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.

I’ve personally been amazed by and appreciative of the number of people that have complimented me on my dating, social media or video blogging. Some of the experiences I’ve had with this which stand out to me to this very day are with my Bre P., Tim S., Jessica V., Corinne & Meg, and my own cousin whom I had no idea read blogs at all, much less mine. I can’t explain the personally-world-changing feelings that I’ve received from those particular genuine, heartfelt interactions/reactions to something I do because I like to do it and because I WANT to do it. Thanks again, to all the readers, whether you’re lurkers or regulars like Fishingrod, Frank, Steve, C-Jay, etc.

Fast Forward two years to present-day 2010 and e-Stalking has evolved from being strictly online to also being offline (f2f, IRL) thanks to location-based services (LBS).

A LBS allows you to inform people where you are at a particular time, usually via GPS location from your cell phone. This is only slightly different from Twittering where you are or having someone else Twitter that they’re hanging out with you because there’s currently no location confirmation on Twitter. You can say you’re at Tavern On The Green (in Manhattan) when you’re actually in The Bronx. The LBS marks down what was said, who said it, where they were when they said it and how long ago they were in that location. Obviously, you can see the delectable stalkability in these apps. >:D

Practical Applications

Other than working for clients, just about everything I do is on the fly. It’s rare that I know what I’ll be doing two hours from now because I never know what I want to do until I want to do it. I use LBS primarily to make exit decisions. If I know I’m leaving location A and heading for location B, I’ll check to see if anyone I want to catch up with IRL is in the area I’m leaving. This worked out for me just last week as a matter of fact, because I found out that Scott B., whom I’ve known of online for ages already was currently in a crowded party I was about to leave. Thanks to the LBS, I got to introduce myself to him IRL before bouncing to the next spot.

Another time was rather interesting because a female friend of mine “checked in” to a restaurant that was close to a spot I was leaving, so I passed by to say “Hi”. I actually walked by her because I was looking for a group and then on my way back out of the restaurant, I saw she was sitting at a small table with a dude… YIKES!!! :O .. A DATE!!! :D

So I tried to sneak out past them, but didn’t make it. She asked me to sit down with them, so (sorry dude! :D) I sat for about 3 1/2 minutes, which felt like 20 minutes so as not to dis her invitation but not to trample his date at the same time. Ain’t Goin’ Out. Like. That! ;)

BTW.. I do this all the time.. Not trample on guy’s dates, but check my surroundings for people I want to catch up with, so if you don’t like it, go ahead and delete me now. thxkbai :D

foursquare.com/BillCammack
gowalla.com/users/BillCammack

The time that prompted me to write this post happened a bunch of months ago, though I’m just getting around to writing about it now. Damien B. & Owen S. had checked in to Lily’s Bar/Restaurant at Roger Smith Hotel, which happened to be located between my current points A & B, and “shouted” (announced via text message on the LBS) a tweetup.

When I rolled in, both guys said “hi” to me and one of them asked me who I was there to meet up with. I replied “You”, which caused them to look puzzled. :D We then got into a discussion about stalking and how people don’t understand the potential safety issues of announcing where you are and/or what you’re doing. Of course, this is 2000x more important for females, since they tend to have more fans/stalkers than males as well of this false sense of security they’ve derived from believing that everyone subscribes to “Men should never hit women”.

Who’s Paying Attention?

I currently have 189 Gowalla contacts and 381 Foursquare contacts, mostly overlapping, so let’s say that when I check in somewhere, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see one or more out of ~450 people show up to the same location. That’s slightly exaggerated because lots of my contacts are currently in other states or countries and can’t just roll up wherever I happen to be. Even if we take that number down to 100 people, that’s STILL a lot to consider every time you use a LBS.

