“Timeline Travel” – The Greatest Facebook Prank Of All Time

Last week, a coworker, sitting 10 feet away called me.

“Someone ‘liked’ an old picture of me and now suddenly everybody is ‘liking’ it.  How do I stop it?” she asked.

“I don’t think you can,” I responded and then I ‘liked’ the picture as well.

“Tim!” she shouted.

“Great picture!” I added a comment.

This whole question got me thinking. ‘Liking’ or commenting on a person’s post, no matter how old, puts that post back into the current news feed. Given my coworkers situation, people obviously pay very little, if any, attention to a post’s date.  I could use this to confuse people.

I went back to May of 2012 on a friend’s timeline, on which she wrote “Great day to set up a hammock between two trees and just lay out under the sky.”

I liked the comment and added “enjoy.”

A few seconds later, that post had additional ‘likes’ along with a comment from her mother “it’s raining! and aren’t you at work?”

She had to explain to her mother, via comment, that it was an old post, thus thrusting the old post even higher up the timeline, leading to even more ‘likes.’

I decided to take this a step further.

I went back to December 27th, 2011 and ‘liked’ a former coworker’s comment – “Had a great birthday yesterday! Thanks for all of the well-wishes!”

Over the next few hours, that comment received several “Happy belated birthdays” much to the confusion of this former colleague (more confusion, because as soon as people began to like the status, I unliked it, thus removing my involvement)

I decided to now take “Timeline Travel” as I was now calling it, to the next level.

I went to another friend’s page and went back to 2008 and found  “I just booked a flight! It’s official, I’m moving to Norway!”  I then clicked “like”

Shocked friends, ignoring the date of the post, began to question her decision and if she had been the victim of autocorrect.

Again, the beauty of ‘Timeline Travel’ is that attempts to explain that its an old post just serve to keep the post in the current news feed.

The drawback, however, is that it’s apparently easy for your friends to figure out that you’re the culprit.  You will also find that your friends have no qualms about giving you unnecessary tastes of your own medicine.

Now that I’ve tested ‘Timeline Travel’ and verified it success, feel free to enjoy executing this prank on your own friends.  I would love to hear your results in the comment section below.