On Stalking and Public Knowledge

Humans are so strange. One question that I have recently pondered upon to arrive at this conclusion is the implication of the idea of stalking on something that is public knowledge.

Let’s say person A posts something about themselves online. I think this action itself ends the control of disseminating information any further, ie person A now has no say whatsoever on the narrative established by this post, the signal.

So, now let’s say someone else, person B, identifies something from the post, which comes as a surprise to person A. Why is this a surprise? There can be many reasons: maybe the target audience wasn’t specified correctly, or even if it was, the mere detail was not meant to be surfaced. Layman knowledge would call this stalking.

Let’s be honest, this sounds stupid. Basically what you are saying is, I want the world to know something about me, but I don’t want someone smart figuring something else out from that information. Wow!

This is one way to identify pretentious people in life, I’d say. Moreover, as a direct response to them, my two cents are: “It’s not called stalking if it’s public knowledge.”

Cheers!