On top of your personal followers, there are the people that follow friends of yours that you’re hanging out with. You might not check in, but if your friend checks in and “shouts” that they’re with *you*, you’re spotted. If they Twitter and @reply you, you’re spotted. If they twitpic, yfrog, Ustream, Qik, Livestream or Bambuser you, you’re spotted. Same thing goes to a degree with Loopt, Latitude & Brightkite.

Also, let’s not forget that a lot of people push each status update to several other sites, so when they shout you out on Twitter, it goes to their Facebook and Friendfeed and Buzz and everywhere else on the planet where they feel people are paying attention to them.. So while you THINK you’re secluded somewhere having private drinks, you’re really sitting out in the open, electronically…. virtually…

There are two obvious ways around this.. 1) Don’t add anybody on LBS that you wouldn’t want to come see you if you checked in somewhere, and 2) don’t check in. If you’re serious about your privacy for a hangout, make sure everyone knows ahead of time that it’s a NOBLOG blackout. Everybody goes electronically off the grid until it’s over or everyone elects to make it a public event. Depending on the situation, you might want to call a total media blackout (no mentions, no pictures, no video), because we all know that if nobody blogs it, it never happened. ;)

I finally got around to writing this because I read an article by Melissa Jun Rowley about stalkerism that she and acquaintances of hers have been victimized by. You should definitely check her post out if you want to hear some weird ish. Personally, I don’t take calls on MY OWN PHONE, so I’m damned sure not taking calls on restaurant & gym phones, but I guess that’s how some people roll. \o/

Fools Rush In

The bottom line is that every time someone comes up with new technology, people rush out to utilize it. When I’m new to a service or app, I immediately look for the people that have 10x or 100x the followers I have on it to see how they’re using it and what traps they’re falling in. I add that to my own in-the-trenches research and decide what I’m going to do.

Unfortunately, most people just aren’t into the nitty-gritty of how this stuff works for AND against you and they’re very happy to tell people “I’m eating a sandwich on 34th and 2nd” and then “I’m watching a movie on 42nd and 8th” all day long, for what reason I have no clue. Granted.. *MOST* of us aren’t popular enough that just because we said we were going somewhere, someone invites themselves to come hang out with us. Trust & Believe that it happens, it’s happened TO ME, and I have witnesses from all the way back in 2008, before LBS were even AVAILABLE, to 2010.

If you’re not willing to have someone show up at a party or event you’re attending, take evasive measures, (including telling your friends not to say you’re there) or eject from LBS entirely. Melissa mentions Personal Brand Promotion and Brand Loyalty as reasons to check in, but you can shout out events and show your support without even being there, like “MashBash is happening @ Roger Smith Hotel tonight!!!”. There’s no benefit to posting “I am currently at MashBash in RSH in the penthouse in the room to the left after you exit the elevators around the corner next to the snacks”.

It’s 2010 now. A lot of people that you know and hang out with are celebrities, whether they or you know it or not or whether you like it or not. Everybody that outputs Social Media is building communities of fans & detractors that face off against each other on the back-channel over something you said or did. You don’t have to be a movie star to get stalked. You don’t even have to do anything that YOU think is extraordinary. It’s all about what your Fans think is extraordinary about you and makes them gravitate towards you.

I know it sounds stupid and perhaps self-centered, but if you’re heavily involved in Social Media, it’s really in your best interest to Act As If you’re a celebrity, certainly not meaning being snobbish towards people, but certainly meaning taking the same precautions someone that *YOU* think is famous or interesting would take to attempt to ensure their own privacy and safety.

Remember… “Fan” is short for Fanatic.

Related Posts

• Deleting People From Facebook
• How To Disable Facebook Places Tagging
• Social Media: You’re Doing It Wrong
• Facebook: Should You Add Someone You’re Dating?
• #NOBLOG Status (Plausible Deniability)

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.

B: Really… This is just about the only reason he wouldn’t tap that. :D

L: In most cases, yes I’d agree. But with a few beers or maybe like 10.. the possibilities are endless.

