In defense of stalking

When Facebook announced its News Feed feature, a new era of stalking began.
Anyone who’s spent a night prowling the site instead of doing homework knows the amazing amount of information you can dig up on your friends, and that new feature in essence activated automated stalking.

There was a tremendous uproar about it, but in reality, the feeds were only giving information that was already accessible. Based off a super scientific poll of my friends, it seems that most of us were digging up that dirt anyway. If you insist that this friend pursuit isn’t as common as I do, think about every time the phrase “I saw on Facebook that ...” has come up in casual conversation.

Because of this, we’ve become more hyper-aware of stalking and it’s not uncommon to refer to someone’s behavior as “stalkerish.”

Let’s move past the casual references and look at those truly deserving of the title: those who make mix tapes for someone they talked to for five minutes at a party; those for whom you’ve learned to automatically push “ignore” on your cell phone when they call. I’m ignoring the next level up: those that are more likely to follow you in their rusty van. That’s not stalking as much as it is kidnapping and a felony.

I’ve started to feel sympathy for these awkward men and women who don’t know how to express themselves and come off as emotionally balanced people.

Like communism, the motives for stalking make sense on paper. If you feel attached to someone, why not send them text messages to hang out, leave jokes on their Facebook wall about the one joke you shared, or make small dolls out of their hair?

At some point around middle school, there was an unspoken test that everyone went through that consisted of figuring out how to build relationships.

For the sorry few who either lacked guidance or were misled by John Cusack films on how to express love, they became the kids that were slowly shunned by society and have been lost ever since. Stalkers just never learned to play the social game.

Social interactions are really a constant strategic game whether we are aware of it or not. If stalkers exist on the lowest side of this, Dale Carnegie is on the opposite end. Carengie wrote the hugely popular “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” which consists of techniques and tips on manipulating others to get your way. The book comes off as one part helpful and one part evil. If I know anyone has read this book, I’m less likely to agree with any statement they make out of fear of falling for some psychic technique they control.

There are some dangerous people out there, but most stalkers are just harmless people who never learned our complex system of social interactions. Personally, I’m more afraid of the girl who’s learned “six ways to make people like you” than the one who’s cut out my photo and put it over a picture of Zach Efron.