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Friday dilemma: What’s a Facebook stalker to do?

The Punch Team

by The Punch Team

23 Sep 12:32pm

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Filed under: Facebook, Friday Dilemma

49 comments

Anonymous says: “I started doing it at night when everyone else was in bed. Then sometimes on the train, while I’m on my way to work. I’ve even done it at parties, or at the pub. Everyone just used to think I was busy checking work emails. But I wasn’t.

Dear Facebook, our minds are starting to resemble this power point display. Photo: AFP.

The truth is I’m a Facebook stalker from waaay back.  And now, thanks to these pesky new changes, I’m going to have to fess up or give up before everyone catches on.  Unless, they already have.

Oh, god! Thanks very much Facebook, they’re hardly improvements you know.

Has the hide function has disappeared? Will all my friends know that I looked at Susie from high school’s wedding photos. Not to mention Steve, my ex. Actually my very first ex, will know I look at his status updates. Someone just told me you can work around that. But can you? What if I screw it up? It would be just my luck to think I had it sorted out when really, all I’d done was reveal my own pathetic obsession with the past.

Then there’s the time wastage factor. The sheer amount of information that’s now flickering on my newsfeed will keep me glued to my computer at work. Or my mobile when I’m out on the street.

Goodbye clandestine joys of Facebook! My reputation will be on the line as soon as anyone bothers to check my news scroll. What should I do?”

Can you help this reader? Post your advice below.

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49 comments

Show oldest | newest first

    • Ricky says:

      12:52pm | 23/09/11

      There are 2 options here that I think should be raised. 1 - Get over it and just use Facebook because you’re addicted and need to post that you took a dump and proud or 2 - Leave Facebook. Man that took me a while to think of.

      Reply

    • Max, of Rocky says:

      12:58pm | 23/09/11

      LOL

      “be sure your sins will find you out”

      My heart bleeds for you,  “anon”,

      “not for very much longer”  wink

      Reply

    • richard.perin@gmail.com says:

      01:02pm | 23/09/11

      Exit…....stage left. XO@

      Reply

    • redvixen says:

      01:02pm | 23/09/11

      Well, I’m not on Facebook, so I can’t feel your pain, but here’s some things you could do:

      1.  give up Facebook.  (You’ve already had an anxiety attack at *that* suggestion, haven’t you?  Sorry.  I decided to go in hard from the beginning).  You could stop looking down at your electronic device, perhaps talk to the person sitting next to you on the train.  Most people on trains aren’t axe murderers so you should be safe.  (Although there was this one guy once that I sat next to….....um, back to your problem).
      2.  you could give up your hold on the past and try to live for the present.  It is possible, and mostly enjoyable.
      3.  or you could just come “out”.  What’s wrong with checking out these people?  Why is it so shameful?  Isn’t that what Facebook is for?  Maybe your ex has been checking you out as well and keeping himself hidden.  Obviously I don’t know why you’re exes, but you’ve both grown since then (hopefully) and could, possibly, now have a beautiful relationship.

      Personally, I’d go for choice No 1, but I don’t miss what I’ve never had.

      Reply

    • Anti Fakebook officer says:

      01:10pm | 23/09/11

      You are a vacuous drone incapable of living a real life. Deactivate immediately or get yourself sterilised. Fakebook is all that is wrong with society and people like you are an embarrassment to humanity.

      This is the fakebook generation in action….the future is not bright.

      Reply

    • Elphaba says:

      01:27pm | 23/09/11

      Stereotyping is so easy, isn’t it?

    • adam says:

      01:53pm | 23/09/11

      sounds like you’d be fun at parties

      I Know I know, now I’m all thats wrong with society, I probably like 21/2 Men and anything else that gets up your nose. tell me, do you vocalise when typing and if so do you use a booming “god” like voice?

    • Servaas says:

      10:50pm | 23/09/11

      facebook is not all that is wrong with society, it exposes all that is wrong with society. It’s like the whole love of money thing

    • Malabar Jail says:

      01:17pm | 23/09/11

      Facebook is a fun place to find people and to interact with people..