B: Actually, this is ANOTHER great exception that I wasn’t thinking about. Similar to how there are people that never smoke… unless they’re drinking… There are guys that won’t be attracted to certain chicks AT ALL until they don their “Beer Goggles”. This can be INCREDIBLY confusing for women, as the same guy that’s all over them the night before isn’t even trying to touch them at brunch the next afternoon. :)

3) You’re dating a friend of his.

B: There are only two things you have to remember as an American male, and they both amount to the exact same thing. Those are:

Blood is thicker than water
and
Bros before Hoes

This means that there’s an infinite number of chicks. They’re always making more. There’s no reason to kick it to your friend’s girlfriend. Keep your eyes on the prize! :D If you like your friend’s girl, just focus on the fact that you can get a chick more attractive than she is, sexier than she is, smarter than she is and more nymphomaniacal than she is.

L: Plus, going for your friend’s “leftovers” as I like to call it, makes you lazy. Get off your ass and go find someone for yourself. Don’t just look around the room sayin, OK I think I’ll take her, she’s the closest person to me and the hottest looking girl within eyesight. With that kind of attitude, you’ll get far in life. *Sarcasm*

B: True Dat! :) As a sportsman, you should be trying to get your own raps, not leech off of your boys… At the very least, make sure it SOMEBODY ELSE’S GIRL, not some guy you actually know… Sheesh! :/

4) He doesn’t like women at all.

B: Especially in New York City, you could look like Stacy Dash, and there’ll be a ton of dudes that AREN’T tryinna hit it! :O

smh…

L: True, this can happen a lot in LA too so beware. And if you are hanging out with someone and you aren’t sure, start being more observant. Does he wear pink converse? Does he buy women’s jeans? Does he frequently invite his best friend, Big Gay Al over and then insist that he’s sleeping on the floor of his room, then keeps the door locked with music blasting all night. Hmm.

5) You have something in common.

B: See, guys are friends with girls for the same reason they’re friends with guys… They Have Something In Common. Stop and think right now about what you have in common with the guy that you’re thinking about and wondering whether he’s actually a friend of yours. If you can’t figure out what you have in common…….. He’s just waiting to hit it. :D

L: Things in common that don’t count: breathing, living in the same city, working, eating meals frequently, showering, etc.

B: Most guys aren’t smart enough to make something up in common with you, so they just OK everything that you have to say. If you like a certain singer, he likes it, too. If you don’t like a certain type of food, he doesn’t either. If you wouldn’t be caught “dead” in a party in Brooklyn, neither would he! :D

L: Here’s another first hand example. If you love music and he loves to surf and all you talk about music and all he talks about is surfing, then both your conversation is one sided. If you’re not interested, you better make it clear, because this loser is just waiting to hit a wave. No pun intended.

B: This is where “E-Stalking” comes in handy. If you E-Stalk a guy, you can find out what he’s into before he finds out what YOU’RE into and figures out how to ! :D

Lindz & Bill
 

Related Posts

• Top 10 Mistakes Guys Make When Trying To Get A Girl
• Top 10 Mistakes Girls Make When Trying To Get A Guy
• Platonic Relationships
• 10 Reasons He Wants To Be “Just Friends”
• Making Friends vs. Getting Laid

… 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.

Second, I find people to be more realistic when they’re posting to the internet than they are in f2f conversation. Not that people are lying, but as I said in one of the other parts, we tend to talk to each other about things that we have in common, which means we’re actually talking about the subset of things that WE BOTH KNOW we have in common. This is a very limited range and actually limits people’s relationships if they don’t strive to understand more about the people they’re socializing with. E-Stalking is fantastic for this. When people are talking to ‘nobody’, or perhaps talking to themselves in print, they go wherever they go. They’re not restrained by what someone else is going to think is cool or interesting or acceptable. It’s a much more interesting trip to spend a few hours reading about someone and gathering the bread crumbs they leave on the net than to sit in front of someone and expect them to be up-front with you with stuff like that off the bat. For instance, a chick might be The Freak Of The Week (extremely sexual), but when you meet her, she’s not going to bring that up. I’ll bet you she posted that TO THE INTERNET, though! :D

