Bill Cammack

I dropped my e-Stalking series in 2008.

At the time, I was talking about asynchronously getting to know someone by reading their blog posts, listening to their podcasts, watching their videos & live streams and coming to your own conclusion about who they are, what they’re like and what they like to do without them ever knowing that you exist.

e-Stalking makes perfect sense because people tend to share what they care about online to the degree that they’re willing to be judged by what they wrote. Trust Me.. You can learn way more about someone in 20 minutes of consuming their media than you can during 20 minutes of banter with them and three other people standing around at an IRL social function. Read the rest of this entry »

Lindz from NNN / Tumblr joins me for a conversation about the ifs and whens of guys being friends with girls…..

B: So… Every Day, there’s some chick that’s completely confused as to whether some guy that she knows wants to be “friends” with her.

This happens in both directions… There are chicks that WANT to date guys, but they can’t tell if that guy’s physically attracted to them… And there are chicks that DON’T want to date guys, but they can’t tell whether those guys are NOT just tryinna get in their pants.

I’ll start off with the high percentage answer to whether a guy wants to be friends with a chick……

This means that if a chick wants to give him some, he’ll most likely take it, regardless of what he told you when you asked him directly. Does that mean you’re in a “relationship” with him? No. Does that mean he’s going to iChat you tomorrow? No. All it means is that he finds you physically attractive, and under the correct circumstances, he’d be very glad to “tap that, sunnnnnn”.

L: You see, though, if she’s hot and you know that she’s outta your league, or maybe she’s the plain Jane next door that still won’t get with you, even though you’re the hottest guy to ever talk to her, don’t get discouraged. You can totally use this in your favor. One word: Wingwoman.

B: As with every rule, there are exceptions. Here they are:

1) He’s not physically attracted to you.

B: If he’s not tryinna hit that, it’s easy to be friends with you, because there’s no pressure. No sexual tension. There’s nothing for him to gain or lose by not pressing up on you. Hanging out with you is the exact same thing as hanging out with any other chick, or a guy.  *yawn*

L: True. Very true. However, a girls attractability (is this a word? I think so) can grow depending on her personality. She can be a total goon and then you get to know her and all of a sudden she’s a supermodel knockout. Ok maybe I went too far, but you get the point.

B: Excellent point, Lindz… This is actually something chicks have to look out for that I wasn’t thinking about. That’s when there’s a changeover from not-hittable to hittable and what gets really confusing to chicks, when a guy that never paid them any physical attention’s suddenly talkin’ ’bout “Say… I lost the directions to my house… Can I borrow yours? :D “.

2) He’s not physically attracted to you. Read the rest of this entry »

… continued from E-Stalking [Part 1] and E-Stalking [Part 2]

Now, I FIIIIIIIIINALLY get to the part about why *I* E-Stalk. :)

First of all, it’s FUNNNNN!!! :D

I really enjoy reading about what people think about themselves and comparing that to my impressions of them. It’s so interesting when someone attractive thinks they’re not, or when someone smart thinks they’re stupid. It’s fun to see what people devote their time and energy to. Actually, I did this to myself just yesterday. I was watching my iTunes feed on my iPod, and other than a couple of Rock Band videos, the entire feed as of late has been videos from blog.blip.tv. Well… My Indy Mogul video took quite a bit of my creative energy recently, but the point is that I didn’t realize how my stream had changed until I scanned through the videos in a row. Doing the blip videos pretty much covers my intersest in being creative and outputting content, so without knowing it, I shifted my focus. So I learned about myself by accidentally E-Stalking myself by watching my own iTunes feed. Read the rest of this entry »

… continued from E-Stalking [Part 1]…

So… I’m minding my business, like I love to do… (my sister’s patented story-opening line)… and I start getting hits from Melissa’s site…

In the first line of her post, Being a Relater, I saw my full name and a link to my site. To this point, I’ve only referred to Melissa by first name in text & tags because I wasn’t sure whether my post was going to become some format of a ‘conversation’ between us or just one post BY me ABOUT her. :) I felt it would have been a Social Media faux pas to encroach on her Google Search results (like my posts love to do). So, since she’s ack’ed me at this point, I’ll mention that her name is Melissa Sconyers, and as far as I can tell, she’s a prodigy/phenom.

I had intended to go in a different direction with part 2 of E-Stalking, but I hadn’t anticipated her posting about my post, so now I’m compelled to respond to a couple of her points. Read the rest of this entry »

So I stopped by Melissa’s blog, and I’m skimming/reading her ideas, and I see this post called Stalking 101. The reason I decided to blog about reading her post is that she was blogging about exactly what I was doing at the time. :)

I decided to check out her reasons for googling people (searching for references to their names or sites they author or are a part of like, Bill, for instance :D) to see if they were similar to my own.

To paraphrase, here are her reasons:

1 ) Being an introvert (including potentially appearing “maladroit at small talk”)
2 ) Needing context for conversations
3 ) Wanting to ‘get to know someone’ before engaging them in “inspiring conversation”
4 ) Attempting to form a fairly complete picture of you based on your online thoughtstream
5 ) Giving the stalkee the respect of wanting to know more about them
6 ) Respecting the time you’ve spent in putting information about yourself on the net
7 ) Wanting to have a meaningful interaction with the stalkee IRL
8 ) Relieving them of redundantly explaining their life story

My reasons for e-stalking overlap with hers at several points, but I have a couple of different ones, which I’ll get to… Read the rest of this entry »