The Friends of Greta

Social networks start as a way to keep in touch with friends, then they become bogged down with peripheral people and advertisements. You need an application just to sort through all the noise. So we move on to the next networking site, leaving the last one still chattering away on autopilot as we eat through the internet like bacteria through the agar.
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I now know of a new social network that probably has less than a thousand members, and it’s shrouded in mystery. I overheard two women talking about it in a restaurant. The couple I heard talking about it referred to “the friends of Greta.” The one woman seemed very excited about the network, saying it was the last network she’d ever want to be on. She was going to explain to her friend how to join when she caught me eavesdropping and sent me a look of hot death, and stopped talking about it.

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“The friends of Greta.” seems to be a red herring. I went to thefriendsofgreta.com and friendsofgreta.com and all the other domain suffixes and it says “server not found.” Only according to this conversation, “server not found” is the page for every members home page! There’s some trick, an answered riddle, some elaborate password that gets you from “server not found” to the actual member’s page. Still, exhaustive clicking indicates that the particular non pages I found are genuinely not pages. Or are they?

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http://www.greta.com/ is a curiouser case. It takes me to a tourism site for Granite Falls, Minnesota. Why greta.com? Is the clue to The Friends of Greta somewhere on this page? Something seems not right here, but I haven’t been able to put it together. There’s got to be another piece to the puzzle.

A google search reveals a smattering of allusions to “The Friends of Greta,” but it’s all very cryptic stuff, with no straightforward explanations. All the pages about Greta Garbo seem legit, but maybe there’s a clue from her life story I’m missing. I keep coming back to the simplicity and the strangeness of greta.com, but I’m stumped.

As Groucho said, “I would never join any club that would have me as a member.” Well here’s a club that doesn’t want me for a member, and I want in! If anyone reading this is a member or knows anything about The Friends of Greta, please let me in on the mystery! I’ve got to know the secret! I promise I won’t spill the beans!

Or have I already said too much?

--Dan Kilian

Mysterious Magician's Affliction

Taj Majal