What Ever Happened To Good Old Fashioned Stalking?

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You know what’s fun? Being a part of the generation that ruins literally everything. I’m sure every generation says that same thing about the new batch of hooligans who think they know how to be adults, but still. It’s such a rush to be in the thick of all that hate.

And sure, there’s plenty of important things we’re absolutely fucking up. Golf, of course, and sex, obviously. Actually, we’re sort of messing up the whole dating thing in general. And all of these are very fair, valid, and great ways for older generations who married the wrong people at young ages, had children they didn’t want to have, and stayed in jobs they hated because that was the right thing to do to be pissed off about. Kudos to them!

The thing is, there’s one thing the older generations haven’t bitched about yet, and it’s time someone speaks up. I could wait until some app does a study on it and Elite Daily blasts it online, but why? It’s pretty obvious what we’ve all done. If we take a good, hard look at what we’ve become, the biggest thing we’ve ruined is staring us right in our ugly faces.

We’ve absolutely ruined stalking.

Nowadays, us youngins have it easy when it comes to stalking our enemies and/or the objects of our affections. We just pull up their Instagrams, Twitters, Facebooks, LinkedIns, Zillows, arrest records, background checks and/or Myspaces if we want some real dirt and emo bathroom selfies. We can discretely figure out everything we need to know with the click of a few buttons and some steady fingers. Boyfriend says he’s staying in to study? You can just check his Snapchat, his friends’ Snapchats, and that slutty girl who he keeps texting’s Snapchat to see if it checks out. Girlfriend says you don’t have to worry about her guy best friend? Check to see whether or not he liked her most recent swimsuit picture. Sure it’s easy and informative, but do you know what else? It’s goddamn lazy.

Back in the day, our parents and our parents’ parents had to actually do the dirty work if they wanted some dirt. They had to crawl through the trenches to get the mf-ing 411. If they thought the person they were “going steady” with (bless their hearts) was being a sneaky snake, they had to physically drive by their house at night with their car lights off to see if his/her car was in the driveway. Once upon a time, if you wanted to see whether or not your girlfriend was really at her friend’s house or at the doctor’s appointment she claimed to have at 10 a.m. on a Saturday, you have to put on a disguise, do a casual drive-by, and have a ready excuse if you got caught.

Sure, the ramifications were much bigger if the person you were stalking caught you. You had to look into their eyes as they told you you were a creep. Now, if we accidentally like a picture from 72 weeks back, we feel shame for about a day, then move on. Odds are, the person isn’t going to confront you about it. They’ll get a sick, twisted joy knowing that you were digging through their timeline, and they’ll make fun of you at brunch, but that’s about it. If you ever actually see each other, you won’t talk about it — you’ll just both remember that time you were a fucking weirdo and double tapped the picture of them on vacation in Cabo from over a year ago.

So, sure. Back in the olden times, the risk was much greater. But the reward? That shit made it all worth it. I mean, just think of the rush. You’d have to creep into the night just to see if the person you’re supposed to trust was actually trust-worthy. You’d grab your best friends, some snacks, and maybe some sort of weapon and just sit outside his house, waiting to see if he was cheating on you with the fucking cheerleader who always smiled at him in the hallway. If there was nothing wrong, you’d still get that jolt of adrenaline and relief, but on a much larger scale. But, if something was wrong, and whoever you were stalking was being a horrible person, you had the proof right in front of you. None of this “show me your texts” or “why were you Snapchatting her at 1 a.m.” nonsense. You could creep through the bushes, look through the window, see him making out with Slutty Stacey, then confront both of them, caught in the act.

It was a better time. A more exciting time. And, naturally, thanks to technology and our lazy millennial lifestyles, we’re no longer experiencing one of the best parts about being jealous humans — being able to stalk the person you love to decide whether or not you should leave/divorce/murder them.

Sure, phones were (probably) invented to make this easier for us. But what about cars? Combat boots? Ski masks? All of those were made for the sole reason of following your SO everywhere he/she goes when they’re not with you to make sure they never talk to anyone of the opposite sex when you’re not around. And it’s time we start using these inventions for what they were intended for.

So, friends, as we’re busy trying to bring back some of the classics from times before ours, like record players and fighting Nazis, I urge everyone to do like our parents once did. Put down your phone, buy a wig from Party City, hop in your friend’s car, park down the street from the person you’ve been casually dating for a month or so, wait on the bench outside their apartment building while reading an old newspaper from 1972 and smoking a wooden pipe, and keep track of their comings and goings for a few weeks to ensure that they’re not fucking you over.

Sure, it takes a little more effort, but I promise, the outcome will be totally worth it. It’s time to take our stalking offline and start stalking how it was once intended — IRL..

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Rachel Varina

if it doesn't have snack or seats, i'm not there. hate mail/Sunny references can be sent to itsrachelvarina@gmail.com

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