A popular internet meme casually declares that President Abraham Lincoln once said, “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”
Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, well over a full century before the internet came into existence, but the absurdity of the claim is the point of the message. It’s a wink at the audience, a not-so-subtle reminder for social media users to avoid assuming something on the internet is true simply because it professes to be.
Social media scams and misinformation create a variety of real-world problems, even in small western North Carolina towns. Cherokee County officials have experienced the dark side of viral posts in recent weeks, ranging from a Facebook hoax about a lost child found in Andrews to rumors that area school systems allow children who “identify as cats” to use litter boxes in place of toilets.
Cherokee County Schools Superintendent Jeana Conley confirmed that the district does not “let children use litter boxes in the hallways” nor anywhere else.
“We have nobody pretending to be a pet or any other kind of animal,” Conley said. “It’s just a preposterous lie that does nothing but cause confusion and take away from the real problems we have when people spread things like that.”
Similarly, a Facebook post falsely reported a lost child being found wandering behind an apartment complex in Andrews during the opening day of the Cherokee County Fair on Sept. 16. Once they’re out there, such hoaxes are often accepted as fact and can quickly spread within a community – and beyond.
“Those types of hoaxes, like with a missing child, that’s terrible,” Cherokee County sheriff’s Detective Roger Williams said. “Everybody’s hearts are racing (and they’re thinking), ‘We’ve got to find this kid.’
“There can be lots of man hours that are expended ... that may have been needed somewhere else. With that particular one, there wasn’t any type of money associated with it ... but it’s unfortunate that someone would take the time to do something that stupid.”
The recent hoaxes targeting Cherokee County are a reminder that scams are not always financially motivated, though, Federal Trade Commission data indicates the problem is taking an increasingly heavy monetary toll on Americans.
FTC data released in March showed that consumers lost $770 million to social media scams in 2021, a number that accounted for about one-fourth of total fraud losses for the year. That figure increased 18 times from the $42 million in social media fraud reported in 2017, as new types of scams related to cryptocurrency and online shopping have grown.
Williams said such scams often go unreported when someone loses money because the victim is embarrassed by what happened.
“We’ve been dealing with these for years, unfortunately,” Williams said. “Mostly they come up around Christmas time or tax time, and it’s usually something about a warrant.
“It would be against the law for us to accept money to not serve a warrant, but that’s what they want you to believe, that you could take care of the warrant (by paying money) by mail.”
Hoaxes sometimes make use of elements from a real-life incident. The one tied to Andrews, which has apparently been used online in various other towns across the nation, co-opted the photo of a 10-month-old child found alone in late August at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in Minnesota. In that case, the Andrews Police Department’s Facebook page alerted local residents to the hoax with a post at 3:18 p.m. Sept. 16.
“Somebody did the right thing by notifying the police department (and asking), ‘Hey, this is what they’re saying, is it
true?’ ” Williams said. “(We can say), ‘We don’t know, but we’ll find out real quick.’
“It looks like it was cut off at the very beginning, which was great. Then people could take their breath and go to the fair.”
By contrast, the narrative that U.S. schools are encouraging children to identify as animals and use the bathroom in litter boxes has not been so easily snuffed out. Conley said she has also heard it repeated about multiple neighboring school districts.
“It’s the most bizarre, ridiculous assertion I’ve ever heard,” she said. “I was reading stuff about it (being) in Union County (Ga.), so I called my friend (Union County Schools Superintendent) John Hill, and he said there is nothing like that in Union County. Then I heard it about Clay County, so I called that super, then I went to Snopes.com and, of course, it’s just something making the rounds.”
The hoax continues to make those rounds despite repeated attempts to debunk it by school officials across the nation, including states such as California, Tennessee, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Colorado. In a Sept. 22 Facebook post about the Stanly County school system, a Star woman claimed litter boxes were being used there, and she also alleged that school officials were required to put a collar on at least one student in parts of school facilities.
“This is a real thing there are several of these in the Stanly County, N.C., school system,” the woman wrote. “One of the ones in Stanly County Schools identifies as a ‘cat.’ The school has to place a collar on this child anytime the child has to leave out of the classroom, has to really put a litter box in the bathroom and that is where the child uses the restroom at during school.”
The photos used in the post are actually still images taken from a 2016 YouTube video featuring a 20-year-old European woman. Several people replied to the post to point out that the story was not true.
The hoax has been kept alive in parts of the country by prominent political figures. In March, Republican state Sen. Bruce Bostelman of Nebraska claimed students there were dressing up as animals and alleged that schools planned to implement litter boxes for them to use. Bostelman later apologized and retracted his statements. Recently, two Republican candidates running for governor – Colorado’s Heidi Ganahl and Minnesota’s Scott Jensen – have also spread versions of the tale.
Meanwhile, the same social media platforms where these online fables spread also serve as platforms where adults and children alike face real dangers associated with being “catfished.” Catfishing is the process of luring someone into a relationship by means of a fictional online persona.
Williams said children, like adults, can be drawn into compromising situations by sending revealing, risqué photos of themselves to an online scammer.
“(People) are exploiting children, and they’re using very similar ways to do it, befriending, and saying, ‘Hey, I got your picture, you’ve got to send me another picture,’ and these kids are more and more becoming victims the same way with adults,” Williams said. “It is going on in Cherokee County.”
Williams said it is important for internet users to consider where online information is coming from and do their best to vet and verify stories, or individuals with whom they are interacting.
“They need to check the source,” Williams said. “You can’t believe Facebook.”
He added that if someone believes they have been a victim of a scam or an attempted scam, they should call the sheriff’s office to report it as early as possible. It’s better if law enforcement officers are “able to jump on the beginning of the train and not try to grab the caboose,” Williams said.
The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office can be reached by phone at 828-837-2589.