Night Stalker

And the last of the article's little pearls of wisdom:  Facebook stalking. As in "don't do it."  We all do it to some degree and it is impossible to stop once you start.

I sat and looked at the words almost breathless with self-loathing. Everyone who cyberstalks thinks no one knows they do it. But evidently everyone does.

I would never go so far as to page through someone's Facebook profile and look for women I could not identify. But there is a little bit of Harriet the Spy in all of us.

I have been the victim myself:

J. - even without Facebook he cyberstalked. He examined my phone records and even called a few unfamiliar numbers I'd dialed when out of town. And completely denied having done so, even when faced with the fact that in an interesting twist of fate, I could see his phone records and tell with tremendous certainty that he'd dialed the numbers in question and when.  And he acted like there was no egg to be found on his face at all when I told him the first was Pat's new cell number and the second was my secretary.  All he could say was, "I don't even know your secretary."  Exactly. Pinhead.

And my crazy friend that is no longer my friend. She used Facebook strictly to dig for intel on people. Who was zooming whom. What two people were after the same man and who was winning.  Who was getting cozy with whom, cyberistically speaking. If she could not scrounge up enough detail herself, she would ask other people to dig for information who would then message me on Facebook asking questions as concerned friends. Not anymore.

And I have to say, I noticed when Facebook would announce some cute blond who'd aged reasonably well had become friends with Scott.  I asked about one once, in the Harley dealership. He said she was a friend's friend or wife or something and that he had no idea why she'd friended him.  I decided to keep an eye on traffic between them. But also thought that maybe she was spying on her own husband and poking holes in his stories of "Going for beers with Scott"  by trying to find times when Scott was out on the waverunner with me when he was purportedly having beers with her hubby. Who knows?

And I have done the stalking myself.

I will admit that I'd look to see when Craig was online and who he was commenting on and who was commenting on his posts. Some girls were downright possessive and wrote posts that were obviously intended to suggest ownership...and "hands off" to readers. In response I would tend to post some of my own, just vague enough with enough said and unsaid to suggest that we had a secret understanding about something. I hoped the stalkers were taking note.

And it all seems crazy.

And maybe that is why the guy who wrote the article may have a point.