A few years ago, stalking someone was quite difficult. It took long hours to discover someone's class schedule, what they were looking for in terms of relationships and their favorite music and movies. Only a lucky few stalkers could gather contact information like email addresses, screen names and cell phone numbers. However, thanks to online social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Friendster, anyone can now become a successful stalker.
However, glimpsing into the secret lives (also known as profiles) of other AU students has lost its thrill after a year of very few updates and picture changes. The progression was only natural, then, to begin looking for new friends: celebrity friends, whose lives are obviously more interesting.
Dan Longino, a senior in the School of Communication, began stalking pseudo-celebrities because he had become irritated by the overabundance of fake celebrity pages on MySpace. He thought he could find some minor celebrities "that weren't famous enough for someone to go through the process of making a fake," he said.
His plan worked. "My first pseudo-celebrity friend was Samm Levine, the actor who played Neal Schweiber on the NBC sitcom "Freaks & Geeks," one of my favorite TV shows. I sent him a friend request on MySpace, and he approved by the next day," Longino said.
Befriending celebrities can be a time consuming process. A past its prime television show must be researched to find out the real-life names of characters. Finally, the names must be entered into the search criteria on a social network. Luckily, that's the easy part. Proving to a celebrity that you're online social network friend-worthy is the difficult part.
"I found Ricky Gervais, the co-creator of "The Office," and Alia Shawkat, who plays Maeby on "Arrested Development," but neither have approved me as friends," Longino said. He has however, become "friends" with John Frances Daley from "Freaks & Geeks," Parry Gripp (lead singer from Nerf Herder) and Jarrett Grode from the show "Undeclared."
Other celebrities who are more than willing to accept boring common people as friends include A.J. Trauth, who played Twitty on "Even Stevens," and Madeline Zima, who played AU alum Benjamin Salisbury's younger sister on "The Nanny."
Being Internet friends with celebrities may not actually be as great as it sounds, though. According to Longino, they never make the first contact, they never call and they rarely reply to messages. Longino was lucky enough to hear back from Grode, who played one of his favorite television show's characters.
"I sent him a message about how sweet he was on the show and I also wrote about how I was seeing Oasis soon, because I saw in his profile he liked Oasis. He wrote me back the next day to tell me some story about how his friend since preschool ... ruined his chance to chow down on crumpets with Liam and make wry comments to Noel about how terrible the new Black Rebel Motorcycle Club album is," Longino said.
So, although some people may be embarrassed to admit they have memorized the profiles of people on campus they've never met, or that they regularly message C-List celebrities on online social networks, online stalking has for better or worse become a socially acceptable way to avoid work and waste time ... and make some sweet celebrity friends.
