GM,
You’d have to be a pretty faithful reader of
The word "creeper" is derived from “creep,” but it's more than that. It's like a creep/stalker. So if a frat boy approaches a college girl in a bar (although they're usually too scared to), it's fine. If an old man does it, he's a creeper. If one were to search Facebook until he found a girl whose last name he didn't already know, he'd be a creeper. If a guy is drunk and hits on multiple girls in the same bar, creeper.
One time, a girl I'm real-life friends with practically called me a creeper for getting her e-mail address from her Facebook account. "Why didn't you just send me a Facebook message? That was just weird." Also, an interesting phenomenon has occurred. "Creeper" is so established that girls are trying to sororitize it even more. In the same spirit that drives "whatevs" and "
I say all that to say this. A girl I don't know just sent me a Facebook message:
Hey, this is really random and may be creepy, but I found your ID a parking lot tonight. I don't know if you want it back or have already gotten a new one, but if you want it, I can give it to you.
-H
“Random,” by the way, is a sorority favorite that goes back to my own college days. Its various misuses are fascinating (people can be “randoms” now). But how could her message be random or creepy?!?! It's helpful and logical! I once found a girl’s flash drive, opened a file on there, and got her name from a paper's heading so I could look her up and get it back to her. She must be traumatized!!!
-JW
Imagine taking a football coach from before the invention of the forward pass and setting him down in today's game. That's me if I ever have to date again.
Because I got married in 2003--just missing Facebook and texting as integral parts of the process--I'm completely oblivious to the rules of today's game. Reading your post, though, I think I'm getting a sense of some general principles. First of all, saying words in their entirety has clearly become passe. Second, the guidelines for acceptable behavior seem to have grown more rigorous. (Emailing is wrong but sending "a Facebook message" is okay? What the hell?!) Third--and this is the big one--initiating a conversation outside of "normal" channels (in person, in a bar) is now so stigmatized that a person doing so for even altruistic reasons has to stammer and apologize her way through it.
Let's discuss this for a moment.
I've been saying for years (though not yet on Smarter Than Y'all, sadly) that Facebook and texting are going to be the death of actual conversations--that, like letter writing, meaningful face-to-face interactions would become the province of hobbyists and Luddites. What I didn't anticipate, however, is the way in which online and digital means of communication have explicitly driven us away from one another. Forget looking up your telephone number. The girl who found your ID was hesitant to make contact even by the least formal method, and not because of shyness or modesty but because of her confusion (warranted, I suppose) regarding what's acceptable. The proof isn't in the "random or creepy" moment, but in the message's conclusion: "if you want it, I can give it to you." If you're willing to see a human being you haven't previously seen, in other words, I can spare you hours of bureaucratic hoop-jumping.
The sad thing is that a lot of people her age probably would have had to think about it.
-GM
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