To spam: I spam, you spam, he spams, she spams, we spam, you spam, they spam

I fell for it. Hook, line and sinker. My twitter account was hacked or hijacked or taken over -whatever you call it--and I let out a few dozen nasty little messages that sounded like this:
                                       
                                                Someone is saying some real horrible things about you, seen this?

And then a shortened url link.
And I could have stopped.
But I didn't.
I clicked.
Why?


I almost didn't.  The initial direct message came from one of my students.  After a lazy Saturday afternoon at the market with my family, I checked my phone on the drive home.  I was in the middle of telling a story to my husband (the driver) when I read this little insidious message. I stopped talking in mid sentence.  I couldn't quite compute.  Why would he send this to me?  Was it a Rate Your Teacher posting?  I had promised myself never to look at those.  Who cares? So I typed out my first response "Why would you send me this..." but then I deleted it.  It looked too harsh to send back to a student.

I sat mulling it over.  Why should I care?  What could it be about? I kept thinking about celebrities who claim not to read their bad reviews.  They claim to be at peace that not everyone will love them so why torture themselves. Maybe teachers could learn something from this.  But then I went the other direction of thinking: maybe I should know? Maybe I have an unhappy student who is crying out for help or attention? Or revenge?

I did a search of my name in Twitter.  Nothing showed up.  I did variations of my name in Twitter. Again nothing showed up.  We were almost home.  I decided to wait until to check my computer rather than frustrate myself doing web searches with my phone.

That's when I hit my reflective response.  I came to the conclusion that I should know what 'horrible' things were being said about me but be prepared not to care and remember everything that I have and be happy with that.  I can take criticism.  I am strong. This won't shake me.  It's not like I am in grade six anymore with girls whispering mean things about you in the playground. Whatever.

So I went to my computer and clicked on the link. It went to the Twitter home page.  Or what I thought was the Twitter home page. I should have picked up on this but I didn't.  I was confused. I was unguarded. So just like that I entered my username, entered my password and fell for oldest spam trick in the book. I opened up my account.

And that, my friends, my students, my twitter followers, is why you received a direct message from me that said:

                                Someone is saying some real horrible things about you, seen this?

I am so sorry.