Cyber Stalking Is Ruining Everything! Let’s Stop.

People obsess over other people. Girls do it, boys do it, teens do it, grown-ups do it… Everyone does it. We obsess. We pick someone to hold onto that we can’t move on from and we analyze, dissect, think, talk, dream about them. It happens.

Stalking used to require a little effort, but now the Internet lets us do it with ease.  You just have to know a person’s name (and honestly, not even – I’ve found STRANGERS on the Internet before). You can be in bed and just dig for information: where they went to school, who their first girlfriend was, where their cousin works, where they vacation every year, which siblings they don’t like, who their work friends are, who they think is funny, how many times they’ve been to Coachella, how long they leave their wristband on after Coachella – I mean, every detail.

It’s embarrassing (for both of us, really). The Internet puts everything in our hands. Sometimes I’m like, three years deep into someone’s Facebook feed and I don’t even realize. I’ll be aimlessly clicking through things, and then all of a sudden it’s 4 am and I’m looking at an ex’s new girlfriend’s old boyfriend from sleep-away camp in 1997. IT’S INSANE.

I’m not even embarrassed to write about this because I know everyone does it. I know you have one person you look at on social media who you never talk about. You get to their Instagram through a comment on a friend of a friend’s photo so their name doesn’t show up in your search history. I know, it’s okay, don’t be ashamed. That’s the behavior of a psycho, sure. But you’re not a psycho, which means I’m not a psycho. We’re both just boring statistics, because everyone I know (and then everyone they know, everyone they know and so on) does this.

How crazy is it that his cousin is my high school best friend’s college roommate’s ex-boyfriend at Northwestern? 

UH! IT’S NOT THAT CRAZY. It took you, like, six people to make that connection. I bet you I could be connected to anyone on Earth by six people. These are not signs of serendipity, these are signs of desperation. And I’m not talking sh*t, because I’ve done this. But I am calling us all out, because I think we all need to CALM DOWN and stop doing this.

The most disappointing part is that we obsess over people who reject us (the WORST people). Nothing like a little rejection to really make you like someone. I know that’s an awful and backwards thing to say. And I’m not saying it because I think it’s a good thing – I think it’s a terrible thing, but it’s true.

This was obviously written when someone rejected me (loser!). I can’t remember who rejected me (yes, I can), or why (yes, I can). But I do remember that for the entire year of 2013 (when that tweet was written) I didn’t fall in love or date anyone seriously – so who cares who this is about? It’s irrelevant now, but on June 27, 2013 it wasn’t irrelevant. It was apparently so relevant that it made me take out my phone and manically tweet this to the public. What sort of message is this sending? My sister follows me on Twitter! She’s 13. I HATE that this is something she might think or feel. She’s smart enough to know I’m joking – and clearly a jokey self deprecating Tweet is funny every once and a while – but this is not really anything I want to promote.

It’s disappointing when people I love become obsessed with people who reject them. It’s insane when people I love and admire doubt themselves because someone didn’t call them back. But it happens. That’s life! Musicians need experiences to sing about! I need experiences to Tweet about! (What a sad comparison to MUSIC… OMG.)

No matter what you’re doing, be it stalking people from the past or stalking people for your future, it needs to STOP. We need to calm down, be less desperate, and figure out how to act like normal people, not robot people who have weird access to information. Let a human share their past with you. Let a person tell you about their first love, not their Facebook. Let me show you embarrassing photos from my childhood with a deep nostalgia for my fifth grade best friend and have you actually listen, not pretend to listen because you saw my #TBT from 27 weeks ago, you know? Let’s just all fall back a little. I think it’d be great for everyone.