[wordup] weblog stalkers

[Adam Shand]

i never understood why people forget that what you post to the internet
is on the internet forever.  and yes, forever is a long time.

Via: http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/15575
From: http://www.lasvegasmercury.com/2002/MERC-Mar-14-Thu-2002/18283868.html
More: http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?CaseOfTheIncriminatingDiaries  

Thursday, March 14, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury
Goldberg: Dear Diary...

By Tod Goldberg

About five years ago, when Caller ID officially became a must-have, the
rules of dating changed forever. Suddenly, calling l'object d'amour just
to hear l'object's voice became a real test of your will: Were you
willing to leave your house, find a phone booth not filled with human
dung (no easy chore in Las Vegas, lemme tell you...), compile the
correct change, and then spend the next hour fulfilling your various
stalking needs? For anyone over 18, the answer has generally become
no...most would rather just obsessively check their e-mail to see if the
love interest had responded to that super-cool "You're old if in the
'80s you owned clothing by Chams" list-o-humor that was accumulated to
elicit that "Awww, he/she is thinking of me!" vibe. And, of course, chat
rooms have replaced singles bars and Internet porn has replaced, at
least for a certain segment of the community (read: the Las Vegas
Mercury freelance staff), actual coitus.

Fine. We all agree that this is how the world is now. We've adapted like
freakin' australopithecines in Olduvai Gorge. The rules are cemented
now, right?

Wrong.

Apparently, there is a new and more dangerous assault to casual
obsessive stalking, dating and innocent sexual misadventure: the weblog.
Or at least that's what I found out after having lunch with my friend
Stacy yesterday.

Stacy met a gentlemen recently--we'll call him "Joe," though his actual
name is "Joel" and for the sake of protecting the guilty we might just
refer to him as "moron" but, since it's already been established that
we're calling him "Joe," Joe it is--at the library she frequents to work
on her novel. He sat down across from her and, as in all great love
stories, their eyes locked. A burst of electricity shot between them and
they suddenly found themselves rolling on the floor doing all kinds of
tantric kama sutra stuff.

Wait. That's not quite right. But more on that in a moment.

Their eyes did lock and they entered into a conversation that eventually
culminated in young Mr. Joe asking Stacy out on date, which she happily
agreed to. The odd part of the date is that it kind of involved me.
Because I'm a pretentious writer, I was doing this reading with
ultra-cool spoken word artist Iris Berry and equally cool author Jimmy
Jazz. Since Stacy lives in the general area, she said she'd pop in. She
and Joe made a handsome couple--so handsome, in fact, that when they
left before I even got up to read I immediately thought, and apologies
to W.H. Auden, that it was on like Donkey Kong. And in fact it was: They
went to dinner, made interesting conversation, and concluded the evening
with some light to moderate petting at Stacy's house.

The next day, Stacy informed me, they again saw each other at the
library--unplanned, but then they are both aspiring writers with no real
jobs, so perhaps not entirely unplanned since that bold angel
Serendipity does play games with our fate...but I digress...it was
unplanned. They exchanged knowing glances at one another and then made
plans for another date that night. Ah, love, how it springs forth from
the belly of the young!

Yeah. Right. Stacy, finding Joe to be an interesting fellow, full of
promise and hope, came home and thought fondly of their night previous
and of their night upcoming. She pondered the unsolicited hangup phone
call, thought about the joke-y e-mail about libraries wherein she might
mention that Aimee Bender story regarding the librarian who screws
everyone who walks through the door...ah, but that might be a touch too
suggestive. What to do? Bored, our hero Stacy typed Joe's name into
Google. This is what she found:

Joe's Diary Thursday, 3:45pm

Met a sexy girl at the library. She sat across from me. The whole time,
all I could think about was taking her in the stacks, just getting crazy
dog-style sexy all up in that. All tantric and kama sutra up in the
periodicals! Oh man. But I'm pretty inadequate sexually. Only been with
five girls. Anyway, I ended up asking her out and we're going out
tonight.

Friday, 2:15am

Library girl and I went out and had a great time. I was hoping she'd
give me a hand job, but she didn't. I don't think she's a very good
kisser, her tongue seemed really long to me. Not many women usually find
me attractive so I'm kind of bummed about this tongue thing. I'd like to
go to her house again and see if she'll give me a hand job. Sorry to be
obsessing over hand jobs, but I just tried mushrooms for the first
time...I'm 25 and just starting to take drugs! Yipee!

Friday, 4:27pm

Saw library girl at the library. We're going out tonight, though I'm
gonna call her in about 10 minutes and suggest I just come over with a
movie. I want to be a screenwriter and she wants to be a writer so maybe
she'll find this really romantic and she'll give me a hand job.

Stacy looked at her watch. It was 4:35. She had about two minutes to
formulate a game plan. Instead, she spent those two minutes piling
through the archives of Joe's life, reading time and again how he's
failed with women because he is, in his own words, inadequate and timid
in the sack. He's also apparently not yet a screenwriter, but feels fine
telling other people that their scripts are "shitstorms" based on the
expertise he garnered being an agent's suck-ass. All qualities that are
not sexy. Or worth putting up with alongside the daily masturbation of
his web diary.

The phone rang.

"Why don't I come over with a video?" Joe said.

"My VCR is broken," Stacy said.

"I could bring my VCR over."

"My TV is broken, too," Stacy said. "Forever."

Upon hanging up, Stacy was sure Joe would call back, sure he'd come
searching for the elusive hand job. So sure, in fact, that she went and
checked his diary the next day. Alas, it was never meant to be: A woman
he'd met via her own online diary was flying in to meet him for a
weekend of wild (though, it seems, for the girl it will be less than
pleasing) fornication. Stacy was Quarterflash to this chick's Pat
Benatar.

I asked Stacy how all this made her feel (aside from the tongue
issue...I figured why badger the girl?).

"A little humiliated," she said. "I mean, what if people realize I went
out with this loser?"

"It's not like you were married for five years and then discovered it."

"I suppose," she said. "There should be a law about these people with
web diaries or they should all wear identifying clothing or something,
so that innocent bystanders who don't need some perverse kind of public
fame can know to steer clear."

"Your story is safe with me," I said. Joe, or Joel, or whatever he wants
to call himself, shall live in perpetuity in the Mercury archives. If he
thinks he's inadequate now...