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Some Guy Made A Facebook For The World, And Complete Chaos Followed

by Eitan Levine

Honestly, there was no way the concept of communal Facebook was going to yield results that were anything but insane.

In a world where password protection and personal branding are among the Internet population's chief concerns, Joe Veix wanted to see what would happen if he released the login information of a publicly owned Facebook page.

He said,

If a social media profile is supposed to reflect our individuality, what would an account that everyone uses even look like?

So on July 9, he created PublikFacebook to test whether or not the Internet as a whole had the ability to take ownership over a single account.

He released the login information to Twitter, sat back and waited for inevitable mayhem to ensue on the profile.

log in today at http://t.co/tOEkiuRUD9 un: thepublikfacebook@gmail.com pw: password1234 — Joe Veix (@joeveix) July 9, 2015

Nothing happened for an hour, and Joe began to think maybe the idea was a dud; maybe the Internet was too nervous to hold a mirror up to itself and see its FB-personified amalgamation.

But then, someone tried to change the password, and Joe knew things were going to get nuts.

First, someone changed the name from John Smith to Maximilien Manning.

Then, people started altering the profile picture and cover photo.

Eventually, word of the Internet's Facebook page got out, and things started to happen quickly.

According to Veix, people started friending everyone they knew, “poking" mercilessly and liking everything certain users posted.

The Internet community went on a page-liking rampage, clicking the thumbs-up button on anything it could hover over.

For a brief while, the profile picture changed to the Taco Bell logo, and Maximilien Manning was used to try and impersonate customer service representatives who answered questions people put on Taco Bell's Facebook page.

This guy wasn't falling for it...

...but this person very much fell for it.

Someone even used the shared account to give a “10/10” review of ISIS.

The profile accrued 154 friends and was logged into around 135 times over the weekend.

According to Veix, Maximilien became a very worldly and experienced individual. He said,

Over the weekend, Max moved from Ouagadougou to New Mexico to Brooklyn to Bali to Boca Raton to Lincoln, Nebraska. He held jobs at Dave & Busters, Arby's, Uber, and Taco Bell. Max liked 322 things, including: the Buffalo Bills; dozens of wedding planning pages; something like 50 pet crematoriums; a bunch of communist pages; numerous topic-specific memes (gym memes, soccer memes, farming memes, etc); Stacy's Mom; Good Charlotte, 12 Street Fighter characters; Blockbuster; Elmer's glue; the Spin Doctors; Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch; and poop.

Veix tried to pull a similar stunt with a shared Instagram page and a Twitter account.

While the Instagram page never really took off, the Twitter page immediately caught fire, became “sort of like 4chan on methamphetamines” and then was shut down by Twitter.

Here is the Twitter after a visit from Walter White.

On Tuesday morning, Facebook killed off the communal account.

Maximilien Manning: 2015 - slightly later in 2015.

Citations: What Happens When Give Your Facebook Password to the Whole Internet (Death and Taxes)