My best friend has become a virtual stalker.
Unfortunately, in this day and age, that’s not a hard feat to accomplish. With GPS, Facebook, and Twitter, not only is it easier than ever to keep tabs on somebody, but we openly mock anyone who has not embraced these social espionage tools.
A good example of this would be my husband, who flat-out refuses to open a Facebook account because “when Skynet takes over, that’s how it’ll go down.” (The first step in a super-evil, self-aware computer’s plan is to gather pictures of all the drunken college chicks.)
Personally, I started a Facebook account to keep in touch with my family members back home. It’s an easy way to stay current on what’s going on with relatives that I don’t speak to on a regular basis. Probably 90 per cent of my communication with family and friends is through Facebook and text messaging, another evil my husband detests. And, yes, there are a few celebrity blogs that I read on a regular basis.
But I think I may have lost my friend, Jill, to the dark side. She told me yesterday that she is tweeting.
Honestly, it’s not the fact that she has a Twitter account that worries me. But the number of celebrities she follows cannot be healthy. And they’re not even the good ones!
I mean, Justin Bieber? Unless that kid’s getting a real haircut, I don’t want to hear about him. And don’t even get me started on those Kardasians. If someone could please explain what exactly their skills are, besides being rich, I would sincerely love to hear it. She even tried to entice me to start “following” Steve Catrell, my favorite comedic actor, but I wasn’t having any of it.
Listen, if I’m going to start taking time to learn how celebrities spend their days, it’s gonna be for the celebrities that have crashed and burned. Beiber drinks soy milk? Snore. Where did Jeremy London wake up this morning? Now, that I want to know. Whatever happened to Andrew Keegan, king of Tiger Beat from 1995-2000? I am all ears.
The funniest part of the whole conversation was when I realized she had spent the last five minutes telling me, “I’m following this person, and this person.
And I‘d like to follow this person and this person…” until finally, I interrupted to ask what she wanted for her birthday. “Perhaps you would like a virtual mayonnaise jar to pee in while you crouch outside their virtual windows?”
She thought that was hilarious.
And because I am the best (and the worst) friend, I decorated an empty glass jar for her as a birthday present, because you can never take a stalking joke too far.
(It’s less funny, though, when you’re flying back East with the stupid jar and you have to explain it to security during check-in. And the security guard didn’t find it nearly as funny as I did.)
