What If Your Name was Thierry Mairot?

What's the worst thing that can happen to you today? The worst thing that can happen is for your name to be Thierry Mairot. Mr. Mairot's name has been posted thousands, maybe millions of times on Facebook since September 2, 2010 as a pedophilic user who targets our children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, cousins, sisters and brothers under the age of 16.

I must admit, the message about Mr. Mairot rattled me when it appeared as one of my friend's status updates. Didn't take a whole lot of time before copying and pasting this warning to my status for all my friends to view.

Then I remembered. The many times years ago I received viral email messages alleging somebody did something terrible. Without thinking, I forwarded the message, summoning everyone in my contacts to the fight, or the knowledge of the misdeeds. One of my friends (Michelle Wright, Chris Ward) would reply with the facts. The email was a malicious rumor or a hoax. I would then feel like an idiot because I'd just done a fine job of spreading a lie.

The post about old Thierry Mairot was on my status when I decided to search him out on Facebook. I found a website called thatsnonsense.com dispelling the information about Mr. Mairot as a hoax. Just as quickly as I put the post up, it was deleted. Hopefully no one had seen it. I then sent the thatsnonsense.com link about the post being a hoax to the friend who sent Thierry to me. Under the link I wrote, "Decide for yourself."

Who knows where these rumors originate. I pray Thierry Mairot is not a real person's name. Can you imagine, going into Wal-Mart to buy some socks. When the cashier sees the name on the debit card, she takes one scowling look at you and calls you a pervert. All because she saw a message on Facebook that identified you as a pedophile. How would that make you feel?

We do need credible people with credible sources to spread the word about something that's need-to-know and factual. The only way to know for sure if what we are reading is true is to investigate it for ourselves.

There are two people I don't want to be right now: Thierry Mairot and the person who unwittingly spreads malicious rumors about him.

Here are three links to credible websites which help determine whether Thierry's a pedophile or not. These sites help dispel other rumors, hoaxes and spam as well.