ManFax

A few months ago I stirred up quite a discussion on Facebook when I proposed that if you can get a Carfax report prior to buying a used car, then you should be able to get a “Manfax” report before dating a guy, that would verify marital status, employment status, reveal past criminal history, credit history, etc. The response from women from everywhere was overwhelming (men were slightly less enthusiastic about it) and I have more than once pondered turning that idea into reality. But the other day something happened that made me realize, Facebook can often give you much of this information itself.

Just after Thanksgiving this past year I got a phone call from *Scott* (name changed to protect the guilty), a man I had dated several years ago. I was surprised he still had my phone number. As we chatted about things that had changed in our lives since we had last met, he revealed that he had both married AND divorced in that time frame. At the end of the phone call, he invited me out to lunch and expressed an interest in possibly rekindling things between us. Personally my attitude has always been that ex’s are ex’s for a reason and if you split up once, chances are the reasons for doing so will still be there, so I did not commit to meeting him but just left it that maybe sometime in the future we could possibly meet up.


A week or so later I was on Facebook and I was trying to find an old friend from College, and in doing a keyword search for that person, lo and behold, Scott showed up in the listings. I recognized his picture and being the curious type, I went ahead and pulled up his profile for a look. Imagine my surprise to find out he definitely got married as he said, but he is not in any way divorced. In fact, during that same timeframe where he called me, he was posting nearly every day about how much he loved his wife, how they were traveling here and there over the holidays, about the gift he was planning on buying her for Christmas and had posted a multitude of pictures of the two of them together in cutsie poses.


I’m sure Scott never dreamed I would access his Facebook page and find out his lies in this manner, and it was a total accident, but the fact is - the information was there for anyone who knew his name to see! My own personal “Manfax” on him.

I think in the future I might make use of this source of information more often, after all, if they are dumb enough to put it out there on a public forum…..