Facebook Wars Making Me Paranoid?
Friday I posted here about responding to a Facebook posting by a niece claiming the President disrespected the troops with a photo shopped picture as "proof" and text using inappropriate language. The war expanded with her mother (not a relative/"outlaw" as opposed to "in-law"
and one guy who was particularly vehement on the the topic of "Awful Obama" claiming to be a recently disabled vet. The vet in particular ended up restoring my sense of humor; I told him I valued his service, but not his opinion, and told him I assumed he was "an over medicated blowhard who has difficulty distinguishing between reality and fantasy." He ranted back some nonsense before declaring he was done with the conversation, and the Facebook war was over.
I thought.
The next day my niece's mother posted something on my timeline from Snopes (which I had suggested was her friend) about the "50 Lies of Obama." The woman is not particularly computer savvy, and we had some back and forth about "read past the example for the debunking" because she truly seemed to believe it was "proving" her point about "Awful Obama." I changed the subject to the benefit of health care (she is low income), but she doubled down with a 2007 photo of candidate Obama not holding his hand over his heart during the national anthem, and I just started laughing at her. I quoted someone here on DU about "most internment quotes are fake-Abraham Lincoln" and she replied she didn't know they had Internet back then, and I really started laughing then.
Not surprisingly, she found this rude and condescending, and after another little rant about insulting people, she de-friended me.
I debated leaving her screed on my wall, then posted a long explanation about "this is what is wrong with this country - fake news and photo shop replacing facts and reality, making discourse about solving problems impossible because we can't even agree on the issues"', tossed in some of President Obama's accomplishments on behalf of the troops, and went about my business, which included a radio interview discussing work my non-profit is doing on behalf of premature babies and children with neuromuscular disorders. (The interview seemed to go well; I had been nervous!)
After the interview, I checked email/Facebook, and got a "we are investigating a possible TOS" from Facebook about the last post, shrugged, hit the "it isn't" button, and thought nothing else of it. Maybe Facebook hadn't refreshed/it had been originally posted on her wall? Who knows? Who cares? No obscenities, just a scathing indictment on education and public discourse; investigate away.
So why the long story? Because last night, while sitting in a restaurant with my husband, children, and out of town relatives, one of my sisters (at the table with us) received a nasty FACEBOOK message supposedly from me wishing unpleasant things for her. Fortunately she brought it to my attention, checked the time, knew it wasn't from me (I was sitting at the table trying to keep 5-year olds entertained while we waited for food, plus bad grammar/spelling) and I bolted to the nearest wi-fi spot to change my password.
At first I thought my account had been hacked, but apparently another "Ida Briggs" is sending nasty messages to my "Facebook friends" (I think?) and I am paranoid enough to think the political discussion had something to do with it.
But I was also on "Internet radio" yesterday, and maybe some nut job didn't like what I said there? Granted, it was all about premature babies and cerebral palsy, and I keep my politics out of it - I don't care where you are politically when it comes to helping children! - but I did give contact info, and my name is out there....
I am pissed. Facebook is one of the ways I communicate with parents in our project, and if someone is taking political disagreement to a level where they are interfering with the work I am doing to help kids, obviously that is all kinds of wrong. I have never had this problem before, and am not sure what I should be doing. I think this is pretty small stuff in the big scheme, and if it is being done by one of the right-wing nut jobs from my niece's side, they are young enough that they probably don't realize the grown ups are actually working on Important Stuff.
But maybe it was a radio nut?
ARGH! Totally paranoid! 
Original "Facebook War" thread -
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021773764
= new reply since forum marked as read
Don't know why a photoshop of the President on a cell phone, captioned with calling him an asshole for disrespecting marines set me off --
But it did. That level of lie was just one step past what I was willing to ignore on Friday.
By Saturday I was back to my "zen" place (which seemed to infuriate folks more).
(Did I mention the one who posted it is the wife of an active duty service man?)
When the professional page was originally set up. In hindsight, I should have created an entirely seperate id, but I didn't think about that back then; Facebook made it an extension off of my original personal account, which has made it incredibly easy to manage.
Really didn't expect this kind of nonsense to be possibly impacting that area.... 
