Hops and Skips and Broken Bits

“there’s a restaurant two miles from my house called—” nope

“today I learned [celeb] went to my high school—” nope nope nope nope nope

these are all real posts I’ve seen on the internet that allowed me to identify a user’s hometown instantly. if it’s a small town, that’s doubly dangerous, because a bad actor could trace you just by a unique first name or selfie you once posted. in an age where doxxing and stalking are some of the worst I’ve ever seen it, you HAVE to think twice about what you’re posting online.

i once saw a 13-year old post an image they noted as being “a few miles from their house.” it had a theater in the shot with a unique enough name to be local. one google maps search, now everyone knew not only what city they lived in, but the possible neighborhoods in that radius too. and they had a HUGE following…who all knew this was a 13-year-old child.

so yeah. not to sound like a 90s internet safety PSA…but I’m gonna be that PSA for a minute.

if you’re posting an image, there is NO need to say that you live there. you could just be traveling. “saw this in Montana” is better than “saw this by my house!”

before you post about a venue, especially a restaurant or small store, check and see if it’s local—CRUCIALLY if it has only one or two locations. people might travel to arenas or convention centers, but they’re far less likely to be traveling to Bartleby’s Fish and Chips. if it’s an anecdote and you still live nearby, you can honestly just leave the name out entirely.

if you’re sharing a news story, it can just be a story you found and wanted to share. you don’t have to clarify “it happened in my town,” because even if you don’t mention your town name, an easily-googled news article will.

if you’re seeing a concert or meeting a celebrity on a tour that’s stopped locally, wait until they’ve hit a few more venues before you post about it, or at the very least wait until you get home. this is honestly a smart move for any event you attend: unless you’re marketing yourself, there’s no need to advertise your location in real time.

check your selfie backgrounds for anything identifying. this includes city names on venues, school names, street signs, and house numbers.

this stuff is flexible if you no longer live in your hometown, or if your city is particularly big, but there’s STILL no reason to tie yourself to your school, your workplace, or your street. you can call it paranoid, but as someone who’s seen my friends get literal death threats over fictional characters before, the last thing I want is someone willing to act on those threats finding out where they live.

Most hoard images from Wikipedia.

Found with the rest of the hoard, the handaxe pictured above was probably found either while digging his own hole for the treasure or maybe earlier in a precious bout of hoarding by some Romano-Briton who thought it was cool enough to bury along with all of his coins and Juliane's bracelet, because cool rock. This was absolutely the correct move.

"So they're best friends who just graduated and joined the mob"

"And they're actually husband and wife but they don't fully remember each other yet cause they are stuck in an eternal maze waiting for their son."

"And here is a vampire with the pretty girl who's making her question her sexuality, who's also a vampire slayer."

And then show you three pictures of the same two guys

2) Tour guide interrupted himself every time he saw one of those delivery robot carts, was so much more animated and passionate about those that it was hysterical, told us he calls them "his little friends" sometimes

3) Tour guide was interrupted by an old woman in a gated community asking him to drive him to the deli. He inexplicably chose to engage with her, yelling back that he doesn't have a car, how's he supposed to do that. She yelled back that it's not far. He tried the gate, yelled back that it's locked. The woman yelled back that someone needs to unlock it. My partner and I are at this point facing 180° away trying to keep it together

4) None of the sites were actually haunted. He was like "See this church?" And we'd be like "This church is similar to a famously haunted church 15 minutes away." "What about this one?" "This one isn't." "Why don't we go to the haunted one?" "BECAUSE IT'S FIFTEEN MINUTES AWAY. BY CAR."

5) The ghost stories were cracking us the fuck up, stuff like "she saw either a really small childlike figure or a giant looming onr" WHICH IS IT 😭😭😭 He also quite obviously improvised a ghost story involving like, the Seattle Seahawks getting attacked by floating beer bottles like I think that would have been larger news??

6) He told us it's a full moon (it is, visibly, not) and the Jersey Devil was going to kill and eat us. He waited for us to respond and we said "Oh no" and he seemed satisfied with that

7) Part of the tour was at an old hospital but we missed all of it because a car drove past playing music at max volume and the driver kept screaming "I'M NOT ANYBODY'S BITCH ANYMORE" again and again and he refused to raise his volume even a little

8) We were interrupted mid-tour by a Bangladeshi guy waiting at a bus stop going "HEY! You guys doing a tour? Oh shit, GHOSTS? I'm Bangladeshi, and let me tell you we got ghosts in Bangladesh."

$690,000/4 br/4 ba

Plymouth, MN

Taohua & I touched grass 🌱🍑