Think before clicking

In a world where the number of “likes” in a display picture or a status is all that matters, where nothing can possibly be more threatening than not having someone who cares about your posts in your profile, and where you can be socially accepted if you repost in-the-bandwagon yet nonsensical and even profane and derogatory posts, how can we be so sure that all of these people interacting with us are our “friends”?

About a year ago—it was almost Christmas—I woke up from a good sleep in the middle of the night. Although I had not really been actively using my Facebook account, it was a habit for me to check what’s on the loop every now and then. But this time, checking my phone and my friends’ posts in our private group produced a result that was a bit strange. All I remember is that my friends were in a panic, and because I was still a bit drowsy, I just ignored what they were being alarmed about.

But while I was scrolling through my account’s timeline, I saw that some people were raging about something and saying things about “back-stabbers” and “pretenders.” My attention was caught, and I wondered what in the world was happening to some of my “friends” in Facebook.

Going back to our private group, I read the posts of my friends expressing dismay and wondering what we had done to deserve this. My eyes widened some more. And then I asked a friend of mine what had happened. She told me that our private group had been hacked. Someone who was holding a grudge against us made a hate page that ruined our image in our high school. The page creator posted the private conversations from our group, making us seem like back-stabbers and pretenders, but in fact we were just manipulated to look that way. (Boastfulness aside, my friends and I managed to graduate with clean names and a good slate. Some people even said most of us are epitomes of beauty and brains.)

But let me make it clear: Whatever we were talking about in our private group stayed in our group. It was never our intention to spread it around; we did not blab about it to other people. Nor did we gossip about other people. Everything we said in our private group was mere girl chitchat—just a way to catch up on some of our acquaintances—and not made-up stories.

For weeks and weeks, the page creator kept manipulating the account and made us feel like the world was against us. It was the worst feeling, because we were so conscious of what other people were saying about us. For weeks, we came across a lot of posts that were obviously for us but were not properly addressed. We were the talk of the town for about a month.

It hurt us to be so humiliated. But what hurt us more was when our friendships with other people disintegrated; it felt like even for them, we were all  persona  non  grata—or worse, contagious lepers in the time of Christ who must be avoided in all possible ways.

Eventually, we learned that the person who had hacked into one of my friends’ accounts, which provided access to our private group, was not an individual but, rather, a group of them. And some of them were even our friends.

I do not mean to wash my hands off what we had done for, in a way, we were also wrong in talking about other people. However, our comments were our personal judgments—everyone is entitled to his/her own opinions—and these were said privately. We never intended to make public what we had said, and to humiliate the subjects. And we are quite sure that they and their circle of friends also did what we did, like most everyone else. At one point, one will talk about what is happening to other people, and after having done so, life goes back to normal. If they did not like what we had done or said, then they should have confronted us and talked to us privately, instead of hiding behind masks while keeping us in humiliation.

Immediately after discovering who were behind the hate page, we sought legal advice. In a matter of days, the group took down the hate page. But as people who are so conscious of how we are perceived by the public, we felt that everything we had tried to build suddenly crumbled, all because of the senseless posts.

Nonetheless, after a year, here we are, trying to recover the dignity that was damaged by a childish act. Some of us have reconciled, others decided to leave everything to the past. And with that sad experience, I am glad we made it through.

It is true that good things make you happier and bad things make you wiser. Through our experience, I learned that what matters most is what you think of yourself, and not what others think. In this world, after all, we cannot please everyone. All that we have to please is ourselves in order for us to grow better. I also learned that those who believed in what we truly are and who valued the relationship that we had made instead of easily giving up on it—these are the people who are worthy of being called our real friends.

It never mattered to me whose fault it was. In the end, the lesson I learned was that we must be responsible for our own thoughts and statements. It is true that we have every right to say whatever we want, but we do not have a right to hurt others’ feelings through our opinions.

Most importantly, I learned from that experience that people will in time forget what you had done. And if they do not forget it, it is not your problem that they keep their mind boxed.

Paulo Coelho was right when he said that “what others think of you is none of your business.”

Mikaela Joyce Sarthou, 18, is a third year journalism student at the University of Santo Tomas.