'The Password Reset' - The Viral Post That Changed Everything!

By now I’m sure most of you will have seen the post know as ‘The Password Reset’, on my facebook page or in my book ‘The Amazing Troll-Man - Winding Up The World One Comment At A Time’ which you can order here. Yes it’s a shameless plug but I don’t have any of those annoying ads on here so you can at least expect me to bang on about my book at every given opportunity – suck it up! If you haven’t seen the post keep reading (but still buy my book) as you’re in for one hell of a ride. If you have already seen it you need to stick around too as I’m going to talk you through exactly how it all went down that day and how without that post, I wouldn’t be here talking to you now.

It was February 2019 and I had been running my Spoof Customer Support profile on fecebook for around two months. I had around 200 followers and to be honest out of those 200 there were only about 3 of them that seemed to find what I was doing funny. I’d made the decision to pull the plug on my childish online antics as it was clearly not as amusing to everyone else as it was to me and those other 3 followers.

I’d not used my ‘Customer Support’ account for weeks, and not really paid much attention to facebook in general, when I was sat scrolling through my phone between sets in the gym. Yep, I’m one of those annoying people in the gym who spend far too much time on their phone meaning you have wait longer to get on the machines. Yeh yeh I know I’m a wrong un, if you’ve got a problem with it, tell it to my Customer Support. As I opened up facebook I noticed that my Customer Support profile had two messages waiting for me in my inbox. Both were from people in America asking me to reset their password. I found it odd that anyone would be contacting a page, which had the Argos logo as the profile pic at the time, with such a request. I came to the conclusion that they must have both got locked out of a facebook linked app and in their frustration had typed ‘Customer Support’ in the search bar and found me. I quickly flipped into full troll mode and saw the golden opportunity that had been presented. I responded to both messages identically asking for further information so I could begin what was the greatest troll of all time, even if I say so myself. Only Rosemary responded and she did so almost immediately and the fun and games began.

Ok so at this point I didn’t have any real direction or plan for how this was going to pan out. I’d remembered the times I had been in the frustrating position of needing to reset a password and having to remember answers to questions like who was my favourite teacher? (I hated them all) and password hints that made no sense at all. I fired across some ridiculous questions and hints to Rosemary whilst trying to appear professional with how I spoke to make sure I got her on my hook, which I well and truly did.

After a bit of back and forth I had the light bulb idea of telling her that she was registered as Nigerian and that it would be really funny to get her to put on some dark make up. As I type this even now, reading that sentence at the very concept of getting someone to do this feels very inappropriate and boarding into the racist territory yet at the time, I had no malice in my heart, it was just the most ridiculous thing I could think of to get someone to do. I will come back to speak more about the moral dilemma I had regarding all this later.

At this stage I knew I had struck gold and the post would most certainly be the viral hit I was looking for. As I looked at my phone, I noticed my power was at a mere 2% so I quickly jumped up and ran to my car to plug my phone into the car charger. Now that I had got Rosemary to go this far, I knew I could push it further and needed to keep her engaged before she thought too much about what she was doing and came to her senses.

“I threw away the eyes” – When she came back with this I was in fits of laughter.

As you can see Rosemary was being a great sport throughout and although I think she half knew it was a wind up she went along with it because she was so desperate to get back into her Casino app. After the chat had come to a conclusion, she was still asking how to log in with the info I had given her. At this point I explained I was a comedian and it had all been a wind up. At first she was a little concerned that I had a copy of her I.D, but after a little reassurance she saw the funny side.

I immediately started taking screen shots of the conversation to post on facebook when I suddenly thought to myself “hang on a minute, is this racist?”. I went from feeling really pleased with myself to my mind being filled with doubts about posting it in fear of what the backlash could be. Would what I had done cause offence? As a white man with no experience of being on the receiving end of racism I couldn’t answer that question. My only intention had been to get someone to do the most ridiculous thing possible in order to rest their password. The target of the joke was a white lady but was I still guilty of being ignorant if not racist? Rather than scrap the post I decided to educate myself, so I quickly headed to a black friend’s house, who originates from Nigeria, to show him the post for a reaction. As I arrived in his house, I handed him my phone and sternly said “read that” without telling him I had anything to do with it. I watched him read with anticipation and as he scrolled through the screenshots. His smiles quickly turned to a fits of laughter. When he finished, I said “aren’t you offended? Isn’t it racist”? He paused and looked confused for a moment before pointing out what I had already thought – the target of the joke is not black people. He further explained that ‘black face’ is when someone blacks their face to make fun of black people usually by acting in an untrue stereotypical manner in order to poke fun.

Whilst I was somewhat reassured, I was still nervous as one black person does not speak for everyone and there was still the risk of a backlash. I decided to take the risk and post it for the world to see. The post quickly went viral and I sat anxiously as people started to read and react. Minutes turned to hours as I checked every reaction and read every comment, but the worst never came. The post was received exactly as I had hoped and intended with everyone finding the joke funny rather than offensive. My following started to grow rapidly and the page, with just a following of 200, which I had intended to close only the day before quickly gained followers in the tens of thousands almost instantly. I was back and I had an audience for my work and well… you know the rest.

I did have a mini panic later down the line with this post over a year later. The country was in our first lockdown as Covid made its first appearance in the UK when I noticed I was getting a lot of friend requests from Nigeria. As I clicked on each profile, I could see they were all sharing this post. I was struck with those feelings of dread again, but that quickly disappeared as I saw the joke had been just as well received there as it has been everywhere else. It felt good to spread so much laughter around all parts of the globe.

You may have also noticed that this post also inspired my logo and The Amazing Troll-Man character which appears on the cover of my book. 

You can see ‘The Password Reset’ and all my trolling work over the past three years in my book (did I mention I had a book out?) available from my online store, click here for more info.