Post #7: Digital Creeperdom / Real Stalking

If you're wondering why this post is numbered, see this post.  If you're wondering why this subject isn't listed in the post, it's because it's in the comments.  If you're wondering why I'm starting at the end, it's because I decided to be difficult.  If you're wondering why I'm being difficult, you don't know me very well.

On Sunday, I had brunch with an old friend who I haven't seen in a while.  We talked a bit about staying in touch, knowing what people are up to in the digital age, and the strangeness of facebook.  I professed my love for the Stalker's Best Friend while she was a little more apprehensive about the prolific digital sharing of one's deepest truths and identity.  And while I do love that I can stay in touch with folks, find people that I thought I'd lost, and just generally waste time in relationships rather than my typical Hollywood gossip trash, she's also right.  It's a slippery slope of stalkerdom, folks.

In that vein, I present to you three situations that demonstrate the range of online identities and my interaction with them.  I think they each fall somewhere on the spectrum of continuing relationships, digital creeping, and actual stalking enabled by technology.

Situation 1: Annie
Annie and I were best friends in, like, kindergarten.  Our moms knew each other and we went over to each others' houses for play dates (before they were called play dates).  Then she moved further north, and we did our best to stay friends via parent orchestrated overnights.  Then she moved over to the neighboring state, and it got a little harder.  By the time we each left for college, we were going to school in the same town; however, it had been so long since we'd really known each other, outside of a few meetings here and there, that it was hard to try to get together.  Plus, college means meeting and making all sorts of new friends, which made trying to put the effort into reconnecting with an old friend kind of hard. 

We lost touch.  During my college years I probably could have tracked her down pretty easily, but I was caught up in my own navel-gazing and career-sorting and apparently couldn't be bothered, which was too bad.  I generally always felt like Annie and I had a lot in common, but geography had intervened.  As I continued to grow up, one of my big regrets for people I'd lost touch with was her.

Here is where facebook proves to be awesome.  Every so often, if I was feeling curious, I'd search for her name.  Unbeknownst to me, she was now more regularly going by her full name, as opposed to her nickname, meaning it would be pretty hard for me to find her.  Instead, she found me.  We friended each other.  We talked.  We started reading each others' blogs.  We found that we had a surprising amount in common in spite of very different paths in life.  When she came to town, we even managed to meet up for drinks and a seriously awesome burst of conversation.  It really felt good.

I'm well aware that we live on different ends of this continent and probably won't be able to get together very often.  I'm also aware that in spite of hearing about her joys and frustrations on her blog, seeing pictures of her friends on facebook, and hearing her comments on my life in this blog, we don't actually know each other particularly well.  If this were the real world, and not the digital world, we'd probably be the equivalent of good acquaintances.  I am very okay with that.  Having rediscovered my childhood best friend and gained a connection to a like-minded young woman makes me happy.  Thank you, technology!

Situation 2: Robin
Robin and I both grew up in the Valley.  She went to East Side, I to my tiny hometown high school.  We probably wouldn't have ever known each other except that we both competed in high school speech.  We were both in the Storytelling category, meaning we saw a lot of each other in the draw room, in the halls practicing, and at the awards ceremony.  I knew lots of the other East Side kids in the draw categories, so we tended to see and hear a fair amount from each other.  She was a few years younger than me, so we didn't graduate at the same time, and I never really learned where life would take her.

Flash forward to the facebook generation.  Facebook has this marginally creepy function called "People You May Know" which suggests people for you to connect with based on your mutual friends and connections.  Most of the time I don't know the person being suggested, but sometimes it's led to some awesome discoveries.  To be honest, I'm not sure if I re-found Robin by this feature, or if I saw her posting on a mutual friend's wall (it's a small world, after all), but I basically messaged her and said, "...are you the Robin I was in speech with?"  She immediately friended me, and we got to talking.

