Exactly one month ago we  started unraveling the bizarre social media oversharing culture that is embracing the world and indeed your closest friends. Perhaps this latest story will give further insight in this bizarre epidemic.

This local Cape model appeared on iol yesterday, terribly upset about how someone had created another identity on Facebook, using pictures of him.

Shame, poor baby.

I wonder which of his 2,000 Facebook friends did it?

Let’s get in there:

It was a nightmare come true for a Cape Town model when he found out someone had stolen his identity on Facebook.

For two years, the online thief stole Shamiel Hagee’s photos – some of them topless – and pretended it was him.

The man, who called himself ”Warren Davids”, used the sexy pics to pick up both men and women in Cape Town and to have X-rated chats on the social network.

An outraged Hagee said he started getting steamy messages in his inbox, and was even confronted by complete strangers in the street who insisted they knew him.

“I got weird messages from people, they would send me slutty messages and it began to make sense,” he said.

“Others would come up to me and say hello and that we are friends on Facebook. I checked my Facebook and I didn’t know them.”

The 28-year-old model and stylist, who lives in Bantry Bay, says he was completely unaware of the scheme until recently, when a friend informed him he is a victim of a form of hacking called “Catfish”.

“I have been on Facebook since 2008 and I have 2000 friends,” he said.

[more here]

I can’t believe some of the pictures were topless! Horrors.

We took a look at Hagee’s Facebook page (where he makes it clear that he also goes by the nickname ‘Sham’) and it is set to private. But the question must be asked, what difference does it make if you have 2,000 friends?

Even though I had no access to this male model’s account, a simple Google gave me these pics:

That one at the gym, by the way, turned up on a very sad page where people send their gym photos taken at Virgin Active. Dearie dearie me. Check it out here. And now of course there’s a new one of him on the internet, thanks to the iol story. The one of him holding a cellphone – disgusted – as shown above.

When will people realise that when you’re online, you’re ONLINE? Do you think those celebrities whose private iCloud pictures were hacked, are still saving naked pics to the cloud? I very much doubt it – they learnt the hard way.

We published an ‘opinion piece’ a month ago, entitled Are Your Friends Turning Into Monsters On Instagram? There’s A Whatsapp Group For That (read it here) in which we detailed the new trend of friends ‘hanging out’ on Whatsapp, casually dissecting the Instagram images people are posting these days. In the post we added that it didn’t matter if people had access to certain people’s accounts or not, as there was always a mutual ‘friend’ that did have access. You’re all aware that there is a screenshot function on most smartphones, right?

Yesterday saw a picture circulating on Whatsapp of a bare backside. A reader emailed it in to us, asking if this is allowed on Instagram.

It seems the person who posted the picture was also wondering if it was allowed. Her comment reads ‘I hope this is not too porno for Instagram.’

A quick look at this person’s profile reveals that she has a ‘closed’ account. So one of her 250-odd ‘friends’ clearly took a screenshot and sent it around.

Further investigation takes you to her profile page.

Oh, hi there, Lychelle.

It seems she runs or owns ‘Synergy Distribution and judging by the About Us section it is clear that her husband is professional cyclist Darren Lill.

Judging by Lychelle’s line of work, she probably doesn’t mind the picture being circulated as it’s in her business’ interests – being in the fitness industry. And anyway, it certainly does fall into the ‘flattering’ category.

Or is that perhaps Dazza’s bum?

We discussed this issue at the office yesterday and my staff proved a point by finding and circulating this pic of me around the office. Also from the internet.

I was in fairly good shape back then, so it’s not the end of the world. Much like the bare ass above is nothing to be embarrassed about. But what about people like the male model – Shamiel Hagee – above? His identity was stolen because he didn’t consider what it actually meant to post his entire life to an unrealistic number of friends on a global social networking platform.

There is nothing on Facebook or Instagram that confirms the people talking to you are who they say they are – are you aware of that?

The sooner we all wake up and slow down on this bizarre self-obsessed over-sharing culture, the better. Unless, of course, that is what you want. For your life and intimate images to be available to billions of people around the world..

If that’s the case, then please, carry on.

To the rest of you, I would advise not publishing anything unless you truly are fine with the chance of that image appearing on the front page of a newspaper. Let that be the test..

Image sources: [iol, Instagram, SAfindit, Crank, my evil staff]