Is This Stalking Yet?

Six months or so ago I quit the internet. Technically I just left Facebook and Twitter but that constitutes 90% the internet so it’s the same thing to me. As an intensely competitive person I was spending too much time trying to figure out whether my life tallied up to that of my old school friends. In my head lived a constantly updated bar graph where points were earned and lost according to how well you were doing in your work, love, and social life. Every time I logged on it felt like the game was bogging me down with pluses for beautiful children and minuses for going to All Bar One after work. Turning on my computer was a depressing chore.

Worse than the game was my secret shame: stalking boys. Everyone’s looked someone up once or twice. You might have even googled someone’s name to see if they were a registered paedo or really into WoW. That’s all fair game. Once I start though I can’t stop. It’s not just boys: once I was searching for Jean Varon dresses on ebay and found a girl who looked familiar. After 30 minutes of searching I found out she was the child of a Tatler regular and where she worked. See? My stalking is inclusive! Everyone can get involved! It’s a multi-cultural multi-denominational multi-sexual kind of thing!

Upon my shameful return to Facebook I vowed that I would not make the same mistakes again. No more late nights figuring out our mutal friends or squinting through 10 pages of party pictures, none. But like an alcoholic who reckons they can have that one glass of champagne and still be fine, I slipped. During a bout of insomnia I found myself searching for my first ever boyfriend. Then random boys I’d crushed out over the years. Then someone who was a friend of an ex’s friend. Then someone who had looked hot in a photo of said ex’s friend’s friend. I developed e-crushes on them and started checking their profile when I was bored at work. Seeing what they were up to, whether we were going to any of the same events, that sort of thing. I tried to guess if they were single by how close girls stood to them. People I had never met became real-er than real. My own friends barely seemed as close as these boys with Flickrs, Twitters, Tumblrs, Last.fm’s, and Facebook pages constantly pinging the world with their every move. It didn’t feel wrong, not at all. Not even a tiny bit.

And then I would see them in the street and suddenly it was back to square one. They were still a pretty boy who didn’t know me and I was a pretty mental girl who knew what they ate for lunch. All the information gathering I’d done was useless because I couldn’t admit to it. What could I say that wouldn’t be creepy? “So, you like Chris Ware? Me too!” or “Did you see HEALTH play the other day? I missed them.” For fuckssake it freaks me out when my friends remember what I put on Twitter, never mind strangers.

The more I checked-in on these boys the quicker my crush wilted: the more irritating they seemed and like a real relationship it faded and died before it had time to be anything good at all. After 2 months back on Facebook I got bored and started hunting for Jean Varon dresses anew. Everything was rosy. I felt like a normal non-psychotic person again and then I met my kryptonite: the boy who cannot be found. The most recent photo I can find of him is from 2 years ago. No matter what clever scheme I hit on I can’t find him; after 2007 he just disappears. My competetive nature has me combing my brain, and Facebook, for clues, pictures he might be in, places he might have been, and nothing nothing nothing.

Though it burns so bad to even consider admitting defeat I think I am going to have to. And next time I see him I’ve promised myself I’ll say hello and ask if he wants to talk about Uncanny X-Men.

Photos by Richard Kern and Marija Strajnic.