Sunday, February 12, 2012

Facebook Creeping: A Case Study in Ambivalence

An online friend of mine had a run-in with an Facebook nutjob who decided to take his psychotic obsession with her *off* line.   It's been a big nightmare.  Those little buggers can be persistent.  But it got me thinking.   Who knows what goes through people's heads when they read my blog, when they visit my page?   But I think about it every time I click "share."  Really?  Share this madness with the outside world?   I founded The Klonopin Chronicles because I couldn’t be myself on my personal page.  But let’s face it, that page under my real name, what I fondly refer to as my “PTA page,” just wasn’t a big enough stage.   All about me, remember?  Delusions of grandeur, remember?

Why did I think this would be a good idea?
On the other hand.  I sashay around the internet, telling tales, cracking jokes, weaving words, but the inferiority complex is always lurking.   Rampant, paranoid insecurity.   "OMG I've been walking all around the club with TP hanging out the back of my skirt just like that poor soul in the photo I just shared about the perils of Jagermeister."   Fuck!   I put myself out there, warts and golf-balls-in-tube-socks boobs and all, and what if it's really just a huge colossal conspiratorial joke on me?  Like over 9,000 of you got together and decided it’d be fun to take Carrie to the prom.  Bucket of pig blood right around the corner.  So there's that.

Facebook creeping meets Facebook cruelty.  That stings.

Now.  I know I have Facebook haters.  Someone said, "If you don't have haters, you're doing it wrong."  Check and double check on that one.  Do I have Facebook creepers?   Possibly.  But they know I'm too wrapped up in myself to notice them unless they get vocal.  So they have to give up the very thing that defines creeper-hood. They're pretty conflicted overall, my creepers.   (It's like that commercial where the girl calls up her boyfriend to tell him that she's giving him the silent treatment.  I think that is brilliant. )    Anyway, creepers, I haz them, and like all good victims, of course I deserve them.  I brought it on myself.   "God, Klonnie, what do you expect when you're so crazy in your online persona?  No wonder some Nutjobs concoct wild fantasies about you.  You should have expected this."

Creeptastical Engineering
Yeah.   Very comforting.  Thank you for that.  Who would be saying this to me, anyway?   Who do I tell?  Who *can* I tell?  My family doesn't even know about The Klonopin Chronicles.  How would I begin that conversation?   "Um, so I have over 9,000 friends I've never met who like me because they think I'm funny as fuck and one of them turns out to be a Nutjob who took all my wild exaggerations literally and now we have to move.  All righty then.  Good talk."

So.   Between the wacky fun we have at my Facebook page (quick they are coming log out and pretend to be doing the dishes) and the sometimes painful writing I do here on the blog,  I can't tell anyone I know IRL about any of it.  It would kill my husband to know that our very private drama is playing out on a very public stage.  I don’t even show him my writing, let alone let him know that I am broadcasting it over the interwebs.   I'm going to have to wait until everyone I know dies before I can announce myself publicly.    People might ask why I "publish" my writing on the internet, given how hurtful it is.  All I can say is, better out than in.  Anonymity breeds bravado.

Again.  About the creeper.  Delusions of grandeur beat an inferiority complex every time.  And vice versa.  This leads to a lot of confusion for me and my many moods.  So I could have a creeper.  I'm awesome like that.  On the other hand, I couldn't possibly have a creeper because I suck the chrome off a trailer hitch.  No wonder no one comes to this restaurant, you can never get a table.  And such small portions.

That, my friends, is what you will see if you look up "rapid cycling bipolar Nutjob" in an Abnormal Psychology textbook.  Doubtless across the page from "sociopathic obsessive-compulsive with an Oedipus complex."  Yeah, our photos perfectly aligned.

So that we kiss when you shut the book.


3 comments:

  1. KC - having a creeper isnt all that its cracked up to be. i hang on a forums platform and have a full blown creeper/stalker who took it to the next level. the kicker, we used to be friends. friends? yes, friends. i had to handle things the legal way than my preferred way and i am in no way as awesome as you.

    i have a blog as well but im keeping it on the downlow as ive wandered off the path and my creeper "monitors" it and has no qualms taking my thoughts and well, im sure you get the picture. bit i wouldnt worry bout your family, as you keep everything very confidential and i doubt anyone could connect your awesomely funny and at times heartwrenching writing to your real life.

    hmm. wrote more than i planned. it happens. but you are what you are and what you are is awesome despite the issues we both (and all) share. and you are so right - better out than in.

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  2. "Better out than in." Absolutely. I'm glad your online persona has, for the time being, a safe place to let real life Klonnie be herself. Not that you don't rate a creeper, cause you're awesome, I just hope you never get one.

    I can't wait until I have ways and means to get myself to a shrink and see what page of that book I'm on. That's gonna be all kinds of fun and frivolity, I'm sure.

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  3. I LOVE THIS!!!! Since I started my page almost a full year ago and just today wrote my very first blog, and no one IRL knows about what I do here either, I think we have a kinship now. No, really we do. Just accept it. :)

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