Rich Dewberry was ticked off he had to get his faulty cellphone replaced at a Best Buy in Colorado. But the hetero Green Valley Ranch felt “humiliated” when he realized an employee changed his Facebook status to announce he was coming out of the closet.
Less than half-an-hour after getting a replacement Android, Dewberry noticed a Facebook post from his old phone that read “I am gay. I’m coming out.”
He admits he forgot to log out of his Facebook and other accounts when he handed in the old phone, but says he he never imagined he’d be the victim of this kind of identity theft: “It’s totally not a joke,” Dewberry tells ABC 7 in Denver. “I feel like I’ve been humiliated.”
He says friends, family members and even his ex-wife started calling almost immediately. Dewberry claims the employee who posted the false item was subsequently fired from the store.
How about we take this to the next level?
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It’s understandable that this guy would be annoyed someone was futzing with his status—we can’t imagine having to explain to our entire circle of friends that we were actually not straight. But ultimately we’d probably laugh the whole thing off. Dewberry seems particularly peeved that he was mistakenly represented as—gasp!—gay. (Where’s the requisite p.s.: “Not that there’s anything wrong with that”?)
He says the whole incident “put a bad taste in my mouth.”
Nah, too easy.
billbert
I’m curious how this could have been done, because on a CDMA phone from Verizon, Sprint, Virgin Mobile, etc., or a GSM from T-Mobile or AT&T using a SIM card, shouldn’t the old phone have been shut down and pulled from the network before the new one was activated? Then again, maybe the old phone had wi-fi activated, and the employee was able to connect to Facebook that way.
Obviously, you have to know how to wipe your own phone before it goes into ANYONE else’s hands.
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eh yaaaah too bad for him, i would hav kill d bastard.
Me
@billbert:
Wifi?
Johnny Q. Doe
I’m not going to fault a man for being upset that someone used his account to spread something untrue about him. Yeah, if my friend did that to me, I’d probably laugh it off (while planning some truly dastardly revenge), but we all probably have that friend who we know wouldn’t find it funny at all.
jason
Facebook? Honestly, guys, get a life. You have to be stupid to be saying anything on fucking Facebook.
PTBoat
I just wonder what kind of creepy behavior led to the store clerk being so angry at the guy that he screwed with his Facebook status. I am tired of the false outrage over being “outed,” but at least he’s not trying to use it in court. Yet…
JameyBoy
Poor guy, I guess next time he will completely wipe his phone clean. This douche of a store clerk probably used WiFi to access his information. Unfortunately removing SIM cards doesn’t remove the information within. I got a phone from a relative that just had the SIM card removed and most of her text messages, browser history, and other various information was still in the phone.
Mikel D McGrew
Poor homophobic baby. Perhaps if he and others were more tolerant, they would not perceive any shame in being tought to be gay. Obviously, we do not want to claim anyone dumb enough to forget to log out of his accounts, thus opening himself to this sort of thing. No, we certainly do not want to claim him!
tulsplat
“we can’t imagine having to explain to our entire circle of friends that we were actually not straight”
I can imagine.
Dave
This is all the more reason not to use facebook or have it on your cellphone.
LaTeesha
He was probably a dick to the employee so this was the employee’s revenge. Doesn’t make it right but it’s still a good lesson in why it’s not smart to be nasty to those in customer service.
Second, if you do something this foolish – you really can’t be too surprised at what happens.
TANK
Oh, please! Just who does Mary think she’s fooling?! If that self-hating, closeted creep isn’t living on the downlow, then I don’t know who is.
B
No. 8 · Mikel D McGrew wrote, “Poor homophobic baby. Perhaps if he and others were more tolerant, they would not perceive any shame in being tought to be gay. Obviously, we do not want to claim anyone dumb enough to forget to log out of his accounts, thus opening himself to this sort of thing. No, we certainly do not want to claim him!”
Hey, I’d be mad too no matter how someone altered a web page attributed to me, no matter what they put on it.
You don’t have to be ‘dumb’ to have something like that happen either. I once had a cell phone whose keyboard froze (everything was controlled via the keyboard on this phone), and had I been logged onto something, there would have been no way for me to log off. When I brought the phone in, they managed to transfer a bunch of stuff to a replacement SIM card – it seems that the keyboard temporarily started working again, only to fail permanently 20 minutes later. Had I gotten a replacement phone and been logged onto some web site, I could have had the same problem this guy did.
SFHarry
@jason: I don’t use facebook but you obviously did not read the story.
Guest
@Mikel D McGrew: So you wouldn’t mind if the guy posted to your facebook that you were now into scat. Personally I don’t care if others are into scat but wouldn’t want to have myself declared into scat on a facebook page when I’m not. The whole point of the outrage is that the store rep misrepresented the phone owner to all his friends and family. He shouldn’t be put in the position to have to seem homophobic when denying that he isn’t gay because the store rep misrepresented him.
Larkin
customer was a dick to the staff and got what he deserved!
Joe in Savannah
From what I’ve heard, the phone wasn’t being replaced, it was sent out for warranty repair. The customer was bringing back the loaner phone and was going to pick up his original phone. Not 100% sure though. As an employee for Best Buy, I’m glad to see the company support the customer here by letting go this individual.
Good Guy Pranker
LULZ
Pete n SFO
I’d be super-annoyed & angry if someone got on my page… especially an employee of a large corp…
beyond that…
meh.
Should I be indignant every time a woman at the mall mistakes me as straight?
takingliberties
Muy triste.
GregR
If the guy isn’t gay, then he wasn’t outed. It’s his fault anyway for “forgetting” to log out of facebook. He says, “I feel like I’ve been humiliated”. What does he mean he feels like? Doesn’t he know? So what if a few friends, his ex and family start calling? That was probably the most excitement they had all day. If he’s not actually gay and not actually hiding his sexuality, then he couldn’t have been outed. Being gay is not a crime or something of which to be ashamed. Every thing isn’t a lawsuit. It took a five minute correction on his home page. He has no case.