on the passive social media lurker
exposing the everyday private investigator
my friends know me as an excellent private investigator; yes, innocent little tasha with her silly little newsletter has gained a reputation for being a good stalker.
i’m obviously not talking about actual stalking like waiting in front of someone’s house and looking through their windows—nothing crazy or illegal like that (please don’t do that). i’m talking about social media stalking—the harmless kind that everybody is guilty of doing from time to time: lurking on people’s profiles, watching their colorful histories play out on disappearing stories and a three-by-whatever photo grid for all their favorite followers.
i’m so good at investigating that if you can give me the littlest kernel of clues, i can find you answers, as long as they are available online. who was that untagged mystery date in your ex’s cryptic photo? is it true that a mutual friend is hooking up with your high school crush? did the annoying colleague you used to hate on get laid off again? what was this couple’s relationship timeline, and did they marry just for the green card?
i’ll look through your ex’s instagram, go through their mom’s facebook, their sister’s linkedin, the askfm profile their best friend had in middle school, just to find a name, a date, a snippet of whatever the internet’s collective consciousness has compiled for the public eye.
whatever the situation, or the mystery, i’m here to dig for the tea, just for you ☕️
am i starting to sound scary? good. take comfort in knowing that someone else is doing this to you, even though it isn’t me this time, i swear!
when i was eleven years old, my family took a trip to the glorious island of maui, and, while on instagram, i saw my celebrity crush’s girlfriend post an ethereal view of a beach resort from their own island vacation. my detail-oriented, budding detective eyes picked up on the pool water sparkling around an erect fountain, ivory beach cabanas, grey cobblestone adorned by towering palm trees…
…before i realized, oh my god, we were staying in the same hotel.
that day, dear friends, was when i realized the power of social media.
for the curious: teary-eyed and snotty me did end up meeting my celebrity crush, and we did take a picture before the crush faded away into a whole lot of teen angst.
lives were quickly changed as more people were sucked into the social media vortex in the early 2010s. a tween-turning-teenager at the time, i started to use facebook, snapchat, and instagram as a contacts list, as a way to keep up with people i meet throughout my adolescent life.
and then, when duty calls—whether by a friend or self-inflicted curiosity—i wielded social media as a search engine, sniffing out the internet trails left behind by my prey, i.e. the beginnings of my budding detective talents.
this skill was surprisingly sharpened when i entered the workforce, when the higher-ups started requesting contact information for people they want to cold email for business development opportunities. if you think finding out your ex’s new beau is difficult, try finding emails of physicians in rural private practices. that’s the real test—one i’ve passed 127 times.
the mortifying truth
the most ironic part of all this is that i am a ghost on social media. i post occasionally, for the quarterly or biannual update to my loyal lurkers, but i (personally) don’t like people knowing about and then commenting on my life. i’m a pretty open to my friends in-person, but knowing that my life isn’t easily accessible to the rest of the world keeps me sane.
whenever i scroll through social media—an activity that feels so private to me—i’m aware that someone somewhere is checking up on me, or trying to, at least. and maybe because i am good at lurking, i am aware of and uncomfortable with how easy it is to lurk, so i make it difficult for other people to do the same to me.
yet, i inflict that same level of discomfort on somebody, even if they don’t know it. and as terrifying it is to talk about publicly, i know for a fact that i’m not the only person stuck in this toxic loop.
why do we lurk on social media? check up on ghosts from our pasts? care about people that have probably forgotten about us?
lurking on social media transports you into a different dimension; you click on linkedin to check on a frenemy-from-middle-school’s boyfriend, and suddenly, you’re on an instagram rabbit hole about cottage cheese, two hours have passed, and you’re still horizontal on the couch (may or may not be based a true story).
it’s so easy to find information these days; maybe that’s the problem. you torture yourself with it to quench a flicker of curiosity, or a tempting rage that we think will simmer down by laying eyes on a photograph. you open social media to feed your cravings, and in turn, social media distracts you from reality.
when you do find out what you want to know… the itch dulls, then an ensuing ache takes over. you still feel awful when you see friends out at a bar without you; still feel upset when you see someone you deem undeserving achieve something you want; still cringe when you see a new couple smear pda all over your feed…
we crave the excitement of knowing information we aren’t supposed to, the control, the confidence boost that the feeling of scratching an itch can offer from validating your life against another person’s.
maybe it’s jealousy, or anger, or a little bit of both. maybe it’s the comfort we feel when we engage in this behavior, shielded by the anonymity of a dark screen, the privacy of our homes. maybe this is the human condition in the internet age. in the age of globalization, of interconnectedness.
most people you meet are fleeting moments in your life, until the internet—and social media, by extension—changed the game. the internet is why “zillenials” exist as a gen-z subgroup. the internet is how zillenials like me grew to become excellent researchers. when we try to satiate whatever curiosities harbor our traumatized brains, sometimes we see things we aren’t ready for, or simply didn’t want to see. so when we are forced to deal with what we’ve learned, it ends up painful. sad, if anything.
let’s not numb pain with more pain
i’ve learned, in my years of social media lurking, that i am often left hollow after the craving settles. nowadays, when i find myself thinking toxic thoughts, thinking too deeply about past demons, i try to talk them out with trusted friends, or find other distractions: go on pinterest, write, read a book, get back to work.
often times, the urge goes away; or settles; or builds into a craving so strong it warrants a quick snoop before collapsing on itself. like you, i’m human, and i’m trying my best to be better everyday, even if i still slip up.
as the baby boomers like to say, ignorance is bliss, and sometimes bliss is all we need in this crazy ride of life. ✌️
thanks for stopping by,
<3 tasha
I enjoyed this, thank you. Only once-upon-a-time was I ever twenty-something, but a few of my characters today are. I'm a fiction writer. Your thoughts and concerns offer really valuable perspective.