Predatory Procrastination: The Talon delves into the world of Facebook stalking

It was 11:37 p.m. on a Monday night—I had to write five more pages for my senior project and take a three-and-a-half hour long practice Calculus BC AP exam. But instead I flipped open my laptop and logged onto Facebook.

As always, I checked my new notifications first and found I was tagged in a few photos from the weekend. So of course, I looked at every picture from the new album.

I’m a somewhat photogenic person, but you win some and you lose some, and when you lose, you untag yourself immediately. Also, with an eye out for good photos, I was on the prowl for a new profile picture.

After a certain period of time (for me it’s usually about once a month, depending on how much I like the picture), a person’s profile picture needs to change. You know, just to spice things up a bit.

Anyway, while I was browsing photos, I spied a friend who I hadn’t talked to in a while, so I went to her profile to catch up. She had just uploaded almost 300 photos from spring break, so I had no choice but to skim through them. I admired how good she looked in some of them. And I haven’t shopped in a while, so I looked with a hint of envy at her stylish clothes.

By the last photo, I officially felt like a lurker. But everyone else who had a Facebook does the same thing as me, so I wasn’t concerned. And she had posted the photos onto the web, so she wanted me to see them, right?

Back on her profile, I saw from the corner of my eye a photo of a mutual friend. He had changed his profile picture (what, you don’t memorize your friends’ photos?), so my interest was piqued. Clicking on his profile, I looked at the new photo, and then continued to go through each of his 57 profile pictures. It wasn’t like I had a crush on him or anything. It was just a friendly kind of stalking, and I couldn’t stop my finger from clicking “next.”

I checked the time again, and it was 12:52 a.m. I had wasted over an hour creeping. I realized that I really needed to start doing my work, but then my friend started chatting with me over Facebook chat, and I couldn’t be rude and sign off on her. That’s just not proper manners. So I gossiped with her for a while about some recent boy drama, which is always interesting.

Forty minutes later, she finally said she had to shower and signed off.

It was 1:29 a.m. Great. I still had that senior project paper to write, and calculus was waiting.

Tuesday was a pretty terrible day.