      Reply

    • Stef says:

      01:30pm | 23/09/11

      I am not looking forward to these changes either!  Things like having a massive screen sized photo of me at the top of my profile?  People who aren’t my friends being able to look at things that before they couldn’t?  I’ve been stalked and harrassed on facebook - and these changes make it look like its going to be easier for the bad people!
      All I want to do is be able to easily catch up with my interstate friends and my european rellies :( I don’t want games, music, movies, or any of the applications!

      Reply

    • Zeta says:

      01:54pm | 23/09/11

      What you need is really difficult to implement.

      It’s a little known fact, but when you got your internet hooked up at home, the service came with a special address, probably ‘your name’ followed by ‘@’ then the name of the service provider.

      Using a really old, outdated program called ‘Outlook’ that sometimes still comes packaged with Windows, you can send ‘messages’ to your friends just like you were using Facebook!

      IT professionals and scientists call this ‘email’ and it’s a reasonably secure way of sending messages between people without using pieces of paper. It’s call ‘email’ because ‘eeeeee’ is the sound the tiny like gnome people who live inside phone cables make when they ran backwards and forwards with your messages.

    • Redeker Plan says:

      02:13pm | 23/09/11

      @ zeta “eeeeee’ is the sound the tiny like gnome people who live inside phone cables make when they ran backwards and forwards with your messages”

      For some reason I can picture that in my head now.  They all look like the minions from Despicable Me. 

      Maybe the Icelandic elves and gnomes should try and corner the market in that - it could get the whole nation out of the financial pickle it’s in.

    • ROFLMAO says:

      07:36am | 26/09/11

      @ Zeta - BAAAAHAHAHAHAAA!!

      Thanks for the laugh on a Monday morn.

    • Kirsty says:

      01:32pm | 23/09/11

      As I have gotten older Facebook has become more boring and repetitive.  Not sure how you could go about quitting the addiciton apart from going cold turkey and then after awhile maybe putting a time limit on it so you don’t waste too much time looking at pics of the girl you once worked with holding her cousins baby or the friend of a friend’s pictures of their trip to New Zealand. 
      Also Susie from high school probably expects everyone to look at the photos which is probably why she put them up in the first place.

      Reply

    • S.L says:

      01:35pm | 23/09/11

      I was at a nieces 21st a few weeks ago and at one table there were a dozen very, very attractive young ladies who didn’t look up from their iphones all night.
      My ex thinks nothing of logging on when she wakes at 7am and she’s still there after midnight and no matter who tells she can’t for the life of herself see why people think she has a problem!
      Sad isn’t it!

      Reply

    • Bernie Lomax says:

      05:53pm | 23/09/11

      OK SL, one “very” would have been odd. Two “verys” is just creepy. Dude, you were at your neice’s 21st!

    • NicoleG says:

      08:16pm | 23/09/11

      What exactly are you implying Bernie? The way I read S.L’s comment is he can’t understand why some very, very good looking girls are glued to their FB, rather than having fun at a party. If you read anything else in to that, well, you’re the creep one!

    • The righteous one says:

      01:39pm | 23/09/11

      I have never even visited facebook total waste of time

      Reply

    • komet says:

      09:43am | 24/09/11

      I usually find that people with this kind attitude don’t have enough friends to warrant a Facebook accnt…

    • Rosinki says:

      01:40pm | 23/09/11

      reclaiming conversation might be a good start, whether that be actually talking to people online instead of lurking or better yet chatting face to face with people.

      Reply

    • Zeta says:

      01:44pm | 23/09/11

      THE New Facebook is a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game where people create characters based on themselves, and compete for friends while avoiding paedophiles, their parents, spam, and intelligence agencies. Review by Zeta.

      In an already crowded online market dominated by World of Kekekeke: Korean Goldbot War and Russian Hacker 5: Grenade of Grenade, the genius behind gaming sensation The Facebook and Facebook Mark ‘BOOM! Headshot’ Zuckerberg is taking a big risk these holidays by launching a new version of his still popular online game.

      New Facebook does away with much of the stealth based gameplay of its predecessors, instead going for a more old school approach, where hiding is not an option. Levels have been carefully redesigned but still require the same mix of strategies to win. Lies, poor spelling, and photos of fat girls pursing their lips are everywhere, fan service for dedicated followers of the series.

