Fits of fancy

I'm prone to short-lived bouts of infatuation with various things - food, people, topics, activities, routines, even punctuation marks. Something will pique my interest, and then I'll entertain myself with it till I tire of it and move on. I'm sure there's something to be said about my perseverance in this trait, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

I'm here to talk about people.

Like with anything, I sometimes get very interested in certain people. And thanks to social media, it's alarmingly easy to find out a great deal about someone's life. Through just a few clicks, you can learn who someone is married to, how old their children are, where they work, why their last relationship ended, the last place they went for drinks, what they drank, etc.

Often people use ugly words for this sort of curiosity, referring to it as "stalking" or "lurking," and I can't blame them. It's creepy to think that someone would follow every word you say, would know more about you than you think they should. We all assume people are occasionally tuning in for glimpses of our life, not reading the novel all in one sitting.

But what happens when a fit of fancy causes me to idly meander through your musings, tweet after tweet, post after post. Within 20 minutes, I know a whole hell of a lot about you. And suddenly, without even realizing it, I've accidentally surpassed the socially appropriate amount of knowledge for two quasi-strangers to have about each other. Yet all I've done is consume content you've made public.

My own curiosity, my inquisitive nature, has made me uncomfortable on many occasions. I don't mean to learn so much about people, but the voyeur in me always wins.

And you put the content out there.

I say this because although many of us preach the importance of safeguarding your online presence, few of us really comprehend how much of ourselves we share with the world (not sure I'm among them).

Personally, I'm a bit of an exhibitionist - I'll be flattered if you know anything about me. But others seem to almost recoil when you know something about them. And as a consumer, I don't think the burden should be on me to stop when you feel I've had enough. The burden should be on you to only give me what makes you comfortable.

Maybe that makes me a creeper, a lurker, a stalker, or any number of unpleasant monikers. Or maybe that just makes me honest. I have a sneaking suspicion we're all consuming much more of each other's content than we're willing to let on, and these ugly labels are just cover for embarrassment about our own voyeurism.

But then again, maybe it's just me. Feel free to block my creeper bum now. (After you've commented to prove that you're not lurking, of course.)