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The Stalking Network
Many times, a little friendly snooping around on Facebook can turn into an obsession and unleash the stalker in us. We talk to a few who have preyed - and have been preyed upon
- PUBLISHED: Fri 7 Jun 2013, 12:09 PM UPDATED: Thu 1 Aug 2024, 3:06 PM
On Facebook - depending on how much time you've spent looking around and messing on it - you might have noticed 'Close Friends' on the left-hand colu-mn of the homepage. It gives you the option to select 'Best friends you want to see more of on Facebook'.
Right. If you ask us, there, that's Facebook just providing you with a readymade option to stalk people more thoroughly, as if the social network's mere existence wasn't enough.
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Whether you like it or not, or want to admit it or not, we have all 'stalked' others on the world's most popular social networking site. Now, the exact nature of that stalking may differ: you may just like to label it “harmlessly checking them out; you know, just seeing what they're up to these days…” and this may range from checking out an ex-classmate from school, an old flame, your boss's wife or a hated enemy you'll speak to over your dead body - but on Facebook, you monitor their every check-in and update, thanks to their lousy privacy settings, hell yeah!
So what is Facebook stalking, exactly? Urban Dictionary, a website that offers non-literal, fun and pop culture-led definitions of anything, says you're a stalker if you “click on someone's profile more than once a day, even if they haven't messaged or tagged you in a photo”, “secretly look up people… go through albums, comments and personal information to piece together a picture of this person”, “have dragged and dropped more than 3 FB photos (not from your own profile)”, and even “actually go to a place mentioned on someone's page in the hope of seeing them in real life… creepy!”
Don't we all know people (besides ourselves, that is) who've expressed interest of more-than-a-passing-curiosity variety on Facebook? The friend who makes you open and view so-and-so's profile on your account, because that person has blocked your friend; the acquaintance from your past who chooses to follow your updates, rather than send you a friend request (the question as to why they even want to know what you're up to currently, when they weren't even that close to you, is another topic entirely)?
Many of us also have a list of people blocked from viewing our accounts - exes, old classmates or colleagues (both ex- and current) -we don't particularly care for; that irritating person you met at a party or social or work event a grand total of one time, and promptly adds you on FB; even parents and family members, likely, because we don't want them privy to what we're up to when not playing goody-two-shoes at home.
Here are a few tales of Facebook stalking we unearthed here in the UAE, ranging from the silly to the sordid.
The Annoying Ex-Classmate
While Paula Dasgupta says she “wasn't exactly stalked”, an old classmate did show more than a healthy interest in her via Facebook. She wasn't particularly bothered either. “The solution was simple; I just cut him off,” Paula says nonchalantly. “By simply not responding to him.”
The guy was her classmate from university, and after finding her on FB, he would pop up with annoying regularity on chat. She let us take a peek at a few of the chats, and you easily get the drift. He leaves endless hi's and hellos, even when she doesn't bother to res-pond, comments about how close he feels to her (they are continents apart, and were hardly great friends at university) and expressing his annoyance that her work schedule was “keeping her away” from him.
In the end, Paula just decided that he wasn't worth keeping in touch with, and blocked him.
The Spousal Stalker
Jatin and Sneha* are a young couple married for six years, parents of a cute little two-year-old. An agreement they made earlier on, during their courtship days, was that they would know each other's Facebook and email passwords. Where they differ is how they both make use of the social network.
Jatin, for one, is insouciant about his Facebook activities. “Yes, I do check out other women's profiles, on occasion. If anyone says they don't look at profiles of the opposite sex, they're lying. That doesn't mean I try to get in touch with or flirt with them. It's just curiosity, esp-ecially when it comes to ex-girlfriends; you do want to see what they look like now and who they've ended up with,” says Jatin. Notably, he adds that he's now forgotten his wife's password, but trusts her completely, and isn't exactly bothered about her online activities.
Sneha, on the other hand, is more than a little interested… and worried. “I do log into Jatin's account often, and go through his inbox and chat sessions,” she reveals. Often, what she has disco-vered has displeased her too. “While I haven't caught him explicitly cheating or doing things behind my back, I have seen extended or flirtatious chats with other women, and pulled him up. It is definitely a good thing that I have his password,” Sneha explains.
The online version of every marriage these days? We can't quite say.
The Self-Confessed Stalker
Our most candid account came from Arlene*. “Of course, I stalk people on Facebook. Who do I stalk? Mostly people I went to school with, to see where they've ended up now; and ex-crushes and ex-boyfriends, to see if they're married,” she says.
So why not just add your ex-classmates to your friends list? “Because I never shared a real rapport or was friends with them, but there's always that curiosity… you know, if they've matched up to what they were like in school. I'll admit it's a pleasure to see it when they haven't. There were these girls who were toppers in school, and now they're just trophy wives with kids. It just makes me feel a little better, that I may have not been all that back then, but I'm doing pretty well for myself in my career now. I didn't end up like them, just spending money, shopping, and looking after babies,” she states.
Then there's the gossip factor. “You know how word gets around, based on someone's online activity. When I get together with my best friends, there's always talk about 'Oh, did you see so-and-so is married now, and this one has kids now, and that one is travelling to exotic places, and so on'.”
Arlene also found out, on Facebook, that her ex-boyfriend got married - to the girl he cheated on her with. “Last I heard, the girl claimed to have broken up with him, but clearly not,” she says. She only got to know on viewing his profile, which had his wedding pictures. Was she hurt? “It was more strange, than anything else, to see he married the girl he was cheating on me with,” shrugs Arlene. “But I've moved on, and am beyond caring now.”
