Look Who’s Stalking Now

I met a girl at a party the other night and couldn’t get her out of my head. The thought of her consumed me, so naturally the next day I began my quest to meet her again. There was a slight problem, however: I had no idea what her name was. She introduced herself to me at the party, but I am terrible at remembering names. When presented with a scenario in which introductions are to be exchanged, I concentrate so much on not screwing up my own introduction that I completely block out what the other person is saying. All I can remember from our brief interaction was her saying “Hi, I’m so-and-so, nice to meet you.” To which I slickly responded, “I’m fine, thanks. How are you?” Our conversation skyrocketed from there, with me telling her that she had some nice shoelaces. I also vaguely remember her mentioning that she enjoyed traveling.

So the next day I began my quest to find her with three extremely helpful pieces of information: a) she’s a Harvard student, b) she likes to travel, and c) she’s female. Ordinarily, with so little to go on, my efforts would have been nothing more than an exercise in futility. But I had an ace up my sleeve, Facebook.com. Lets face it: the best part of Facebook is that you can both keep track of all your friends and also meet new people without ever actually having to talk to anyone—it’s a ready-made social network for the anti-social, a way to keep in touch for the lazy. Why do you think email, text messaging, and AOL Instant Messenger have become so popular? We care about people, but if we have a choice between verbal and nonverbal communication with them, nonverbal wins.

So I “Facebooked” the girl. After logging onto Facebook.com, I entered “Harvard, traveling, girl” into the search engine. 108 profiles appeared. But while scanning the pictures, hoping that her Facebook photo would bear at least a passing resemblance to her actual appearance (many times a vain hope), it occurred to me that there are really only two types of female Facebook profile pictures. First is the girl whose picture is a “group shot” of her with her girlfriends; she hopes to impress guys by advertising her popularity, but does not realize that this tactic usually backfires because the guy gets distracted by one of her attractive friends. Then there is the girl who posts what she believes is the “best” picture of herself, far more often than not clearly cropped from a “group shot.” The picture is centered on her but is surrounded by the cut-off faces of her friends or a stray arm around her that does not have an apparent owner. After exhaustive examination of all 108 photos, I found her in a “group shot”—but being the guy I am, I wasn’t distracted for a second by her friends.

I now knew her name, which was a good first step, but knew that I needed more. After all, you can’t date, fall in love with, and marry a girl without at least knowing her interests and hometown (I’ve learned this the hard way). This posed a challenge, though, because her profile was cryptically sparse. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) for her, I’ve always enjoyed the thrill of the chase.

Though her profile did not reveal where she lived, finding out proved to be child’s play for an experienced Internet stalker such as myself because she had posted her cell phone number. I entered her area code at whitepages.com and was immediately barraged with pop-up ads for businesses in the Chicago area—problem solved. She also didn’t post her high school, but after inspecting her photo albums, I had a good sense. The high frequency of pastel Polo shirts, ribbon belts, and guys with “popped” collars clearly indicated that, despite hailing from Illinois, she had attended a New England prep school. Her profile also listed her AIM screen name, which I quickly added to my Buddy List under the “Girls I Don’t Know Yet” group, immediately checking her away which read, “R.I.P Whiskers :(.” Translation: “my pet rodent died, I am frowning.” How endearing.

Her profile went on to mention that her house at Harvard was in the Quad. This was disconcerting to me as I am not a fan of long-distance relationships, but with the time I had already invested in our relationship, I didn’t think it was a deal-breaker. Finally, I bit the bullet: I Facebook “poked” her (which, in my opinion, is one of the most romantic things a young college guy can do for a girl.)

Finally having gleaned enough information to make a real move on this girl (e.g. initiate face-to-face contact), I checked her class schedule (also posted on Facebook), and planned a convenient time and place to “accidentally” bump into her—outside the Science Center at about 11:00 a.m. So if you see a guy creeping around the Science Center wearing a pink Polo shirt with a Chicago Cubs cap and holding a Hallmark “I’m sorry about your dead pet rodent” card, wish me luck, but please, don’t turn me in to the police.



Eric A. Kester ’08 is an anthropology concentrator in Winthrop House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.