digital campfire of the social feeds of relatives you blocked years ago.
Meet Facebook’s serial killer
Breathless Facebook users from all over the country are reporting that a serial killer is on the loose. According to the reports, Robert Thibodeau, 52, has claimed victims in South Florida; Salem, Massachusetts; Las Cruces, New Mexico; and dozens of other communities. No matter where he goes, Thibodeau’s methods are the same. According to the posts:
This man goes around knocking on peoples’ doors claiming to be homeless, and seeking help, & he attacks you after gaining your trust. He’s ruthless and very dangerous. On Thursday, he attacked a 37-year-old single mom with a knife and left her struggling for her life…he also stole a vehicle from an 83-year-old grandmother under the guise of helping her offload groceries from her car. If you see him, please call the police and be careful. Warn others.
There’s even a picture of him, as you can see above. I’ve anonymized it, because, as you probably guessed, there isn’t really a serial killer named Robert Thibodeau attacking our nation’s 37-year-old single mothers and stealing every 83-year-old grandmother’s Gran Torino. The guy in the picture isn’t named Thibodeau and he hasn’t attacked anyone with a knife ,as far as we know. (He’s allegedly more into hiding cameras in women’s restrooms). The whole thing is an elaborate bait-and-switch scheme.
The real crimes on Facebook
Over the past few days, nameless scammers have been infiltrating hundreds of local Facebook groups and posting a mugshot of an unrelated guy and calling him a serial killer. The idea is to get people to engage with the post, to comment, like and share it. Once it has risen in the algorithmic rankings, the scammers change the picture to a link to some scammy thing or another—a survey where you can get free money, a sales pitch, an offer of “free dental services”—but the real goal is to get personal information users might give up.
It’s not a new type of online scam, but according to the Better Business Bureau, bait-and-switch social media schemes are on the rise, and they specifically target local groups on social media. The fake posts vary in subject matter. Sometimes they’re about a lost dog that was hit by a car and can only be reunited with its family if you share the post; sometimes it’s a missing child; and sometimes it’s a serial killer. The common thread is that these are all highly emotional subjects, designed to get people to hit “share” without consulting their brains, or taking five seconds to look into whether it’s actually true. As Sheriff Shannon Beasley in Tipton County, Tennessee puts it, “You can almost rest assured if someone this violent is on the loose you will find this information on our page.” (Almost?)
One simple trick to defeat Facebook scammers
Jeffrey Blevins, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who specializes in misinformation, advises you to cross-check Facebook claims with another source. Cybersecurity expert David Derigiotis says you should look at the profile of the person who posts something suspicious to see if they’re lacking connections to other Facebook users. The Better Business Bureau suggests you do a reverse image search on Google for images you think are fake. But these are all half measures. If you really can’t recognize scams on Facebook without doing a reverse image search, you should delete your Facebook; they’re going to trip you up eventually. Even if you don’t fall for scams, you should delete Facebook, just because.
The further adventures of Elon Man
A few weeks ago, I went deep into the fictional version of Elon Musk that AI created so that dumb people would have YouTube videos to watch. Elon Man is an American folk hero who spends his time changing the lives of waitresses at Waffle House and saving schoolkids from bullies. Here are only some of his recent adventures:
Musk isn’t just a hero—he’s a super-villain, too. Because I am even-handed, here are some of the dastardly deeds of Bizarro Elon Man, supervillain of the liberals.