Another reason to E-Stalk is to become aware of a LACK of information about somebody. Let’s say someone walks up to you at a Social Media gathering and tells you they do a certain type of business. Let’s say they claim to have clients. Let’s say you google them and you can’t find ONE client of theirs in some form of internet representation, and you can’t even find a resume for them. In this day and time, you’re going to be extremely suspicious of that person and way less likely to take their word for things.

E-Stalking is useful for dating as well. You’d be surprised at the information available at our fingertips about people’s girlfriends/boyfriends they were hiding, KIDS they didn’t want to bring up when they were making up this rosy relationship y’all were going to have… If you show up on Maury *NOW*, you’re an idiot, because there are just too many ways to find out that six other dudes hit it that same week. Twitter, Facebook broken hearts, Flickr sets, Paparazzi video, Text blogs, iChat status updates….. Last season, a couple of breakups occurred and I found out about them the same day without having ANY contact with ANY of the people involved. Same thing with people becoming an item without announcing it. This is Social Media… “Welcome To The Show!” :D

E-Stalking accelerates your ability to relate to people as well. If you have to wait for them to tell you stuff, you don’t get to think about it and formulate topics to discuss with them. It’s like Black & White Television… out of style. When I’m interested in someone, I want the dossier… YESTERDAY! I need to get up to speed on the perp. When I run out of E-Stalking information, *then* I have to go to the source to take it to the next level.

Everything means something. Maybe not on its own, but when lined up with the rest of a person’s media, you get a vector… Where they were… Where they went from there… Where they’re heading in the future. Did they gain or lose weight? Did they cut their hair or grow it long? Did they get into or out of a relationship? Are they developing confidence in themselves or are they stuck in the same rut month after month? Do they understand their own potential? How sheltered have they been? Did they change their names? How much do they understand about how things work in the real world? How much of their brainwashing have they shunned with the goal of determining what’s right for them on their own?

E-Stalking’s really great, because you get to see what people show you without intending to. Granted, what you’re reading is STILL crafted by that person. It’s still the portion of themselves they’re willing to put on the net and doesn’t come anywhere near to describing the true depths of their personalities. It’s still a lot more than you’ll get from looking someone in the eye and clinking a brew with them, and that’s what makes it so fascinating.

Related Posts

• Tech Stole Your Girlfriend!
• E-Stalking [Part 2]
• Online Dating Tactics
• E-Stalking [Part 1]
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… 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.

he talks about how he didn’t recognize my Twitter name or my real name, and therefore was unable to place me in context. He also mentions that’s he when he tried several times to draw a connection between us, and found none.

Yes. This happened in the very beginning of when I spoke to her. Most of the time that I go to Social Media events, I’m hanging out with my friends and I meet friends of my friends. I was immediately at a loss, not being able to connect Melissa to someone I had already met, so I believe I reverted to the dreaded “what do you do?”. :) I don’t exactly remember her response, but it was one word. It was probably “marketing”. Whatever it was that she said, the WAY she said it was what was of interest to me.

Most people that you encounter on the meetup circuit are “looking to make a come-up”. IME, they normally connect themselves to the largest, most recognizable company or accomplishment they’ve achieved so far. Whatever Melissa’s one word was, it was delivered with the matter-of-fact-ness of “I do what I do”. She didn’t feel any need to explain her “doing” any more than that. Something about her demeanor indicated a confidence and self-sufficiency about her that made me figure that if she had been from around here, I would have heard of her by now. Since I hadn’t, I believe I asked her if she was from out of town.

… it’s easy for me to tell people what I “do right now” with any number of simple answers — marketing, advertising, search marketing, digital media — and much, much more difficult to explain what it is that I “do.” Because I do a lot of things.

