Have you already seen a weird page or group on Facebook? Since everyone is allowed to create a group on social media, there might be cases wherein some of the groups were created for unusual purposes.
One example is this trending Facebook group, made for ants. Of course, ants can't use the Internet, but people can.
There are human ants on Facebook; Here's where to find them
A colony of ants is now infesting the famous social media network Facebook. However, they are not literally small ants but Facebook users that pretend to be ants.
As reported via NBC News, over 1.7 million users are now joined in a Facebook group named "group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony."
The group has simple instructions. "Worship the Queen and do ant stuff," as said in the group.
Members-only have to do anything ant stuff like collecting sweets for the Queen ant. Users will post pictures or videos presenting any sweets or food with ants on it, and members will comment "LIFT," "MUNCH" and "LINK." It is also a common behavior to sacrifice food for the Ant Queen and comment "LIFT.TO.THE.QUEEN."
From 100,000 members that started in March, the group has increased its members to millions of Facebook users.
According to its creator, Tyrese Childs, 20, the number of members wanting to join the group continues to increase over time. In fact, a lot of messages he received pertains to joining the platform.
"We have so many user requests and pending posts that this has become a job for me," said Childs, who's also taking classes online for the spring semester. "I think people are searching for something to do right now. You can only scroll so much on social media."
No COVID-19 posts or hateful comments
Since the group is strictly applying an ant-like life for all its users, Childs and other moderators of the group limit the posts for these ant-related contents only.
No Coronavirus, political, or any hateful comments or posts will be tolerated on the platform to stabilize the real purpose of the group.
"We have filtered out all the COVID-19 posts, so it's like an escape," said Childs, a college student living in Fargo, North Dakota, with his family during the pandemic.
Why this group receives a huge number of followers?
It is no longer a new thing for Facebook to cater to weird or unusual groups on the social media network. Since everyone is on lockdown, people have more time to spend online than to go outside-- making this a common hobby for anyone.
However, Andreas Lieberoth, an assistant professor of media psychology at Aarhus University in Denmark, said that "the ant group sounds like a psychologically safe space to meander with nothing scary and nothing political and nothing coronavirus-related," he said. "I don't know if ants get COVID, but in this colony, they don't."
