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Alright, let’s get right to the point.
Facebook stalking.
We all do it. Don’t deny it. I’m a a Facebook stalker, you’re a Facebook stalker, we’re all Facebook stalkers! Man, that felt good.
We creep through our old boyfriends’ pages, and we probably know more about their new girlfriends than we’d like to admit. But the big question is, WHY do we do this? And WHAT DID WE EVER DO without facebook?
I imagine myself as a young woman in oh, say, the Victorian era, intercepting my ex’s calling cards and bribing his hand servants into telling me who his ladies in waiting are…
I’m just kidding. I don’t know jack shit about history, nor am I THAT creepy. It’s just that Facebook makes it SOOO easy!
I’ve had mixed reactions when talking about Facebook-stalking with other people. Some people have said “it’s not stalking if you’re FRIENDS on FB! That makes it okay!” These people have a point, it IS ok if you’re friends, right? It’s not like you add someone and say “we can be friends, but if you look at my page more than once there will be HELL TO PAY!” I’ve also had people say if you go through photos more than once, it starts getting creepy. On that note, I once dated a guy who found my creepiness and ability to find his ex’s on facebook (knowing only a first name) adorable and impressive.
So let’s get down to the nitty gritty. Why do we do this? Some guys we want out of our lives after a break up. We tell them to never talk to us again. We don’t respond to calls, texts, emails, but sooner or later, you’re sitting at your computer and find yourself at their Facebook page. I imagine that I’m not the only person who has had this little conversation with themselves:
“Oh look at that. Hey BOY, nice looking FB page”
“What is this? ‘In a relationship with GIRL’? let’s get a look at this gal (ho-bag, slut, ya know, whatever word you say to yourself)”
“Damnit! She’s prettier than me!”
Or is it just me who has had this conversation with herself? I have zero scientific evidence to back this up, but I often wonder if this is what’s at the core of facebook stalking/creeping/peeping-tom-ing. We want to see if these other poeple are doing as well/better than we are. Depending on the nature of the separation, your feelings towards their well-being differ quite a bit. Do people sometimes stalk for more reasons than just to “see how someone is doing”, or is it often in hopes of making them feel better about themselvs? Is the new girl prettier than me? Smarter? Are they doing things that are more fun than what we did?
MySinchew.com recently posted an article asking these same sorts of questions. To be honest, some of the results did make me feel better about my own creeping.
Take T. Toh (most first names have been withheld on request), for example. For a month after breaking up with her boyfriend in February, the lovelorn 21-year-old logged on to Facebook for hours every day, tracking him via the updates he posted.
“I really wanted to see what he was doing, who he was hanging out with and find out why he didn’t want to meet me,” says the Singapore Institute of Management student.
But eventually, “it hurt too much”, she says. “So I checked his Facebook profile only when pictures of him with girls popped up.”
I don’t think we need to get into how unhealthy this can become. It can be a bit obsessive and make it hard to move on. The article even discusses one man who left a tab open on his browser specifically devoted to stalking his ex-girlfriend’s facebook page. But when it comes to harmless creeping, what are your confessions? Is there anyone out there who can honestly say they NEVER peep at their ex’s page once in a while? And if there are, you should write a self-help book. You’d make millions.
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Facebook can be a scarey place. Within one day of my joining facebook my Crazy Kidnapping Stalking ex had found me and bombarded me with obscene messages and threats to come and ‘get me’, 5 or so years after I last saw him. And I have an alias on facebook for that reason, and to control who I am friends with. Luckily he was able to be blocked.
So then Avoident Personality Disorder Ex figured out how to get into my facebook and deleted about 100 friends of mine, wrote a whole bunch of nasty emails and accused me of getting married so he would find out about it and get upset. Then he locked me out of my own facebook AND email account.
So please, feel free to look at my pictures, thats not really a big issue with me!
It’s probably sad I was facebook stalking in another tab while reading this article.
same here.
I may have just logged off facebook as well. Maybe. >.>
I friend of mine got dumped by her boyfriend but not blocked from his friend list. So she started stalking him on every community known to man. When a girl posted a message on his Facebook wall she would look her up on Myspace or StudiVZ or both. And if that wasn’t enough she checked the girl’s photo albums just in case… Not very healthy. Fortunately my friend realized that and stopped after six months of hardcore virtual stalking. She deleted all her own profiles and took time out from the internet.
