Alt title - The strange adventures of Betty Sharp on the internets. I just wanted to give all you readers an update that I think I finally managed to exorcise the on-line profile of Betty Sue, Peabody High, class of 73 . Now please don't think I've stolen the real Betty Sue (of the big bad city)'s moniker and started weird imaginary yankee versions of her on reunion sites.
Simply, about a full year ago I started getting email newsletters from Classmates.com to Betty Sue (who is probably a real actual flesh and blood lady from Utah) .
There was no obvious unsubscribe button , I just deleted them, hoping that she'd realise she hadn't got her confirmation and hence log in and change the damn email address. But no, I continued to get these crappy newsletters every week for a year. When I did try to unsubscribe it forced me to "register" and so then I had a user name and password, hence "Betty Sharp". At this juncture I had to rush to the mirror to check I hadn't sprouted a perm with frosted tips, or overly-plucked eyebrows, such was my identity confusion. How can this be, that I, Bee Sharp of Bondi, had a password for poor old Betty, in Nebraska or Omaha, or wherever the hell Schenley is? (that's the other school she entered to her profile in the optimistic hope of finding old buddies). Someone had even signed her guestbook this week.
Firstly, clicking "unsubscribe" just came up with an error message every time. I'm sure that kind of thing is illegal. Anyhoo, yesterday I finally manged to delete the whole profile - take THAT, Classmates dot com. Ha HA!
I do worry what the ramifications are for out Betty however. Does she feel an inexplicable emptiness or loss now that her online self is dead? Did she get a sharp pain in the liver when I pulled the plug? Are those actual classmates going to contact her in RL now that her profile just disappeared like that?
5 comments:
Ha Ha! According to Classmates.com, we had one "kylie minogue" in our year at my high school, but I don't remember her at all... in fact thought she was from Melbourne, not Adelaide.
Poor Betty. So none of her highschool boyfriends contacted you, swearing undying love or looking for a no-string affair?
Nup nothin' not a sausage. Although it seemed like Betty set up a "free" account - so to *see* the guestbook comment you had to pay money to the site. The cheek. I probably saved here from some pyscho web stalker anyway.
Please write on your blog exactly how you got around the 'error' message when you tried deleting your profile on classmates.com.
I have been trying to remove my name/profile from classmates.com but can't get past that 'error' message each time i click on "remove membership". It would be a real service, if you let me know exactly how to do this! Thank you!!!!
Hi Anonymous,
Sorry but I can't remember. I just messed around until I found another way, rather than the unsubscribe button. (My general approach to life, really. I think I had to actually log in, and then look for some "edit" option button and click "delete profile" or something. It probably asked "do you really want to delete your profile?" a few times. - Keep at it.
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