To Friend or Not To Friend

Until recently, I have never been the stalker type. When I met a guy at a bar, I never even thought about looking him up on Google (although, in hindsight, this might have saved me from several terrible dates). Once in awhile I would type in the name of an ex-boyfriend to see if any marriage notices would pop up, but that was the extent of my stalking effort.

But now that I'm full-fledged, everyday user of Facebook, I'm obsessed with finding out what former foes, friends, exes and classmates are doing. Are they a train wreck? Are they divorced? Have six kids? Live in my hometown? Gained weight? Lost weight? Stayed the same???

I've also recently found out that there is only so many times you can stalk the same people (apparently, people's lives don't change that dramatically day-to-day). So I've been thinking of friending people I never even spoke to in high school. I'm thinking of pressing the "add as friend" button as I scroll over the names of people I hated in middle school.

But then I stop. And I stare at their face. And I get heart palpitations at the thought of letting them into my Facebook life. And while I want to know what they're doing to and how they look now, I don't really want to click the button because it seems be implying that we ARE friends or that I want to BE their friend.

When I don't. I just want to take a peek into their lives. I wish they had an "I want to judge" button. Then I wouldn't feel so conflicted.

So I took the advice of AF, my actual friend in real life and on Facebook, and hit "add as friend" to a former college best friend; a girl who I had a major falling out with just as we headed off into the real world.

And it came back as saying, "Error. Please try again."

I did not. I promptly aborted this friending of non-friends mission.

I take it as a sign that I will stick to just friending the people I know (or at least don't have any bad memories of from years before), rather than actively friending people I want to stalk (if they choose to friend me, I will happily click the "accept" button).

And if this means I can only peer into the lives of 200-something people, I think I can handle it.