Today was an all-day diversity training (other people learned from it, I wrote a naughty song about it) and one of our most senior officers started talking about a boy she'd almost adopted when she was 26. He'd been in 16 foster homes before the age of five -- she used to take him home on the weekends.
Her story was so poignant, and I am picky about the things that touch me. He was shuffled around from home to home because he hid food in his bed. He hid food in his bed because, even at five, he knew what it was to be hungry in a way that made him strategic. When my colleague would have him for the weekends and he'd be upset, he'd pretend he was Frosty the Snowman and hide under her desk. "Go away, I'm melting!" he'd say.
But to get to the stalking. I asked my coworker if she'd Googled the boy; he'd be 30 now, she'd said, so it seems like there'd be something on the internet about him. "No, I hadn't thought of that," she said to me, and gave me a sideways glance I've seen before -- the slight befuddlement and slight wariness of one who does not understand the art of internet peoplefinding.
This is not a new thing for me. In every job I've ever had, I've always been the Google girl, the one who can dredge the endless waters of the the Internet and come up with information about a person, a place, a thing. People love me for doing this when they need the address to something or a movie time...but the second they find out I've been doing it to people, finding out about people, it's just too creepy to bear.
Honestly, I have trouble understanding this. I mean, it's not like I'm rooting through anyone's medicine cabinet (which I LOVE to do -- if I have been to your house, sorry, I've done it) or sorting through their dirty hampers (which not even I, in my infinite nosiness, would do). There is information about people on the Internet because, in the vast majority of cases, the persons themselves choose to put it on there.
If I can find someone's MySpace, I don't feel guilty about it -- the person MADE a MySpace, and oftentimes all it takes to find someone is simply plugging their name into a search engine. Likewise, if I find out a new friend went to a certain university, or an intern applicant worked at a nonprofit last summer, I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed to. That information's available to everyone -- I'm just taking advantage of what's already out there.
I don't have any incantations I recite or secret search engines. I don't smear chicken blood on my monitor to control Internet-searching demons. I just use Google. And Facebook. And MySpace.
Ain't nothin' wrong with that.
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