My Facebook account was created by my elder sister in 2009 when I was more social and didn’t use any other social media. In 2012, I took control of the account which had a bunch of friends who were either my sister’s friends or knew me from Farm Ville – a game on Facebook. Initially, I thought it was okay to accept requests from strangers because we could just talk and that would be it. Additionally, I misunderstood “add friend” as “accept request” instead of “send request”. As a result, I added nearly 200 people from school and coaching classes based on suggestions and accepted all random requests from guys.
There was no one to advise me on the do’s and don’ts. Sissy only warned me not to share personal information (like my address or phone number) with strangers. I didn’t even have a photo as my display picture. At that time, I was a big fan of the TV series Pretty Little Liars, and Lucy Hale, who played Arya, was my favorite actor. I liked her so much that I made one of her photos my profile picture. Many people also had celebrity pictures as their profile pictures at that time, so it wasn’t as cringy as it would be now.
Anyway, a photo of Shah Rukh Khan, Robert Downey Jr., Justin Bieber, or Kristen Stewart was more recognizable to the crowd than one of Lucy Hale to Indian teenagers back in 2012. I received messages like “your eyes are beautiful”/”you are so pretty” from guys who wanted to video call me and asked for my photo. I neither confirmed nor denied being the girl in the photo. Eventually, I revealed my face on Facebook when cleaning up my friend list by removing people whom I didn’t know personally. It’s unclear how those guys felt after realizing the truth about the photo. 😅
Sharing a reference link for people who still live under the rock and don’t know her! Just kidding 😛
