"Number Neighbor," the latest idiotic idea to come out of the internet, can have pretty terrifying repercussions, as demonstrated by a woman who had to file a police report after she received death threats from her number neighbor.Â
The premise of the game involves people who blindly text phone numbers that are nearly identical minus one number that differentiates the two. The idea to communicate with number neighbors arrived on social media in recent weeks and has since gone viral. The entire purpose revolves around posting these anonymous conversations online, as sometimes they can lead to shallow friendships and/or lols.
One woman in Los Angeles, who asked to only be identified as Ashley, shared the horrifying downsides of blind-texting a stranger. After she decided to partake in the social media phenomenon, she began receiving death threats in a series of texts. The person on the other end of the thread threatened to show up at her house and kill her and sent her videos showing two guns being loaded. The "number neighbor" called her phone 70 times, and even after she blocked the number, the calls kept coming in from another source.Â
"You know i'm going to kill you right," read one of the messages from the anonymous number. "Lifted black diesel truck. You'll hear me. And if you don't come outside, I'm coming in," read another.Â
Although the calls have stopped, Ashley wanted to speak up to warn others of how the game can have terrifying consequences.Â
"A lot of people were telling me that there's no way he can track me. But when someone's sending you things like that and calling you non-stop, second after second after you reject it's really scary," she told NBC. "I just really don't think you should even talk to any strangers."
