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Okay, so I'm woman enough to admit this: I'm a little bit of a
stalker. Not the kind of stalker you might be thinking of, a.k.a. I
haven't purchased any pieces of Lindsey's smashed car off of eBay.
However, with advanced technology like
AIM and Facebook at my fingertips, sometimes it's hard to resist
the temptation to stalk. For example, I have my ex-boyfriend's
sister on my buddy list. Now really, that isn't all that bad, but
honestly I'm worried for my future, because with this little kick
start, soon enough my buddy list won't be comprised of friends and
relatives, but boyfriends, their ex's, and their relatives. Combine
all that and you get the all-too-familiar drunk "dialing, IMing, and
Facebooking." My impending days look far too dismal.
So to put some boundaries on my
obsessiveness I have compiled some rules to try to limit my
stalker-like tendencies; I'm sure you and my stalkies could learn
something from it too.
Drunk Dialing
You all know the routine: you've just gotten someone's cell number,
you play it cool until you are about seven Busch Lights deep, and
suddenly your cell phone is out and open, scrolling for their
number. You miss it the first few times because you're squinting
with one eye, but then there it is like a raindrop in the desert,
and before you know what you're doing your fingers are going crazy
and it's ringing. At this point your partially sober friends are
looking over at you shaking their heads, motioning to you to hang
up. But it's too late and all you can do is try your best not to
slur as you invite this new "friend" to the party/"bedroom." You
wake up the next morning and don't even realize what you've done
until you screen through last night's calls and see the 2:05 am dial
to so-and-so. You are then forced to send the shameful morning-after
text message apologizing for your behavior the night before.
"Everyone is allowed at least one drunk dial—it's
inevitable. But the only thing worse than doing it one time, is
doing it over and over and over....to the same person." Now,
everyone is allowed at least one
drunk dial—it's inevitable. But the only thing worse than doing
it one time, is doing it over and over and over....and over...to the
same person. So save yourselves some pain, as hard as it may be, and
ERASE THAT NUMBER. I have had to do this with random people I've
drunk-dialed, ex-boyfriends, their girlfriends, their moms, etc.
Whoever it may be, if they want to speak to you again, let THEM
call. Let the phone get out of hand before the situation does.
Drunk IMing
This is a problem that has been
plaguing college campuses for the past few years, and it often
starts with the obsessive-compulsive checking of other people's away
messages. I'm guilty, you're guilty, we're all goddamn guilty. And
more often than not, we pay the price. Ready for another
revolutionary solution? Eliminate any screennames that would
normally be socially unacceptable to have on your buddy list
(boyfriend's ex's, people who don't know you exist, etc.), and
transfer them to a friend's buddy list. Look, everybody is entitled
to their curiosity, but to prevent that from transforming into
something slightly more, dare I say, frightening, keep them on your
BFF's buddy list. Next time you get the urge, ask her/him to check
it out for you, that way you're never directly linked to any drama
in the case of an inevitable slip-up.
Facebooking
Facebook does a pretty good job of
preventing stalkers from going too far by limiting the profiles
you can check to those on your friends list and those who go to your
school. The only problem is that they don't compensate for the
drunken curiosity that can lead to Facebooking people simply to be
able to check their profile—people who may be slightly freaked out
by your overwhelming curiosity about them. I haven't found the
answer to this one yet. The best advice I can give you is to turn
off your computer before you leave your room for the night. That way
when you come home drunk, stoned, or all hopped up on whatever it is
you do, hopefully you'll be too messed up to bother turning on your
computer, waiting for it to load, going to the website, and then
asking someone to be your friend, who in all truth, probably doesn't
know who you are. I really hope you have a slow computer.
Nobody likes to admit it, but we all have these problems. Before you
head back to the bottle or ask your doctor about Valtrex, give these
tips a try. They may be just the treatment you're looking for.*
*No representation is made that
the efficacy of these methods is better at treating herpes than any
other method.
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