Google stalking: you love it

Do I like Google ? Not especially. It does what it does.

Do I like Google Earth? I don’t know. I don’t particularly care about it.

That said, I spend more time with both than my family. Why? Well, it goes like this. I read my emails. I write my emails. Then I’m finished. But I’m bored, so I open a browser window.

My browser, at the time of writing this article, is Mozilla Firefox, the home page of which is, of course, Google . I stare at that text field for some
seconds. Then I think, “God. I really hated Wesley Crusher on Star Trek TNG. I hope he’s dead. I should check.” So I type in the string”Wesley Crusher”. I quickly find his blog, realise he still lives and am genuinely disappointed. But I’m reading his blog now, aren’t I? And now I know he’s a Leo and his dog is the “best dog ever”, don’t I?”All right,” I think, “So where does the idiot live?” So I trawl until I find his home address, then I locate his house on Google Earth. I
don’t know why I’m doing this anymore. But by this stage, I’m so invested, I need to see his house and cars and, ideally, the dog.

The entire process consumes some hours.

I didn’t always do this. I used to be obsessed with the Jonestown massacre, so I used to spend entire nights online reading survivors’ testimonials. It was a life. But I eventually tired of Jonestown and soon after a shift occurred.

I believe the shift came when everyone got Live Journals. I would go to a party and by the time I got home, photos were already posted. Why? I didn’t need to see photos. One, I was there fifteen minutes ago. Two, it bored the crap out of me the first time. Seriously, I started destroying property. I didn’t need to relive the night.

And yet I was. I was reading everyone’s blogs and I was looking at all their houses.

And the behaviour was habit forming. It is now a regular and significant part of my life. When friends come over, I say, “Hello friends, let’s look at the blog of this idiot we both know.” And we do and we all have a big laugh. And they don’t find it weird because they all do it too. Because Google and Google Earth actually encourage you to do it. The system is designed to make stalking a very easy process.

And given that everyone is endlessly documenting and posting their movements online, it seems a shame not to. If I can look at some hundreds of photos of Wesley Crusher’s real life dog, why wouldn’t I? Seriously, what else am I going to do at 2am? Watch Saved by the Bell: The New Class? No, that would be “sad”, wouldn’t it?

I don’t have strong feelings about Google or any of it’s affiliated engines, such as Google Scholar and Google Books. Yes, I think they’re good. I think they’re good inasmuch as they give me information for
free. But I don’t think they are as problematic as they are sometimes portrayed.

Is this stalking business, for instance, problematic? Possibly. Possibly I should be doing whatever it is young people are meant to be doing. Kicking a ball into the community, presumably. But Christ, I love Google stalking . One night me and my best friend stalked Peter Coombes. He sang “Newspaper Momma” in the early 90s. It turns out he has a pool. That was the best night of my life.

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