Have you ever wanted to keep tabs on someone you were interested in, but didn’t want to let them know you were keeping tabs on them? With the social media age being in full-swing, it’s easier than ever to dig up all the information you could possibly want to know about someone. Of course, it’s still sort of creepy to do it… But only if you get caught, right?
While I’m not exactly promoting the idea of lurking someone’s online presence, I’m also not denying that I’ve done it before. I’m going to tell you 4 ways to make sure your crush doesn’t find out you’ve been cyber-stalking her, so you can continue building your imaginary relationship in your head. (But, I urge you to get the courage to ask her out as soon as possible. Don’t be that person who only ever pines from behind the screen.)
Don’t touch anything.
Obviously, if you don’t want to get caught, you need to make sure there’s no trace that you’ve been where you’ve been. It’s almost as if we’ve been pre-programmed to “like” everything that our crush posts, though – so when you’re six years back on her timeline, you’ll need to exercise all the self-control you possibly can.
If you accidentally “like” or “react” to something, though, you might not have anything to worry about. Some women turn off push notifications on their devices, or don’t have Facebook installed on their devices. Unless she sees the notification before you undo it, you’re still in the clear.
Follow her regular haunts.
If you don’t know your date well enough to be on her friends list (or maybe even know her name!) you might want to keep up on the places you’ve seen her. For example, if you’ve seen her more than a few times at your local lesbian club, there’s a good chance that following their Facebook page might get you some candid pictures of her.
But what if she’s not a part of the club scene? You can still follow her workplace (if you know it) or something else you remember her mentioning. And, thanks to Facebook’s new social graph search, you can search with basic English instead of Boolean text – try searching for “people who work at (your workplace)” or “events (crush’s name) has attended”.
Figure out what makes her laugh.
If you know her name, as it appears on Facebook (which it’s supposed to be, according to the kinda transphobic way the policy is written), you can figure out everything she’s liked and commented on – pages, photos, and statuses. Of course, this will probably be mainly memes and company pages, but still. The more you can find out about her, the better.
Try using the graph search for this one, too. You can use phrases like “photos (crush) has liked”, “pages liked by (crush)”, and “links (crush) has commented on”. Unless this person has been super strict with their privacy settings, it’s going to turn up some results. (Might want to check your own settings, while you’re at it…)
Get hand-delivered stalker statuses.
If your crush happens to be on your friends’ list and you happen to want to be a total creeper – without her knowing – all you have to do is add her to your “close friends” list, and you’ll get a notification every time she does anything on Facebook. Everything will be hand-delivered right to your notifications list as soon as it happens.
The creepiest thing about this particular trick is that Facebook doesn’t let you know when you’ve been added to someone’s close friends – meaning you have no idea who’s watching your every move. When in doubt, remember – stalk responsibly and no one presses charges. Good? Good.
[interaction id=”577a467ceaef76d524435681″]
