Facebook hates roleplayers
In a recent article I explained how you can use Facebook for roleplaying. You can create a new profile for your character and post to your own wall and other people’s walls as your character, speaking as if you are the character updating their own Facebook account.
But roleplaying is something that Facebook doesn’t like.
I just personally feel that Facebook doesn’t like our Hobby shall we say. It is a means of escaping real life pressures but facebook won’t allow us to do that.
Facebook might delete you
That’s right, if you don’t use Facebook the way they intend for you to use it, your account might be deleted. If that happens, there’s no way to get it back. All you messages are deleted, all your wall posts deleted, all your friend connections, all your photos, all your Farmville scores are all deleted.
I’ve seen it happen. I’ve experimented recently with having a separate roleplaying account for Facebook and made some connections with other roleplayers. At least once a week I heard that someone’s account had been deleted, and they’d had to create a new account.
my main RP account was deleted a few weeks back and i had to create a new one. I have had a few friends that have been deleted aswell.
I have no idea why they deleted me… although i do have a suspicion about why. A Girl a few weeks back was removed from our group for roleplaying something that was against the rules… we removed her from our group and she got upset and reported a load of us… my account got disabled.
FltAdm Michael Knight
If you do get deleted, see our article about what to do when Facebook deletes your profile.
Facebook only allows one profile per person
In Facebooks terms and conditions they state that each person should only have one Facebook profile. In section 4 of their Statement of Rights and Responsibilities they state “You will not create more than one personal profile.”
Reading their terms and conditions actually makes me quite nervous because I had no idea how strict they were.
You’re not using Facebook how they intended
Facebook was intended for people to interact wit their friends and the concept of roleplaying probably never occurred to them. People who roleplay think differently, and the first thing we’ll think when we discover a new web application is “can we roleplay with it?”.
People who do use Facebook are left scratching their heads as to why they’re not allowed to use it this way. A roleplayer playing Captain Janeway from Voyager says this:
Apparently from what I’ve been told Facebook just generally don’t like roleplayers, why? Your guess is honestly as good as mine, when I think hard about it, the only thing I can come up with is that with people hiding behind pictures of the people that they are roleplaying as, many could use this to their advantage and it could be used in some cases as of one being rather gullible and gaining the trust of a character someone could use that as a way of some form of sexual act weather it be rape, paedophilia, stalking, I don’t know you name it but that’s the only thing that I can actually come up with, to a degree I understand that but there are some on here such as myself that are loving and caring and share a lot in common with their character. If it isn’t what I’ve said here then I really don’t have a clue.
Captain-Kathryn Elizabeth Janeway on Facebook
Facebook want to advertise to you
Facebook has adverts down the right hand side of site, these are adverts that are extremely customisable and the adverts you see might not be the same as your friends see. The adverts are quite clever and you’ll only be shown ones that Facebook think you’re interested in, this depends on the type of things you’ve mentioned in your profile, and the fan pages you’ve “liked”.
For example if you’ve stated that you like Star Trek, you’ll probably be shown adverts for Trek memorabilia, and if you’ve said that you’re in the United Kingdom you might get shown adverts for Star Trek conventions local to you.
If everyone has two (or more) Facebook accounts, one as their real profile, and another for their character, the likes and interests of the character might not be what you’re interested in so the adverts they show might be totally irrelevant. Facebook doesn’t like this, and neither does the companies who are paying for the adverts. Also Facebook are very cleverly building up a very detailed profile of you as you spend more time using their site, which they will use to show adverts which suit your taste. If you’re not using Facebook the way they want you to, they don’t like it.
Don’t get reported
It’s possible on Facebook for anyone to block your profile and report it as spam or offensive. Clicking “Report/Block this person” on a member’s profile brings up many options of why you might want to report this profile.
One of these options is to report the profile as fake, which alerts it to Facebook to investigate. This is obviously intended to protect against identity theft or paedophiles pretending to be young children, but Facebook staff won’t take too kindly to hundreds of people all pretending to be “James T Kirk” each with identical profile pictures.
One of the roleplayers I heard about being deleted was Fleet Admiral Michael Knight, roleplaying as a Star Trek character.
I have no idea why they deleted me… although i do have a suspicion about why. A Girl a few weeks back was removed from our group for roleplaying something that was against the rules… we removed her from our group and she got upset and reported a load of us… my account got disabled.
FltAdm Michael Knight
Other limitations of Facebook for roleplayers
Because Facebook was not created for roleplayers in mind, there are a few pieces of functionality that Facebook have either left out, or deliberately limited so that roleplayers can’t make use of them. An example of this is Facebook’s ability to allow you to change your name, which is useful if you’ve just got married and changed your name. But Facebook set a limit on the amount of times you can do this, as Vice Admiral James T Kirk Explains:
You can onloy change your name a set number of times, and if you get promoted…and you have already reached that limit you cant update your name, which is personally disgusting
If this feature wasn’t so limited it would allow roleplayers who are playing a character with a rank to use the rank in their name, but limiting the option only gives you one time to change your name.
Facebook should allow roleplayers
Facebook’s terms and conditions are quite specific, but unrealistically strict. As long as the profiles for roleplay characters are clearly labelled so there’s no confusion, I can’t see what the problem is and why Facebook doesn’t let roleplayers continue what they’re doing.
They probably don’t allow Role players because they class the profiles as fake. Even though in our information boxes we clearly state that we are Role Players.
Yeoman Janice Rand on Facebook
There are many benefits, and this is clear by the number of people who use Facebook for roleplaying.
Yeoman Janice Rand on Facebook
Many people roleplay perfectly happily on Facebook without being removed, so as long as you don’t draw unnecessary attention to yourself you might just avoid it. But if you do find yourself deleted from Facebook you can easily create a new profile or create a game on OngoingWorlds, where we love roleplayers and won’t delete you!
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