Bizarrely, she also knows people who've been stalked in real life, through Facebook. “This very pretty friend had the habit of logging in using Facebook's location check-in function. So this guy who had a crush on her would see her updates, and keep 'bumping into' her wherever she went. She figured out there was a pattern behind his sudden app-earances after a few times, and stopped checking in after that. It became a little creepy that he was following her everywhere she went. Later, she also blocked him,” says Arlene.
Arlene has had her fair share of stalkers too. “The harmless ones were a couple of girls from school, who I never really got along with. When I bumped into them somewhere, they let slip a few things that they knew about me, which they could've known only from following my Facebook updates. So, people may pretend they don't give a s*** about you, but they actually do!
“The scary one was this guy I'd met on one of those chatrooms -back in the late 90s and early 00s when online chatrooms were big -who tracked me down on Facebook. When I rejected his friend requests and then told him directly that I wasn't interested in keeping in touch, he got all nasty and sent me abusive messages, even creating multiple Facebook profiles - seven, in total -to stalk me. I blocked all of them,” she says.
The Stalking Affair
Savita* has one of the more disturbing stalking accounts to narrate, involving marital relations and Facebook. A couple of years ago, two of her friends got married to each other, and the husband almost immediately embarked on an affair with another woman. The interesting part? The husband, wife and the other woman had worked together in the same company years ago, and all three were now part of the same social set.
Soon, the husband began making solo trips back to India, which the wife suspected was to meet up with his lover. But she had no way of tracking the other woman online anymore, as the latter had blocked her on Facebook. Desperate, she turned to Savita for help.
“I was uncomfortable doing it, but couldn't say no to my friend. For three months, I snooped on the other woman using my husband's Facebook account (as she was on his friends' list), and there she was making open declarations of love for this guy, a married man, and even putting up status updates and posts about celebrating her birthday with him,” says Savita. After three months, she confessed to her husband about using his Facebook account, and he put a stop to it.
What happened of her friends and the other woman? The couple remains married, while the husband continues to see the other woman on the side!
“Why does my friend choose to remain with this man who openly cheats on her? I don't know,” says Savita. “That's a question no amount of Facebook stalking can answer.”
The Obsessive Ex
Samantha's* is a story oft-heard, of first love and the heartbreak that follows, when your childhood sweetheart and the pedestal you put them on turns out to be a rocky foundation for love.
They had known each other for years, and it seemed inevitable they would marry, when he moved to another country to work and seemed to change overnight. “Suddenly, I wasn't good enough for him anymore: he became demanding and controlling and insisted I change everything about myself for him,” rec-alls Samantha.
Things soon got ugly and they broke up, but that didn't stop Samantha from keeping track of his online activities. “I had his email password, and knew he was chatting up a number of girls,” she says. Hurt by his actions before their break-up, but also unable to rid herself of her obsession with him, she created a fake Facebook account, with a female profile, and sent him a friend request. He accepted, of course, and went on to chat up the new 'girl' and criticise his ex - Samantha - to her, which hurt her all the more.
Today, she admits it wasn't exactly the right or the bright thing to do. But well, that's how we fare in love and war. Savita's own story about her ex mirrors Samantha's, with a different angle though. “My ex-boyfriend was a famous and popular radio jockey, and after we split up, I continued to look him up online. A year after we broke up, I even made a Facebook fan page for him - using a fake profile, not my own. I guess I was probably more in love with the famous RJ, than the man himself,” she smiles.
So why do we stalk?
A resounding chorus we heard among all the subjects spoken to is that everyone stalks others on Facebook, whether or not they admit to it. We might stalk for different reasons, and to different degrees, but we do, oh yes we do. Facebook is the ideal platform for all sorts of stalking -be it induced by curiosity, jealousy, envy or just plain idleness.
People also stalk because it's so easy to, in the first place. “Facebook's privacy settings are bull****, because they constantly keep changing them, and you don't know what on your profile is private or public anymore. Initially, I was under the impression that my full profile is not viewable to the public, but then I saw that my Wall and Timeline photos were all public, though my settings are private,” complains Arlene.
“And if someone sends you a friend request and you don't accept it, they automatically end up following your public updates. So, thanks to FB constantly changing their 'privacy settings', not only is it easy to stalk, it is easier to be stalked in return.”
Face it, our lives have never been the same since young Mark Zuckerberg decided to write code in his Harvard dorm room. What's next? Facebook is soon coming up with Graph Search, which will enable you to sort through existing friends and search for others using their interests listed, places and even photos! Apparently, this new search function even prominently uses profile pictures in the results, blowing them up much bigger than the size it is on your actual profile. We can see just where this is going…
Also, here's an insightful pointer to check your own 'stalking' habits from Facebook. Go to your own profile page, click on the 'Activity Log' button, click 'More' on the left-hand column, and click the 'Search' option.
We guarantee, you will be shaken, if not stalked… er, shocked.
*Names have been changed to protect privacy.
Stalkers' Syndicate
How common is Facebook stalking? More than you know! A study conducted at the University of Western Ontario revealed that an astounding 88 per cent of those who had been in relationships that ended, track their exes on the site.
In one bizarre case of stalking in 2012, Cheryl Nelson, a 52-year-old woman from Grand Rapids, Michigan, created fake profiles under her ex-boyfriend's name, and pretended to be stalked and harassed by him and his new girlfriend! She even filed criminal complaints against them, but was caught out during the investigation that followed.
Facebook can, umm… even harm your health. A November 2010 edition of British medical journal Lancet features the account of an 18-year-old asthma patient who logged on to Facebook, only to discover his ex- girlfriend had become Facebook friends with several other men. “The sight of this seemed to induce dyspnoea (laboured or extremely difficult breathing), which happened repeatedly on the patient accessing her profile,” the doctors wrote. When the patient stayed off Facebook, with a little help from his psychiatrist, his asthma attacks ceased.
marypaulose@khaleejtimes.com