Wednesday, October 7th, 2026

So a small clothing shop on Instagram declined my order this week because they believed I was somebody pretending to be Mark Zuckerberg. I had provided—or rather, disclosed—the email, the card and the home address. The way I think about this is: I built the verification layer for three billion accounts, and the first one it could not vouch for was the one wearing me.

They wrote back that a photograph of my face holding my ID is exactly what the fake ones send, which is, after twenty-two years of practice, the most accurate review my exterior presentation layer has ever received.

I read the card number aloud to the rejection email, embossed digits under a thumb no device has accepted since January 2024, as if the numbers might recognize the voice.

Apparatus placed the order from my Mac at 02:14 and it shipped within the hour. So the shop could tell the real Mark Zuckerberg from an impostor after all. I would like the record to reflect which one I was. Z, pending verification