Stand By Me
Some time around mid-September in the year 2015 – an anonymous loser pilfered my iPad Mini from my gym bag outside the weight room at Kenora Recreation Centre. It sucked but there’s not much I could do about it as the police weren’t going to raid every single house in Kenora for a $200 second hand iPad Mini from Winnipeg.
I went and bought a new one, changed my Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat passwords and went on with my life.
So a couple of weeks ago I’m chilling with my children and start getting a deluge of Facebook messages threatening me unless I took down a previously unheard of page called Kenora’s Druggies, Dealers, and Douchebags. Being a bit miffed and slightly blindsided I logged into Facebook and checked out the page they were referring to.
I couldn’t edit the page because I wasn’t a page administrator, but as there apparently was a video showing that I’d created the page – I posted a ‘Visitor Comment’ on the page with a screenshot of my Facebook Groups & Pages letting people know I didn’t create the page, and I wasn’t an administrator. Less than a minute later that message was deleted from the Page’s wall, and my ability to post another message or photo was restricted. It was clear whoever was setting me up was doing their best to stop me from publicly defending myself and actually proving that it wasn’t me.
I messaged the page to warn them I’d taken steps to protect my life and that if someone came to do me harm and I got into a gun battle with them because they thought I created the page – the creator of the page would be responsible and would do time in jail at least for incitement. My message was read but not replied to.
I spent the next few days trying to explain to people my iPad was stolen in mid-September which was at least half a month before the page started – but did anyone listen? Of course not – so I gave up.
The stupid thing is everyone knows that I’ve been doing websites, computers, and doing Facebook for clients for nearly 13 years as part of my job. Yet nobody bothered to think that after 13 years of using the internet and Facebook to make money – it’s obvious that I know how to cover my tracks if I cared enough about other people’s lives to make a page.
My children’s mother has a theory on who it was which makes perfect sense because they have motive, but there’s absolutely no evidence aside from a strange lack of commentary from them about this Facebook page. So I did as she asked and informed the police who came to my house. I told the officer who came to my house that I’m not as much afraid for my safety as I’m afraid of what I would have to do to ensure my safety, and told him there’s a reason why I bought my firearms. Obviously he said it won’t come to that and to call them if something happens and they’ll treat it as #1 priority.
The thing that sucks is when I changed my Facebook password after my iPad was stolen, if only I had remembered to sign out of other devices in Facebook settings none of this would ever have happened. It’s a mistake I won’t make again.
To all of those people I lost as friends because they believed the gossip and forgot how people in Kenora are, if you ever again have an innocent friend who needs somebody in their corner – listen to the song below. You should’ve known to Stand by Me.
