So, a few weeks ago, I received an email from some random dude on some random social networking site (Friendster, Naseeb, Orkut). I try to adhere to a no-reply policy to randomness on such sites for the sake of proving the point that I only joined said sites to reconnect with old friends, friends of friends and friends already made before I adopted this policy (this is, of course, barring displays of extraordinary writing skills or other scholarly talents by random emailer).
In any case, this random dude emailed me, saying that he'd seen me working out at my gym. A couple of weeks prior to that another random guy emailed me mentioning that he sometimes sees me on the train during my morning commute. Such emails make me nervous for many (hopefully apparent) reasons. I'm not saying that I have stalkers (that would be presumptous of me) or anything but the thought of cyberworld intersecting with real world without my knowledge leaves me feeling not so super.
Oy.
11 comments:
Creepy. How do they find out your name?
and suddenly the enrollment numbers for the creative writing class (for males 17-37) shoot up by 400% in the NJ/NY region
omigosh, you are the most popular girlster ever! hee!
Erin & Passion: yah, I figure the weirdo at the gym overheard someone talking to me or something but I still can't figure out the commuter dude. He made it sound like it was a serendipitous sighting; like he saw my profile on the networking site and just happened to see me the following day.
Serendipity, my ass!
But Shirley, dearest, I thought you were the most popular girlster ever!
I read your blog. You have a link to your frienster account. If I lived in NJ or the tri state area as you put it, I'd most probably recognise you.
Nevertheless, it's all rather freaky
of course, it doesn't help that you're writing about your realworld encounters with cyberworld people on a cyberblog read by realpeople that probably only know you via your cyberlife and assume that the realyou is like the cyberyou and can't talk to you in realtime so they resort to sending you a cybermail about a reallife brush they had with the cybernerd.
AinA: You just gave me a headache. Thanks.
Terra: Yes. Yes it is.
Creepy, semi-anonymous, somewhat stalkerish e-mails or strangers yelling, "Hey, you're the Nerd!" in public places?
Yeah, I'd kinda prefer the latter.
Chris, I concur! I concur!
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