By Sage Tippie
Remember that time you were 87 weeks deep into someone’s Instagram and you accidentally liked their post? Anxiety overwhelms you as you realize your mistake. You unlike the picture as fast as you can, unfollow, even block them, but it’s too late. The damage has been done. You spend the rest of the day worrying about whether they noticed the notification or not, and if they know you were lurking. The awkward eye contact made at school the next day confirms they know what you’ve done. It happens to us all.
We’ve all been there; don’t deny it. You’re a lurking creep, but you’re not alone. Once you’ve started you can’t stop, and before you know it, you’ve found your crush’s aunt’s cousin’s hairstylist’s boyfriend. Social media is truly an amazing commodity. I mean you can find so much about someone just by going through their entire profile page. You could have stopped at the first three, but what’s the fun in that?
You’re not weird though; it’s human nature. It’s natural to want to know everything about your crush, right? How else are you supposed to find out what he or she is like? Through conversation? As if. You can find out everything you need to know about someone from the comfort of your own couch. It’s just one of the many advantages of living in the modern world.
Plus if someone posts something on the internet, he or she is he or she is basically asking people to find out every little detail of his or her life. Why else would someone have an Instagram page? Twitter allows you find out all the thoughts inside someone’s head, like her favorite things, and his pet peeves. It’s the perfect site to find out some conversation starters with just about anyone you’ve been wanting to talk to. Snapchat is basically useless because everything disappears after twenty-four hours, unless you screenshot. But if you do that, it is blatantly revealed, and we can’t have people thinking you’re like obsessed with them or something, even if you are.
There is really nothing to be ashamed of about lurking. There’s no reason to fear that it might get back to Jimmy that you liked his great aunt’s picture, right? I know he does it, too. We’re all ashamed of our guilty pleasures, but I say, let your creep flag fly. So here’s to the social media stalkers and the twitter lurkers because even if you don’t want to admit it, we’ve all liked a picture that we didn’t intend to like.
