i'm a stalker baby. why don't you ip locate me. i'll admit it. i'm a stalker. not physically (i know popular conception suggests otherwise). just on the internet. in the big scheme of things, it's not so bad. everybody does it. admit to it. you stalk people. you've googled people to see if they could be found. yeah, i've probably googled you. incredible the things you can find out about people online. assuming they have a semi-original name. funny how stalking on the internet is totally socially accepted. but stalking in real life is a big no-no. actually, in real life, the fine line between chasing and stalking is really just a matter of the interest from the stalkee's perspective. does this definition apply for stalking cases online? are you only a stalker if the stalkee doesn't want you to be looking? because if you did want somebody to read you, wouldn't you refer to them as readers?



regardless of the name, i am addressing all stalkers, me included. by the way, never self address yourself in public, you'll look stupid. anyway my stalker brethren, what do we get out of stalking? are our lives that much better for it? flipping through page after page of scribble. getting all excited because "oh look, there's a picture!" you can read a normal web site, an informational one, and that is not stalking. that's just getting information or links. but when you read somebody's "journal" you are definitely peeking into their lives a little bit. and what do those peeks tell us?



they can tell us if you're interesting or retarded. at least that's what it tells me. after awhile, if you continue to stalk a particular person, you start to get a sense of them as a person. a very narrow and constricted view but sometimes when that's all you have, you shape their limited words and sentences into entire beings. you know what i'm saying? like i'll read someone and after a given amount of time, feel like i know them.



part of this phenomenon is that you're reading everything all at once. three entries complaining about the price of tomatoes over a week will make it seem like you're obsessive over tomato prices. but this not so. perhaps you are only complaining for those three times but written down in paper form and date stamped and archived, it seems like you've got nothing better to do than complain about tomatoes. sometimes i'm asked how much i'm really thinking about this crap that i throw up. generally the answer is, not that much at all. it comes to me, i blog it, and there it is. it's a little more complicated than that but not much more. in general the more bored i am the more i'm blogging. the more busy or exciting i'm being, less blogging. so really, if it sounds like my life is exciting via blog, it's actually not. crazy but true. most of the things i write about don't come pre-conceived or have much of an after life unless someone brings it up or it happens to fall into conversation and i'm willing to mention it to look stupid. "that's funny, just today i blogged about how the yak is really superior to the cow. what a coincidence!"



actually as much as i like reading other people's journals (who doesn't?), i don't write about personal stuff on this thing. one, it's boring. two, it's boring. three, who cares? a side of me would like to spontaneously write whatever comes to mind, whatever happens is what gets written down. but then you start to really put yourself out there. and that is not really necessary for me. i could write under a pseudonym and create codenames for people but really, that seems counterproductive. i would really like to see what people think of what i think of them or what i'm really thinking when nodding and smiling but i'm not quite there yet as a person. i'll wonder if the "real" thoughts that i'm internalizing is matching up to what i'm exposing externally. but in order to scratch that itch, it would require me to share. and sharing is not caring. despite what michael "jesus juice" jackson might have told you.



but i do like stalking those who share. because it's interesting. and i admire their courage. or i stalk in order to find some good writing or some great ideas. or i just stalk just to look at the pretty pictures. or to settle the million dollar question of "is this person cool?" sometimes you think somebody is so cool but when you actually meet them (a rare occurence) it's hard to into the conversation "so, on february second you mentioned that you had a bad day, what was that about?" there is a barrier between the online world and the real world. shocking but true.



there's also something positive to be said for just keeping the stalkee as a faceless entity. it allows your imagination to run wild about what kind of people they are. without having to deal with actual interaction and perhaps being disappointed that they aren't as interesting as they write. or you just have this overwhelming urge to say to them "ok, pretend you're writing me, go." and that might be insulting. i'd like to imagine that all the people i stalk are wonderful people who would be just as wonderful in real life as they are online. but does that happen? are some people just more interesting online? do they lose points when in flesh form? like their superpower is to become a mighty online presence? are they entirely useless outside of their element? ala aquaman?



reverse stalking. following the breadcrumbs. let's talk about it. below my blog (and many others) there is this nifty contraption called the sitemeter. with it you can get ip addresses of people, where they're coming in from, how they got to you, blah blah blah. it's very 1984-esque. with this simple device you can see how many people are visiting, how long they are staying, how often they are returning, all that neat stuff. with this information, it also allows you to (roughly) determine who is visiting. now, if you keep a careful watch of this traffic sometimes you will wonder "who is this stalking me?" and you will research it and think "hum, who do i know in saskatchewan?" the answers are hardly ever conclusive. but answers rarely are.