I stalk people on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Formspring (and I don't even subscribe to those last three). I stalk friends of mine, friends of friends, celebrities, and even people I don't know. Many have said that the internet has made our world smaller than ever, but I think that social networking has brought it to a whole new level. When I read about individuals in news articles I will look them up on social networking sites, and when I am successful in finding someone, it makes that person and their situation so much more real for me.
I don't stalk with a creepy intent, I just do it to find out more about a person or to see what is going on in their life. I know I probably appear to be like any normal Facebook user, but truly, I am sitting on the computer going through profiles reading status updates, personal bios and just finding out all kinds of interesting things.
Sometimes it is helpful information. For instance, the other day I was looking at a profile of a Marine wife, who has two young boys like myself. We don't know each other in real life...or even on the internet really. We're both members of an online group and for whatever reason I clicked on her profile one day and now I check her page pretty often, even though we're not "friends". Like I said, she has two young boys, and her husband left for deployment one week after mine did, so I like to read her status updates and see how things are going for her since our situations are so similar. The other day, she posted a status update about sending her husband cakes in a jar, along with the recipe. I was thrilled to learn that there is, in fact, a way for me to send my husband his beloved lemon cake while he is on deployment! In that case, very helpful to me.
Sometimes the information is disturbing. I was recently on a Formspring page, where several 15 and 16 year olds were talking to each other. The language used, and the topics were actually quite offensive to me - and I watch MTV - so I didn't think much could shake me. Not only that, but it was made all the more upsetting due to their age. I couldn't believe how mean and cruel some of the kids were being. My first thought was that high school has certainly changed a lot since I was there. But then I thought, perhaps it's not the kids who have changed, but that these social networking sites have given those mean kids a platform where they can say whatever they want to whomever they want, (and anonymously, if they choose to do so). Unnerving as it was, it was also a window into the minds of some adolescents these days, and has got me seriously considering home-school for our kids.
Most times the information is simply entertaining. The other day I came across a MySpace profile of a woman I do not know, who is divorcing her husband of two months. She is 19 years old, and has a three year old daughter. While I am so sad for this woman's child, I have to admit that the status updates about this woman's crazy life are pretty entertaining; she is like a one-woman soap opera.
So maybe I need to get a hobby, but I know I am not the only one who does this. And I am also not the worst. For instance, I think my mom is worse than me - she uses my Facebook profile to stalk people. I mean, at least I created a profile about myself so that others may stalk me, that's only fair, right? Which begs the question of who is stalking me? Or perhaps, who is stalking YOU?
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