Another six months later they got back together and he told her – who would have thought? – that he’d follwed her around the internet aswell. They blocked each other from then on and led a healthy and sane relationship. Well as healthy and sane as it can get between those two.
yeahhh…i still stalk my ex’s page sometimes (we’re still on a friendly basis)…and i can’t tell you how good it makes me feel that his new gf is, shall we say, FUGLY. I’m not a pest or anything, I don’t obsessively comment or post on anybody’s wall, but yeah…i’ve had that internal convo you described many times.
Hello, my name is Shaina, and I’m a FB addict.
I don’t really have any ex’s to stalk because I had one date (just a movie, we went dutch) before I met my husband and I don’t even know his surname. I will however admit I got a certain satisfaction when I went through the profiles of my HS class and found that my old crush is now bald with a pot belly.
Same here. My fiance was my first boyfriend. But I stalk other people’s exes for them and I I sometimes stalk his ex girlfriend.
The same happened to me! It’s mean to say it but it made my day. It’s just natural curiosity
Oh god, yes I do it as well, just to get the satisfaction that they are so much worse off without me ;)
I’ve checked out ex’s pages but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten crazy about it. I did have one guy start seriously fb stalking me after I broke things off with him. He would either repost, comment on, or message me about every single thing I posted. He even started sending me these really uncomfortable, slightly pathetic video messages begging me to take him back. I told him flat out to stop because he was getting creepy but he just ignored me. I was on the verge of blocking him, when he showed up at my apartment with food and heat packs because he read my status update saying I had a sore back (he definitely got blocked after that). I’m sure in his head it was a really sweet gesture, but holy shit. Looking at pictures is harmless, I think it only becomes a real problem when you let yourself get deluded into thinking the facebook access makes you closer to the person than you actually are.
I don’t have a facebook. I don’t have a myspace. I don’t have a twitter, a livejournal, a xanga, or whatever the hell else there is. I don’t do that social networking junk.
Therefore, I can safely say I have never “facebook stalked” anyone.
I mean, I’ve looked at pictures o ex boyfriends and guys I had crushes on, and even clicked on girls they knew’s profiles (actually, that’s mainly with my current boyfriend, and she constantly tries to get into contact with him…they used to have a thing) just to see pictures…..but even when I was feeling snoopy, I’d visit a profile once, glance at some pictures and interests, and then go back to my home page.
Hello, my name is Mireia, and I am a professional facebook stalker. Stupidly good at it. And proud.
ooh dear i was guilty of this…i deleted my ex after he finished with me thinking it would make things easier..but i practically forced my best friends password out of her so i could check it through hers! crazy, then eventually when he added me again it wasnt so bad anymore..i also checked facebooks of any girls he was pictured with or commenting on.. im so glad im no longer in that dark place ! ha
i dont check my ex boyfriend’s fb pages. but thats cause i have a handsome, loving and amazing new boyfriend!
thats the answer, you dont want to be obssesed…so move on. and there’s no better way to move on that by loving someone else.
(yet it only works if the new bf is actually worth it and loves you, if not then its just a downward spiral to size 18…)
Hey…Im guilty of myspace and facebook stalking. I stalk my ex’s girlfriend…well now ex girlfriend and Ive been doing this for 3 yrs and cant seem to stop. Im obsessed…I think, physically Im better looking but for some reason I think she has a better life and mind set than me? I dont know what it is really but I know its sick of me to obsess over this girl I dont know. Ive even gone so far to create a fake FB account to friend her just so I could see her page and pictures. I also made a fake aim s/n so I could contact her via AIM. She worked at better companies than me and always looks like she has a good set of friends around her and having a good time…all of this I gather from one picture…and I know it sound ridiculous but why do I continue to beat myself up and obsess…I need to get a life cos this is bad!
OMG…I Facebook Stalk my ex all the time and I even stalk people on his friend’s list-which he just made private.
I am worried I might be showing up as a “suggested friend” on some of the profiles I regularly check out….does anyone know if that could happen?
Can they find out I am stalking them?