See, this is what I was talking about. Having so many skillz to “fall back on” makes it so that one doesn’t have to latch onto any particular thing to receive props. If Rob hadn’t told me I should wait and get a new iPhone, I would have already replaced my old-ass phone with the little alien in it that jumps rope and takes baths (don’t ask), and I would have googled her right there on the spot.

… to his credit, he did a very thorough e-stalk on me, and emailed me with all sorts of comments and questions.

haha Yes I did Laugh Out Loud at “thorough e-stalk” hahaha :D

The way I see it, the net is a place where you can put all sorts of information about yourself, and if it’s not buried too deeply, anyone who’s interested in finding out about you can do so. Also, if they find out things they don’t like, they can eject without ever having to contact you. The reason I say “buried too deeply” is that I have over 300 videos that I’ve posted to the net since 2006 and *I* can’t even find some of my own videos easily! :D My cousin asked me the other day “How’s that girl doing that you did the music video in the car with?” and I was like ????? I didn’t even REMEMBER doing a music video in a car.

Song: “Tease”
Artist: Kelly (www.myspace.com/KellyPorter)
Video performed by Firestarter from KR3Ts (KR3Ts.com)
A&B Camera: Krys G., Bill C.
Edit: Bill C.
Date: August 02, 2006

Anyway… yes. I am an extremely thorough E-Stalker. Depending on my level of intrigue, I will skim every single piece of media that I can find on the internet with your name on it. Everything means something. It’s so interesting to build a psychological profile of someone, pieced together from your guesses about their media and then see how close you come to their actual demeanor and way of being, IRL. :)

This makes me quite good at small talk. But it still doesn’t mean I enjoy it by any means.

To me, small-talk is similar to not browsing the other person’s media on the net. It’s like throwing away time. I’d rather say nothing and enjoy my own thoughts than ramble on about some nonsense. Even if someone’s on-topic with me, I’d prefer that they knew what they were talking about, haha. I *can* small-talk… but if I did, I’d be perfectly aware that I was wasting my time as well as theirs.

As a keen observer, I prefer to move around a room, watch how people are interacting, overhear a couple of conversations, and then find one where I can jump in. This is my way of finding context, when it isn’t possible to know something in advance about the person standing in front of me. Plus, the participants in the conversation are already more interested in talking to me than if we had all started cold, because I’ve made myself relevant to what they’re already talking about.

I enjoyed reading this paragraph, because this is exactly what Melissa did to me. :) Once I had determined that Jonathan was in twitter contact with Melissa, I knew what I was going to do. I was going to find her the next day in his twitter stream and get my E-Stalk on. :D Until that time, I was perfectly content with my current understanding of “who she was”. I knew how tall she was, that she had something to do with marketing, that she was cute and that she spoke English. That’s it. :D Oh, and that she had a Twitter account name, which I was currently too inebriated to remember, but knew I was going to get from Jonathan ‘on the morrow’.

At some point, she says something to me about my shirt.

I replied something like “Oh, that’s Renzo Gracie. He’s a fighter”, and expected that to be the end of the conversation… except she goes “I know” to which I raised an eyebrow and listened to her continue about a topic that I’m very interested in. hahaha Excellent Technique! On top of that, it worked on me just like it was supposed to. That conversation went directly to the top of my ‘understandings’ about her, because as she says:

In my experience, people aren’t interested in “you.” They’re interested in how “you” are interesting to them.

heh. Spot-On.

Apparently, Bill wasn’t the only one who didn’t get a full impression of who I am.

I think the important thing is that the impression that I *got* was that there was more to learn about Melissa. I don’t think it’s feasible that I would have gotten the entire picture, IRL. People will type stuff like this, but they won’t rattle it off when they meet you:

Yes, I am in advertising. But I’m also a geek, a writer, a blogger, an author, a photographer, a photojournalist, a restaurant reviewer, a programmer, a world traveler, a public speaker, a fluent Mandarin Chinese speaker, an entrepreneur, a web and graphic designer, a videographer, an inline speed skater, and probably a lot of other things that I’m forgetting.