      Like Northern European global economics simulator EVE: Goldman Sachs Edition released last year, New Facebook is a time sink. Unlike EVE, and it’s use of real money rewards, Facebook continues to use an out dated metric for success, friends, which are increasingly of little value to the players.

      Graphics have improved marginally, but the new emphasis of running Facebook on less powerful devices like iPhones and retinal implants will disappoint the PC gaming master race.

      Developer and distributor the Central Intelligence Agency says “With The New Facebook we’re really hoping to revolutionise the way players communicate with each other. End game is a big priority for us now. High level raids in the previous Facebook consisted mostly of endlessly spamming the same jokes at pages for dead teenagers. This time around, players will have to do so while avoiding dangerous new algorithms that feed your location straight back to the Police.”

      Only time will tell if Zuckerberg’s new MMO can compete with single player RPG Twitter, which continues to gain in popularity, despite players wandering it’s landscapes without ever encountering a single real person. 

      Interim score of 3/5 stars, but we’ll wait for the first patch before passing final judgement.

      Reply

    • Tombowler says:

      02:47pm | 23/09/11

      That is worthy of being an article in it’s own right Zeta.  At the end of that day, it’s not too far from the truth. ‘Characters’ are carefully stylised, tweeked and ever-so-delicately cultivated distortions of self; carefully selecting pages to like and groups to join that reconcile with their desired image..

    • Ben C says:

      04:16pm | 23/09/11

      God I love these pieces of yours Zeta!

    • Craig says:

      07:41am | 24/09/11

      Brilliant! People would pay money for your writing. The Punch must love you for your philanthropic mindset.

    • LuxuryYacht says:

      01:51pm | 23/09/11

      I don’t understand. Why won’t you be able to stalk people? How are they going to find out if you just look?  Or do people now get notified if you’re looking at their profile/pictures/etc? I thought the changes made it easier to stalk, not harder!

      Reply

    • adam says:

      01:56pm | 23/09/11

      Gold Zeta

      Reply

    • fairsfair says:

      01:58pm | 23/09/11

      In reading the above comments, I can’t work out why people are so dead against FB?

      Yes it is overused by teens and spending your entire night liking “Inviting the boys round for fairybread” and 37 other pages is not really time well spent, but please don’t think for a second that is how all uses take up the service.

      I don’t have the time, the funds or the energy to ring my friends every day. I catch up with my closest friends at every opportunity, but I know so many people around the country who I would otherwise fall out of touch with purely because “life” gets in the way. FB allows you to chat to them for free, keep tabs on what they are doing with their life - look at photos of their kids, see that they went on holiday. Remember only 6 years ago if you had a kid you’d have to manually send out email updates to your friends with photos, or order “double prints” and post those babies out to Nanna and the gang. Or you’d wait for the we got up to X this year letter in the Christmas card. Those days are over and it is fantastic.  It is such an effective tool for communication if it is used correctly.

      For people who don’t take part in the community to be so harsh on it is just rediculous. You clearly don’t understand and what A Current Affair too much. You don’t have to be friends with people you hardly know and yes, I’ll admit when I first joined there was an element of asking everyone you have ever met to be your “friend”, but now - I have deleted most of those people and it is nice to be able to chat to friends and aquaintences that you really like in a time and cost effective manner.

      Lay off the hatoraide.

      Reply

    • Shama says:

      02:07pm | 23/09/11

      Agreed, fairsfair.

      Half my friends and family live elsewhere, without FB it would be hard to keep in touch eeemail (once bashed for replacing post) and snail mail notwithstanding. And I don’t do farmville and co and I have good privacy settings and its all fine.

      Half the people glorifying real time interactions must not even be acknowledging their neighbours.

      And its become boring to bash FB everytime it is changed.

    • fairsfair says:

      02:35pm | 23/09/11

      That said, I am not really digging these new changes. It is kind of like the news.com upgrade. There is just far too much going on on a page where you used to just be able to scroll through an entire days activity and make your own choice as to what you would like to look at more closely. I am not a huge fan of the site choosing for me what it thinks I would like to see, but then again, that is based on my past activity - so clearly it is what I want to look at.

