Is blog stalking acceptable?

I saw a comment on another blog the other day about Facebook stalking, and it got me to thinking.

Ok, I’ll admit it. I’m a blog stalker. (See evidence above.) And I’m a little conflicted about it. On the one hand, I think most people start blogs hoping that people will read them—the more readers, the better. On the other hand, well…you’re reading the intimate details of someone’s life. After a while, you end up knowing an awful lot about the blogger.

Let’s be clear on what we’re talking about. I’m not talking about those blogs that are clearly written for a large audience. I don’t feel weird about reading Cake Wrecks. (Have you read that blog? It’s hilarious.) I’m also not talking about my own blog. I really want people to read it, whether I know them or not, and I try to write it in such a way that it might be accessible to a larger audience than my circle of friends and family. So please stalk me. It’s all good.

But let’s just say there’s a blog you find through a comment on another blog, and you check it out, and it’s well-written, funny, interesting. But most of the posts have no more than a few comments, and those are from family and personal friends. You go back and read post after post, because hey, it’s a really good blog. And before you know it, you’re involved in the intimate details of this person’s life. You’re following the development of their children and know their names, you know a bit about the blogger’s schedule, and you may even know a thing or two about their sleeping habits.

You feel like a nosey voyeur, but isn’t that why the blog is there?

What would you say if you ever met that person? Would you pretend you didn’t know them, or would you be like, “Hey, how are those new jeans working out for you?” or, “I really liked your girl poem!” (and then blog about it the next day, of course).

That actually happened to me once, on a slightly smaller scale. This was back when MySpace was still cool, and not just a place to go for booty calls. (Please, you know it is.) You’ll remember that on MySpace you didn’t have to be someone’s friend to see their profile unless they specifically set it up that way. We were all MySpace stalkers back then.

Don’t lie. You know you were.

So I met a guy who was a friend of a friend, and I knew all about him already through his MySpace page. I totally played like I had no idea who he was. I let him go through the normal small talk about where he works and stuff, and the whole time I was listening I kept thinking, “This is so dumb. I already know this stuff.” But at that point it was too late to say anything. It would have been even more weird.

What do you think? What’s the accepted protocol here? As for me, I will say that if some random person ever approaches me on the street, and is like “Hey! You’re Solid! How are you enjoying your new Xbox?” I’m gonna be stoked. I always wanted to be famous, after all.

As for me, I just don’t know. Someday I may own up and introduce myself to some of these bloggers. I’ll probably just keep stalking though.

What do you think? Am I weird? Is it better to just own up? Help me out. I'm still new at this.

And please forgive me for the lack of pictures in this post, but I refuse to type "blog stalker" into Google image search. Who knows what you might get with that one?

-Solid