As it turns out, she was just leaving on a year overseas with her fairly-recently married husband who was going to telecommute his computer job while she learned, traveled, and gained life experience.  Sound familiar?  Yeah, I thought so, too.  So I followed her blog, drooled over her awesome travel itinerary, and tried to give her encourage and support about the value of global interaction and the beauty of people and places.  I had barely thought of her in 12 years, and yet I felt very close to her.

This summer, she and her husband were home briefly to trade out suitcases before they left to live in Hong Kong for a year.  We tried terribly to get together for some kind of face-to-face - the first of its kind since we were teenagers - but alas, schedule and a massive migraine intervened.  It was too bad.  I would've loved to have seen if the new relationship based and formed in digital life would have translated to energizing and meaningful real life conversation.  Instead, I'll continue to creep on her travel pictures on facebook and read her incredible thoughts on her blog.  It feels a little stalkerish sometimes, but it will have to do.

Situation 3: Kara
I know Kara really well.  She's a rural Red River Valley girl, and always feels more centered when she gets to go home to her family's farm for a visit.  She is really obsessed with beauty and fashion, and is constantly trying new hair products or colors for her rapidly expanding collection of nail polish.  If I needed advice on the right shade of red lipstick for my skin tone, she'd be my go-to gal.  She really wants to be a writer, and has had articles in the Star Tribune and Vita.mn, as well as having written a style section for her university newspaper.  She has an affinity for pop culture in general.  She works as a self-described "shop girl" at a chain store in downtown Minneapolis.  She's rocking some seriously platinum hair these days.

I have never met Kara.  She does not know I exist.  I could pick her out of a line-up, even have a conversation about her as if we were besties, but the closest we've ever been to each other is when I walked by her place of work.

Let me explain.

A long while ago, I was searching for something online.  I cannot even remember what, exactly - something about fashion.  I found the last article she'd written for her school's paper before her graduation, about what every girl needs to have in her closet and purse to be successful in the world.  It was clever and informative.  I instantly liked her.  At the end of the article, she invited people to follow her on Twitter and follow along on her style blog, so I did.  She's funny, has great beauty insight, and has a vaguely similar life story to me.  So, I occasionally checked in on her blog and followed her Twitter feed.  I was hooked.

In particular, her Twitter account tells me a lot about her.  She writes about where she's going out for drinks, who she's seeing for supper that night, where and when she works, things people say to her in the Skyway, what song she's listening to, what she's feeling angsty about.  In a weird way, it's somewhat similar to the kinds of stuff that I write about; however, her very revealing details have made me a bit more conscientious about the things I write about in my tweets.  Nonetheless, over time, I have come to feel like I know her.  Still, we have never ever met.

The place she works is connected in the Skyways of downtown, someplace I pretty much never am.  I was, however, there last week with my girl JB (this will be discussed in upcoming Post #6) after the hottest baseball game known to humanity.  As we walked through the blessedly air conditioned corporate hallways, I realized we were walking right past the place where she works.  The first time we went past, I didn't see her.  (The lack of platinum hair was a dead give-away.)  I was glad, because it gave me time to reflect on the fact that trying to find someone you'd never met by staking out her place of work was actually pretty much stalking.  However, on our walk back through, we walked past the store again.  This time, she was there.

I was probably twenty feet away from her.  I realized how much I knew about her, and how much I liked about her based on what I knew.  I figured that it wouldn't take much to stick around and find out when she was done with work.  I think she takes public transit, so following her home wouldn't take much.  I could strike up a conversation on the way.  We could be friends!  She's so cute and funny, and our sense of humor is so similar.  Maybe she could even help me class up a little.  It would be awesome.

This, I suddenly realized, is what stalkers are made of.  Just because all this information about her was out in the world didn't mean a) it's meant explicitly for me, b) tons of other people aren't also reading it, and c) it's even true.  My edge of vague, harmless digital creeperdom had slid solidly onto the border of full-on real stalking.

Needless to say, I continued on past the store and promptly forgot about it.  I do still follow her on Twitter, though.  And I can't wait for her next blog post.  But I know we're not friends.  At least, not yet.