I have been told that Facebook is a different world, with its own set of horrors and irritations, and I sure ran into one of those last night. You see, I (remember, dear reader, that your Blogmeister is Harvey Phillips, husband of Laura Jo, not Laura Jo the brilliant writer herself) have set up two Facebook pages for Laura. The first page was done the way most Facebook pages are done and it didn't work too well, as the page is configured for social networking, not for an author to communicate with her fans. When I found out that there was a special page format for the latter purpose, I immediately set up one of those, and have been doing my best to urge (perhaps, even, shoo) the fans and friends from the first page to the second.
Well, in an effort to do just that, last night I was sending messages to people who had "Friended" Laura Jo on her first site. Apparently, I crossed some sort of "spam detection threshhold" with regard to the number of messages or the speed with which I was sending them, and Facebook decided to test whether I was the real owner of the page or some sort of evil spammer. Apparently it never occurred to the programmers to record the IP number from which the account was opened and compare it with the IP number of the computer presently being used, which was the same computer. No, that would be too hard.
Instead, Facebook gave me a quiz--I could prove my bona fides by identifying the faces of the people who were friends on the page. Well, since I have NEVER met any of these people, I could not do it, and am locked out of the site for now. Helloooo, this is an AUTHOR PAGE, people. Authors don't know what their fans look like--they know them by name or email address. Expecting an Author to pass this kind of test is asinine at the very least. Laura Jo spent four hours of valuable time she could have spent writing on this problem this morning, trying to save me more frustration, and got nowhere. I can't even think about it without risking a cerebral embolism, so I'm leaving it alone for now.
I've been watching Laura Jo's email for an email from Facebook saying, "we believe your page may have been compromised, please confirm your identity by replying to this email" or something rational like that, but there has been nothing.
Eventually, we will find a way to get back into the page and will be able to update it. But, if you have been following the page and are seeing no updates for a few days, that is why. It is not that we have abandoned it or are too lazy to work on it, but that we are locked out for reasons that are absolutely nonsensical. We'll be back soon. Someday.
[Sound of hair being ripped from my scalp.]
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