That's What She Said

BY BRITTANY DeVRIES

I was on Facebook last night, that student-turned-global Web site craze that, just last week, was so unfashionably redesigned. It has so many spam –looking hyperlinks that I couldn’t even find the people’s photographs. Not that I was trying to snoop through photos that had nothing to do with me.

Okay, so I’m lying. I spent 35 minutes staring with dried pupils at uploaded shots of people I hardly knew, of people drinking beer after beer and losing clothes.

I stared at my ex-boyfriend having fun without me, and the pretty girl with a pair of boots I didn’t own yet, and I sneered.  I laughed at inside jokes I had nothing to do with. A tear came to my eye when so-and-so’s status revealed the little Facebook broken heart. I even found someone’s family gathering and smiled at the family resemblance between grandfather and grandson.

I don’t think I know the grandson, but we are, and it’s official, “Facebook friends.”

I stalk. So do you. When I first got to college, I was ashamed of my actions and kept them to myself.

Yet, after many conversations over several years with loving friends that are stalkers too, I have embraced my creepiness as a healthy habit. Whether through online sites like Myspace and Facebook, or through any other facet of life, it is both normal and natural to be curious, nosy, and even perhaps obsessive of those we love and hate.
Weird? No. After a couple drunk drive-throughs at Route 1’s Taco Bell, a few break-out-into-song situations with B101.5 at the Nest (By the way, is that not your favorite station now?), a few bike-cop escapes, a 3 a.m. run to Walmart, and a couple rides on the Fred Bus, strange ways turn into a means of survival in this tiny town.
If you haven’t mastered the art of stalking, creeping, and being strange, it’s about time you did. It is time to put aside your studies, time to lose the “I’m just standing and drinking a beer like a normal person,” or the “I never stop smiling, ever” pose in every Facebook picture (because I’ve seen you do that). It’s time to stop pretending you didn’t trip while walking up the stairs of Combs, and jump on the creeper bandwagon.

Really, we’re all a bunch of overgrown children who are constantly  trying to not be weird just long enough to earn a degree, a resume, and a job.

I know, the new Facebook is hard to cope with. I’m still learning, and much against my will. But we will adapt.
I mean, you do log on every two hours.