No dry toast: it's not stalking

 The other day as I browsed through Facebook, I realized that I went from looking at my friend's profile page to unintentionally stalking a guy named Karl. Karl is a single libertarian from Oregon who loves Bob Dylan, used books, nutella and "The Office." With only one friend in common, I considered the creepiness of my perusal through my newfound soul mate's photos. Then it hit me: I had in fact become a stage-two stalker. 

 Our generation is both blessed and cursed with the technological advances that make networking so effortless. For this reason, it may be difficult to distinguish when one has ascended from stalkerish to fullblown stalker. Thus, I have created a measurable system of identifying four stages of stalkerism. 

The stage two stalker is the victim of an overly diagnosed title. He's the unfortunate looking male who finds you attractive and winks from across the train. His wink wouldn't be abhorrently violating if he were David Beckham; but he's not and thus he's labeled a stalker. The stage-two stalker single handedly takes it upon himself to know your name, lunch schedule, phone number and place of residence. Through Google, Facebook, MySpace or common friends, he attains knowledge of your likes and dislikes while stealthily making your coincidental collisions seem unplanned. 

At stage three, the real problems begin. This stalker continues contact after you've asked him to leave you alone. Your inbox becomes bloated with his unread texts and BBMs. Along with texts he leaves voicemails, e-mails, Facebook messages, Skype calls, WebCT IMs and notes under your door that say, "I'm worried about you because you haven't responded to me." 

The stage-four stalker is a delusional lurker with an imaginary connection to this stalkee and a shrine of you in his dorm. He is the pathological anonymous follower whose presence makes you quicken your pace when heading home late at night. 

To be perfectly honest, I believe that having a certain degree of stalkerism is acceptable and even necessary in today's world. I'd be lying if I said that I'm not going to make an exquisite mixed CD from the compilation of musical artists I've gathered from Karl's Facebook favorites. And if it puts a smile on my face to pseudo-accidentally run into my crush at the Pit every Thursday, then stalking should be deemed a harmless pleasure. I'm not saying you should harass someone with love letters and pictures you've taken from a distance, but you shouldn't be judged for taking an hour out of your day to sift through the 2,000 tagged photos on said person's Facebook. Chances are if they have that many photos, they're narcissistic enough to want you to stalk them lightly.  

Consider it an exercising of your networking skills. Don't let the stigma attached to the word stalker stop you from getting a leg up on your soul mate's interests. Stalking is merely an intelligent way for a shy person to find love.