We’ve been seeing lots of our friends sharing a post with the tag #ran on our feeds as of the late, and we can’t help but investigate since this does not work on any of us when we tried it out. Here’s why it doesn’t work.
It all started with the Harry Potter easter egg a few weeks back — Facebook decided to honor the 20th anniversary of the first book with magical animations when you type in one of five keywords on posts and comments. Pranksters took this on a new level by showing a supposedly new easter egg when you key in the word #ran on the comments.
Here’s the thing: It’s actually a Snake Screen Overlay app available at the Google Play Store and anyone can use it on pretty much any app on one’s device since it just shows snakes crawling around your screen endlessly. The same goes with other similar apps available and spreading right now on the social media website such as those of spiders, cockroaches, and other insects — you don’t need any hashtag to show them that.
We hope you learned a thing or two today, and always verify what you share beforehand. We’re keeping an eye on these viral things and debunk them as we learn more about them.
#ran