Dear Denver: Facebook stalking defined

10/8/09 7:00pm

Dear Denver,

What defines Facebook stalking?-Questionably Creepy

Dear Questionably Creepy,

---

---

I have received a large number of responses to this very question, yet I still cannot come up with a definite answer. As I asked people around campus what they thought, everyone started arguing over the definition, all with different ideas and limits. Here's a rough conglomeration of what they said.

The simplest definition is that you just met someone and use Facebook to learn more about them, in an easy, lazy way that requires no direct social interaction. (Don't lie. You've done it.)

Maybe you have a casual acquaintance you want to get to know a little better, so you look at his or her info. This seems perfectly un-stalkerish, considering he or she publicized his or her likes and dislikes in music, television, movies, books, etc. In this way, "Facebook stalking" is just poring over people's info sections, seeing what they are into and comparing them to yourself.

Now, pretend you're really bored and find yourself on a friend's Facebook page, flipping through pictures of that date back to his or her high school years (or earlier - middle school was unkind to us all), checking the common friends you share, and if possible, how they know each other. Before you know it, you're reading all of the person's quotes, past jobs and posted links. This can occur out of pure boredom, or genuine interest in this person's life story. The latter is creepier, undoubtedly.

Sometimes you can tell a lot about a person by the way they format or list their information: Do they only list their education, or the whole caboodle? This could give insight to their feelings towards Facebook and their personality in general.

People who have small amounts of information are either very simple or quite enjoy their privacy and would be appalled by you "stalking" them. For instance, do they list only a few basic bands they like or do they feel desperate to cover all the bases by listing every artist they've ever heard? The latter may indicate that they are open to and enjoy discussing music, or that they are enthusiastic about finding more friends with common interests. These are all great ways to speculate about a person before you chat with them in depth, thus avoiding any major clashes in taste right off the bat.

I would not comment on - or worse yet, "like" - a picture where your potential love interest is tagged unless you're obviously friends with someone else in the picture. If you choose to disobey this rule, it's a dead giveaway that you were checking out their tagged pics specifically from their profile, indicating that you took the time to individually check them out. To some, this might be endearing - but to most, this is definitely considered "stalking." (And, please, don't even think about leaving comments like "dam wat a fox lol" unless the person really was dressed up as a fox.)

You can creep around on Facebook all you want, but the trick is subtlety. Don't make it too obvious that you've been checking people out until they get to know you better. This is much the same as real life. If you were interested in a guy or girl and asked a friend about your love interest, they might supply you with the same information you could find via Facebook. But if you approached your love interest and made it obvious that you knew about their penchant for Pokémon without really having spoken to them before, they would quickly peg you in the "stalker" category, much the same way they would see you on Facebook.

Once you've hung out or talked to your love interest, and you've convinced the other person that you're just a regular Joe, you can then casually introduce these Facebook facts into your conversation. Innocently. Because you've earned some degree of trust, the other person will consider you a normal, non-stalkerish person simply interested in getting to know him or her better (which is exactly what you have been the whole time, right?).

In the end, every person has his or her own definition of Facebook stalking. All you can do is hope, in case things go south, that your stalkee has a more accepting view of being stalked. Just please, please don't save pictures of people on your computer if you aren't friends with them. That's just creepy.

---