“Lurking” traditionally summons an image of a masked man in a trenchcoat, spying on his prey in the shadows. Frightening. However, the new definition is far less threatening- picture a teenage girl, armed with the lovely irrationality and over-analyzation that comes with being a teenager, holding a device that contains a full profile of information on her target.
On second thought, perhaps the new definition is far more threatening.
My intention isn’t to come off as superior. Before I go any further, I have to confess my own lurking atrocities.
- Finding savvy, New York City IT girls and scrolling through their Instagram all the way back to their high school years to see if they were lame in high school (It’s as a way of reassuring myself I could be like them some day). However, sometimes it backfires. The other day I spent forty minutes on one of these quests, only to find out the girl was just as beautiful and cool her sophomore year of high school, a tragic fact that gave me the urge to eat an entire box of Thin Mints.
- In fourth grade, I was a crazed Glee fan. I would spend hours online, researching fun facts about the actors on the show. The exciting culmination of my extensive research? I found one of the lead actresses on Skype. I wanted to message her, assuming she would be thrilled (who wouldn’t want a 9 year old to contact them on a personal account they created to avoid crazed fans?) but my mom gently suggested Lea may be creeped out. Obviously, I was crushed.
- Regularly checking the Twitter page of somebody who I fundamentally dislike. Why? I literally don’t know. It’s not that there is one particular person I stalk. Whoever is bothering me at that point in time is the person whose Twitter I chose to scrutinize.
This darker side of my lurking repulsed me, because I like to consider myself a generally positive person. However at night, by the glow of my iPhone, I transformed into a horrifying creature: The Lurker.
A small comfort to me was knowing that I was not alone in this concerning behavior. After interviewing a collection of teenagers, I found that many people partake in “checking-up” on people they dislike.
“When people block me I find someone that is mutual friends with them still and ask them to log in so I can stalk and a lot of people who let me log in let me just keep their info because they know that the only reason I would go onto their account is to lurk. Literally no one is safe because you could completely block me on everything and within seconds I know your latest post and every post from the point you blocked me up to the current stuff. Not too proud of that but it’s fine.”
-Anonymous Female, Age 16
Analyzing why I was lurking people that I did not like forced me to make a difficult realization: I may not like the person I was lurking, but I certainly did care.
The unfortunate fact is nobody stalks a human being they do not care about. That’s just Stalking 101.
It seems that lurking stems from two basic causes: interest in the subject, or sheer boredom.
Romantic Interest:
The heart wants what it wants. And, when you are a teenage girl with a crush, what your heart wants is more information on the person you have set your sights on. Most lurking stories are based around possible romantic interests or romantic interests gone sour.
“There was a cute player on the opposing basketball team so I went on MaxPreps, used his number to find his name, and used that to find and follow his insta. I learned he had a girlfriend but he still followed back.”
–Anonymous Female, age 17
*note: MaxPreps is a website for high school sports.
“I really only knew my boy’s (not quite my boy yet, but soon) first and last name, and knew he was from New Jersey…but I was able to figure out his parents’ names, his brother and sister’s names, his address, what his dad does for a living, as well as any social media associated with him since he has no social media himself (says it’s overrated). But it was my hardest lurking attempt ever.”
-Anonymous Female, age 18
“One time I had a crush on this boy and I was lurking hard like 2010 lurking and I found his old Youtube account that was linked to his parents’ Facebook. Next thing I knew, I knew his address, entire family, parents occupations, and more. I ended up watching an old 80’s video of his parents getting married. How cute.”
-Anonymous Female, age 17
Lurking out of romantic interest can take place even after the relationship, or flirtationship, or talking has gone sour.
Curiosity Killed the Cat
“Sometimes I lurk and I get jealous and upset, then sometimes I’m psycho and I’ll know someone’s follower count (boys for example) and I’ll see if it went up and if it’s a girl I’ll go and look them up on Twitter.”
-Anonymous Female, age 17
Memes are dedicated to the subject of lurking and consequently getting your feelings hurt.
In the pre-Twitter, pre-Instagram era, people did not have such extensive information available to them about their failed romantic pursuits. Now, however, people can essentially track who their ex is currently pursuing, as the signs of a blossoming romance are prevalent on social media.
It is an incredibly common occurrence for someone to be informed about who their ex has moved on to, and for them to respond with an aloof, “Yeah, I kind of figured.”
Make no mistake, the reason the person just happened to “figure” is not because they are incredibly intuitive, it is because they have been routinely combing through their ex’s social media.
But Satisfaction Brought It Back
The positive thing about lurking, however, is that it can yield an impressive amount of information. When you have no emotional investment in whatever scandal you are investigating, the searching for information can be fun rather than gut-wrenching. This is why, sometimes, the responsibility of “lurker” falls on a third party, as this tweet depicts.
Pure Boredom
“Sometimes when I’m lurking someone I get curious when I come to a new person they took a picture with and I click that person and lurk them. And then I find a picture with someone else that seems curious of the new person I’m lurking and lurk them. This cycle continues and soon I’m lurking a 10 year old opera singer who is from Canada. Lurking is some enlightening stuff.”
-Anonymous Female, age 17
“One time one of my friends didn’t believe in my lurking abilities, so I knew I had to prove myself. Within 5 minutes, I found his address, annual household income, cost of his home, and the birthplace of his parents. And the scary thing is that I didn’t even have to lurk very hard to find that information.”
-Anonymous Female, age 18
“I went through my cousin’s instagram found a picture of him and his fiance which she was tagged in so within 10 minutes I probably knew just as much about this girl as my cousin did.”
-Anonymous Female, age 15
It seems like, for the rest of our lives, both social media and annoying people will exist. Unless some sort of apocalyptic event wipes out both, which would be kind of bittersweet.
Anyway, assuming an apocalyptic event does not occur, and that social media and annoying people will be in my life forever, I have decided to find a way to get the dark side of my lurking habit under control. For now, my preventative measures include asking myself why I care about whoever I’m lurking on, and that seems to be working. But if anyone wants to start a support group, I’m open to that as well.
Tina is the Executive Social Media Director, and in charge of managing Hawk Headlines. She has spent three full semesters here, and is heavily involved with theater. Tina describes herself as a "pop culture aficionado".