I think the best you can do in a social situation is exude potential. Maybe potential, personality and class. When people ask me what I do, I say “I edit” or “I’m a video editor”. I’m not actually interested in people knowing how good I am at editing or what schools I graduated from or that I’m a world-class XBOX team leader or an ultimate frisbee terror. That’s because I’m not “tryinna make a come-up”. I don’t go out to make business contacts. That’s why I don’t carry “business cards”. I go out to spend time with cool, fun and intelligent people. If we have something in common, let’s chill. If not, let’s not! :D

Basically, I derived enough from our interaction at that event to consider Melissa someone I’d be googling in the near future… and I think that’s really all the impression one needs to make in this day and time! :D

Continued in part 3…

Related Posts

• E-Stalking [Part 3]
• E-Stalking [Part 1]
• Tech Stole Your Girlfriend!
• Online Dating Tactics
• re: Raymond Kristiansen’s “The Audience of Ten”

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…

Another thing that was funny to me after I read Melissa’s post was that we had met each other “cold”… purely by accident. She happened to be standing with a group of friends of mine, and since I hadn’t met her before or seen her around, I introduced myself. I figured that even though I hadn’t seen her before, I’d be familiar with her twitter name, so I asked her what that was…. No dice. Never heard of that name before. :) So, now… Here I was, at a social media event, having ZERO point of reference for who she was. To me, this was like falling off a cliff into a chasm, with a cheap greenscreen effect to show me supposedly falling away from the camera. It was like a system shutdown. To illustrate how strange this was, I could have taken a rock and hit no less than 45 people that I knew in the same room with us. I mean, no walls between us at all, and I couldn’t draw ONE connection between her and any of them OR anybody else I knew on the social media scene. So the next question I had was something to the effect of:

“So… You’re from out of town?”

Which she wasn’t, which made me fall farther from the camera into the chasm. :) What I realize now is that I was doing what Melissa describes in her post. I was attempting to latch onto some sort of internet-based understanding of “who she was” in order to have some form of useful conversation with her. Once I drew a complete and absolute BLANK, I had no point of reference and probably seemed like I didn’t have anything to say to her. I’m sure I had lots to say to her, except as I mentioned in Chris Brogan’s post, “Five Levels of Social Conversation”, I’m not a small-talker. I’m interested in USEFUL conversation, and by now, I’m very used to knowing what conversation is useful to whom because of what they post to the net.

Anyway… A mutual friend standing in that group was already in social media contact with her, so I decided I was going to “quit while I was in the middle of nowhere” and just google her the next day. To her credit, she struck up a conversation later on, based on what was on my shirt and I found out that we shared a mutual interest. That’s always a good thing. :)

So it was really interesting to me that in the process of e-stalking her, I arrived at a post that talks about how she e-stalks people, and why. :D I thought it would be interesting (to me) to see where my reasons and Melissa’s paraphrased reasons overlap…

1 ) Being an introvert (including potentially appearing “maladroit at small talk”)

I’m not an introvert at all. I may actually qualify as an extrovert, haha. However, as I mentioned above, I don’t small-talk. I’m not interested. I’d rather say NOTHING than say (or listen to) nothing interesting. I don’t care about the weather. I don’t care which direction you brush your dog’s hair OR that you even HAVE a dog. At the same time, I don’t want to bore you with things that *I* think are interesting that YOU don’t care about. E-Stalking helps to avoid this, because I know that Charles likes politics and Grace likes food and Annie likes to read books. I know ahead of time what conversations I’m going to get into, so I’m properly prepped for the evening’s events.