      You can’t stop progress though, and even though I am one of the people whinging about it on there - it won’t be changing back anytime soon, so I may as well just lump it I guess!

      I too have the highest privacy settings, I don’t play any of those (what I think to be) stupid “games” etc, but yeah I just don’t get the hatrid toward it. It is along the lines of that hipster article a while back. Something is cool until everyone likes it and then it is just embarassing. And I note that a lot of the criticism comes from actual “gamers” who think they are too cool for school and then bang on about world of warcraft until they are blue in the face. I used to work with a call who openly criticised Facebook and then moved from here to the UK to live with some guy she met while running through the desert on one of those weird second life type games. Ummm… it was clear to me which of the two of us had the dependence on the technology issues….

    • Kika says:

      02:10pm | 23/09/11

      I’m so bored of people complaining about facebook. I actually like the new functions. There’s seriously a lot of people who I don’t give a flying HOOT what they think about life, or being positive or whatever other bllsht they want to lecture everybody with today - so I can unsubscribe from them, but still remain their friend so they are not offended. It’s brilliant!  Plus i can customise who reads my posts so I don’t annoy others.

      I don’t know why everyone hates it. It’s brilliant. Facebook have been filtering our feeds anyway for a while. For some reason I don’t get feeds from people I actually want to hear from, and get all these ones from people I don’t give a sht about.

      Go live in Somalia or something and find something real to winge about!

      Reply

    • Kate says:

      03:14pm | 23/09/11

      I agree, Kika, I was quite happy about that feature!
      My fiance’s got crazy family members on there who flip out if he deletes them, but post five hundred things per day, most of which are video clips of themselves playing guitar (not very well). I used to say ‘just get rid of them’ but they have nuclear level meltdowns when deleted, so this feature makes them a lot easier to deal with.
      I am still very glad that my crazier relatives don’t know how to use Facebook.

    • natweeza says:

      02:13pm | 23/09/11

      What hide function are you talking about?
      I’m pretty sure noone can see who has viewed their page.

      Reply

    • Adamjacobbryant says:

      12:14am | 24/09/11

      I was wondering this too? I like the new Changes. I dont think that it tracks where you have been though. Only if u leave a comment or like something on your ex’s page would that happen.

      Any one who dislikes Facebook should probably not tell other people that they should dislike it too. It is a god send for me living in Canada. You can really easily see when someone is in town, and mum/dad can check out what I’m doing at any time. It’s also a great way to keep in touch with new work friends (who have also come to Canada for this fellowship) for down the track when you otherwise might lose contact all together

    • Anna C says:

      02:53pm | 23/09/11

      BORING. Facebook is for losers who need to go get themselves a life. How is it even possible to spend so much time on Facebook updating your profiles? No one cares that you met up with so and so for lunch or that you had a baby or that you went on holidays to Bali or went for a shit. While you people are pissing the day away on Facebook, your real lives are passing you by.

      Reply

    • Wynston Cruso says:

      03:43pm | 23/09/11

      Agree Anna, while Facebook in theory is great, and it was when I first signed up to get in touch with old friends, now it seems nothing is worth doing in real life if you don’t tell the world about it on fb. To be honest, who f*cking cares what your cat had for breakfast or how many generic pages you like. I especially enjoy how people express their individuality by liking the same crap that millions of people before them have liked. I’ve spent way too much time with ‘friends’ who sit on their iphone while we’re out in the real world updating their fb page to let everyone know which pub we’re at and who with. It’s really become an attention seeking device for those who think we care what they’re doing and with whom. It’s good in theory, but ignores the fact that people are generally stupid and will post anything thinking people care.

    • Shama says:

      03:53pm | 23/09/11

      Er, is real life posting on The Punch about things you don’t care about? 

      In that case, I will pass.

    • Elphaba says:

      04:20pm | 23/09/11

      @ Anna C, as I said above - stereotyping is so easy and your ignorance of Facebook is clearly showing.  If you don’t understand it, ask - or by all means look like a total moron, it’s pissingly funny.

