Stalker Nerd??!

*A few years ago:

At the insistence of her only Pakistani friend, our Nerd grudgingly signs up to join Naseeb.com, an online social network very much like Friendster and MySpace, but geared to young Muslims, looking for the same things as everyone else: friends and activity partners/soulmmates/etc, etc. She doesn't immediately upload pics or thoroughly describe herself in the section labeled "about me." However, she goes on once or twice a week to read her friend's original writing (Naseeb has a journal feature where members can write about whatever they please).

One day, while trolling around the site, our Nerd stumbles across the profile of a person, who shall remain unnamed, who did her wrong a few weeks earlier (sure, he wasn't right for her and sure she wasn't really that into him to begin with but, oh, the mortification of being beat to the "you aren't right for me" and "I'm not so into you" email was…well, it was mortifying). So, she becomes slightly obsessed with said person's profile on the site and calls her colleagues over so that they too can see the mug of the person who has done our Nerd wrong (or right, depending on how you look at it). Over the next couple of (ahem, several) days, she carefully studies person's profile, reads person's journal entries and canvasses person's friend's profiles.

Not too long thereafter, our Nerd has dinner with her Pakistani friend and proceeds to tell him about person-who-wasn't-right-for-her's profile on Naseeb and her mild but shortlived obsession with it.

Pakistani friend sits across the table from our Nerd, butter knife frozen over roll. "But you're not a paying member," he states.

"Ah, duh. The day I pay for that shit," she laughs.

Friend puts down knife and then puts down roll. Placing his hands on table, he leans forward in his chair. "You do realize that each and every time you visited his profile, your profile popped up in his "Who is Viewing Your Profile?" window.

The Nerd finishes chewing her roll and then very calmly asks, "And when you say each and every time, surely you don't mean each and every time."

"Oh no," Friend says, still sitting back, his eyes circles of shock now. "I mean EACH and EVERY time. And your screenname…"

She looks at him, hovering somewhere between laughter and tears.

You see, her screenname on the site is SabilaK.

Our Nerd laughs. Friend laughs.

The following day, our Nerd chooses to "pay for that shit" and become an official member of that site (with ability to invisibly browse profiles…ahem).