UPDATE: As of 2:45 PM Eastern time, the Fake Richard Horvitz profile has been deleted by Facebook.  Thanks to everyone who helped bring it to Facebook’s attention.  Victory!

Being a ‘convention personality’ in the fan community has its ups and downs.  I love meeting fans.  I love talking to people who are excited about things in pop culture that I’m into (like anime and Transformers.)  I love reading the Internet when folks post about how much they enjoy projects I work on.

Occasionally, though, I have to deal with the random idiot who tries to ruin it for everyone else.  I usually just ignore the nuisance since (as we all know) you shouldn’t feed the trolls.

That said, I live in a fan culture the deals with thousands of people.  I can’t even IMAGINE the headache of hundreds of thousands of fans and having to deal with the issues that can be caused by the occasional “one bad apple.”

Thus, I now segue into talking about my friend Richard Horvitz.

Richard is the voice of main character on a television show called Invader ZIM.  Recently someone thought is would be funny to create a fake Facebook page and pretend to be him.  Now, I’m a fan of parody and I read a number of “fake” people on Twitter.  There is a difference, though, between PARODY and IMPERSONATION.  The Fake Richard Horvitz Facebook profile is pretending to be him in real life.  Not cool.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003088142181

Richard has reported the offending page and has even made it public that someone is impersonating him.  You can read the post on the InvaderCON Facebook wall here:

http://www.facebook.com/invadercon/posts/248846945173371

THIS IS THE PART WHERE I ASK FOR YOUR HELP.

It seems that Facebook is a little slow to react, so we need folks to report the Fake Richard Horvitz profile.  Please follow my simple step by step instructions…

STEP 1: Go to the Fake Richard Horvitz profile on Facebook.  It lookes like this:

Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003088142181

STEP 2: Scroll down to the bottom left of the page and find the link that says “Report/Block”

Click the “Report/Block” link and a pop up will appear.

STEP 3: Complete the “Report and/or Block This Person” form that appears.

Check off the box that says “Block Richard Horvitz.”

Select the option that says “This profile is pretending to be someone or is fake.”  You will then be asked to “Choose a type.”  Select “Pretending to be a celebrity.”  Next you will be asked to put in the name of the celebrity.  Type Richard Steven Horvitz.

The page should look like this:

Click Continue.

STEP 4: Select “I confirm that this report is correct” and click Continue.

Afterwards, you’ll see a popup that says “Thanks For Your Report.”

Richard reported the fake profile a number of days ago.  Facebook hasn’t done anything yet, but I think if we get a large number of people to report the profile (I’m talking to YOU InvaderCON Fans and OHP Fans!) then we should get this knocked out in no time.

Thanks for your help!