      Grow up.

    • Bobby says:

      03:40pm | 23/09/11

      The trick is to sign up under a fake name if you want to stalk. You can still see heaps of stuff. People don’t realise when FB makes a change. Recently people’s walls have been showing, what’s it going to be like in 5 years I wonder.

      Reply

    • fairsfair says:

      04:59pm | 23/09/11

      but do people seriously become friends with people who make up fake names? Unless you are an idiot or a tween, you wouldn’t really do it would you?

    • WA Redneck says:

      05:03pm | 23/09/11

      Hey try some of these things:
      - Go to a pub with some friends for a night out
      - Go out to lunch and/or dinner
      - Join a sporting club , keep fit, party lots and meet people!
      - Go to a cinema to watch a good movie
      - Try something adventorous like scuba diving or bungee jumping
      - Go back to uni to do learn more, party more and meet people
      - Get involved in your local community
      - Overseas holiday with some mates, make more friends over there

      In short…... GET A LIFE

      Reply

    • Jenni says:

      09:00am | 24/09/11

      Hey WA Redneck - of your list, I regularly enjoy most of those (I’m not much into bungee wink BUT none of them allow me to:
      - instantly look at pictures of my friends who moved overseas, and their lovely children
      - keep track of my parents touring around Australia in a caravan; without racking up a HUGE mobile phone bill (and seeing the photos of all the beautiful places they are visitng)
      - set up an event in all of 5 minutes and not have to worry about finding all my friends’ addresses, writing out invites, paying for postage, wondering if it got delivered properly, waiting by the phone for the rsvp, etc

      I could go on, but I’m sure you get my point. I have a life, thank you very much, and it’s one I enjoy immensely. Facebook is merely one small part of it, and I use it in a way which further enriches my relationships and brings me happiness.

    • Comedy lover says:

      10:11pm | 23/09/11

      Stalking, NUMBER ONE reason I ditched facestalk.
      Was great to hear from old school friends, for a while.
      Not so great having previous GF’s commenting on my kids.
      FACEBOOK BE-GONE.

      Reply

    • Brizben says:

      06:10am | 24/09/11

      have you tried google plus?

      Reply

    • Craig says:

      07:36am | 24/09/11

      Apply for a job at ASIO.

      If you are going to be a Facebook stalker, you may as well be paid for it.

      Reply

    • John says:

      05:40pm | 24/09/11

      Facebook is….a crutch. There’s always somebody somewhere who needs a crutch, so we shouldn’t complain too much. But why on earth does it need so many facelifts?  Oh I see, somebody thinks they can invent a better mousetrap.

      Reply

    • subotic says:

      07:59am | 26/09/11

      Facebook is…. a crotch, more like it…..

    • NESLIHAN KUROSAWA says:

      03:08am | 25/09/11

      Hi Punch Team,

      Is this a bit a like our original obsession with mobile phones, sending text messages, spending the money we do not have on our credit cards??  We may be creatures of habit & sometimes doing everything to the extreme!!  However, we also have self control, discipline & will power, right? In a way, we actually feel that having all this latest technology & electronic gadgets at our finger tips, will make us smarter & more attractive to the rest of the population!!  It may be so for some of us.

      However, my personal belief is just like anything else in life “less is more” theory should apply!!  I do enjoy sharing information & pictures of latest events on Facebook periodically!!  I am actually talking about friends & relatives who happen to be far away and seeing them on a daily basis may prove to be almost impossible!!

      I can say with all honesty when it comes to watching the latest news, using our mobile phones, the internet & Facebook constantly, may not be all that good for our physical & mental health.  It is just like any other kind of addictions & obsessions in our lives!! And should be kept under control at all times.  Best regards to your editors.

      Reply

    • OchreBunyip says:

      08:18am | 25/09/11

      Rule one of the internet is be careful when and how you use your real name.This used to be taught at school and uni but it seems to have fallen by the wayside.

      Reply

    • Heather says:

      12:00pm | 26/09/11

      I get the impression you can see who has been visiting your Facebook. How can you do that? Is there a program or something?

      Reply
 
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