2 ) Needing context for conversations

I don’t *need* context, but it’s good to have. It’s way more efficient to walk in the door knowing what someone thinks instead of deciphering it halfway through a conversation. Context is what I was struggling for when I met Melissa. Is she in video? Is she in web design? Is she in finance? If I had heard of her ever in life beforehand, I would have known these things by the time I physically met her and I would have had some intelligent questions/statements. :)

3 ) Wanting to ‘get to know someone’ before engaging them in “inspiring conversation”

I agree with this, entirely. E-Stalking is fantastic for understanding what someone’s passionate about ad how/if their mind works. It’s one thing to say you have a dating blog. However… What are you REALLY talking about? Are you original? Are you regurgitating stuff you see in movies or read on other blogs? Is your material useful to ANYBODY past a basic, surface level of dating idiocy, such as “you messed up, so buy her flowers”? Being able to read people’s material ahead of time saves you from wasting the time, energy and breath of starting a discussion that you quickly find out you’d like to end. :)

Another thing is that people involved in social media are more likely to post something to the net than bring it up IRL. I found out, for instance, that Melissa’s been to China. I would never have asked her about that, because, to me, “travel” falls under the category of small-talk. Besides… I’ve been to ChinaTOWN in NYC, DC, Philly, etc, but actual CHINA never enters my mind as far as a topic of conversation. Since people are more likely to post on the net that they went to China than to blurt it out randomly in an IRL social setting, e-stalking helps you to know who has stories you’d like to hear about places you never plan to go.

4 ) Attempting to form a fairly complete picture of you based on your online thoughtstream

Spot-On. This is one of the best parts of e-stalking! :D You can meet someone IRL so you know how it is to be around them and how they carry themselves and how they speak, smile and laugh… then you get to figure out on your own time and at your own pace what level of interaction you’d like to have with them, going forward. Of course, this works in both directions, haha. Your social media presence could enhance your relationship to someone or delete it entirely. :) Assuming that what you’re posting is a good representation of what you really think or feel, even deletion is a good thing. Social Media allows people to passively opt-out of socialization with someone, due to irreconcilable differences based on personality, activity or philosophy. If someone decides not to like you for some reason, they can carry on that relationship with themselves, and you don’t even have to be aware of it. :)

5 ) Giving the stalkee the respect of wanting to know more about them

This is definitely true. It takes a lot of time to read people’s blogs and watch their videos and read their forum comments and twitter posts and emails. Every minute you devote to someone else’s self-expression on the net is a form of respect, IMO. Then again, it could also be a form of your own personal entertainment, assuming you read blogs of people that you don’t respect yet find entertaining.

6 ) Respecting the time you’ve spent in putting information about yourself on the net &
7 ) Relieving them of redundantly explaining their life story

This was one of the things I really, REALLY enjoyed about starting my own site… as far as business and as far as pleasure. The first time social media hooked me up was when a company wanted me to bring them an editing demo reel, and I was able to point them to the URL to see samples of my work on their own computer screens and I got booked on the spot. I used to waste SOOOOOO much time redundantly telling people what I do. Now, I just point them to my site. My site URL is the same as my name. If you can’t remember my name, google “Bill”. That’s all I have to say. Also, I bring my iPod Nano with me with my video blog on it. I can show you what I do and you can read about the rest of it on the net. Lovely. :)

8 ) Wanting to have a meaningful interaction with the stalkee IRL

This is similar to (3), except once you already know the person. Bre moved from doing videos for Make Magazine to doing videos for Etsy. I learned about it via social media, so when I hung out with him the next time, I asked him about it. It was a much better conversation than the weather or something that we weren’t mutually interested in. It’s useful to have the option to gather this info ahead of time and increases the amount of quality conversation, accelerating people getting to know and appreciate each other.

I think I’ll add my e-stalking reasons in Part 2…

Related Posts

• E-Stalking [Part 2]
• E-Stalking [Part 3]
• Tech Stole Your Girlfriend!
• Online Dating Tactics
• re: Raymond Kristiansen’s “The Audience of Ten”