Early this morning, 32-year-old Caitlin Andrews was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital following what the victim described as a “shocking and traumatic” encounter with the Facebook’s “On This Day” feature.
Caitlin arrived at her Midtown office and logged onto her work computer, only to find a photograph of herself snuggled up to her ex-fiancé, wearing a Hillary Clinton campaign shirt, with the caption “I could watch Carrie Fisher on Catastrophe for nine more seasons!” at the top of her newsfeed.
“I was immediately transported back to that day with Chad. It was perfect,” Caitlin says. “I’d spent the morning looking at FiveThirtyEight with the utmost faith in Nate Silver, then read a think piece about how North Korea was at least a decade away from making usable nuclear weapons.”
The photo was taken mere days before her once-fiancé, Chad, dumped Caitlin for a spin instructor/fitness model. This photo was one of the last moments Caitlin shared with Chad, completely unaware that her dreams were about to be completely crushed.
“I was so…full of hope then,” Caitlin says. “Chad and I joked about how bad 2016 had been so far. But we were so blissfully unaware of how bad it would get. And Facebook just made me relive that.”
Doctors at Mount Sinai say cases like Caitlin’s are not uncommon—“On This Day” has a real knack for digging up photos of exes, dead people, and you looking much hotter than you currently do.
Dr. Dev Bhat says these cases have particularly ramped up over the past few months, as Facebook users have been forced to revisit the 2016 presidential election, beat-by-beat, nearly every day. “We’re going to be all hands on deck on November 8, 2017,” Dr. Bhat says, referencing the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump being elected president. “But at least we can prepare for it this time around.”
Luckily, Caitlin’s incident was not fatal, though she has months, if not years of therapy ahead of her. Doctors warn others to remain vigilant and turn off the Facebook feature to avoid a similar fate.
