I hope not, because I am curious and I can't help it. I've been trying to fight the urge to ask this, but I'm caving. If you are visiting from a Harvard computer, please tell me who you are. You've been visiting my site lately, and the mystery is starting to get to me. I manage information. I need it to survive. Give me data. No really. I have a feeling this will end up being less exciting than I am hoping, but anyway, send me an email. Address is in the sidebar. It's not fair that you get to keep tabs on me but I don't know who you are. I understand that life isn't fair and I did this to myself, but I reserve the right to ask about my visitors. Maybe you will like me and not make me feel like an object like some other people I know. One can hope. Secret pent up anger? Me? Never.
Why did I do this? Oh God. I've lost my mind. I'm stalking my stalker. There's just something not quite right about that.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Will Curiosity Kill the Visits?
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7 comments:
I fear that you may mean me. When bored at work (Harvard Law) I do sometimes flip through a collection of blogs, and yours was added to my roll recently--discovered via a search of the blogosphere or, alternately, through a system such as Friendster. As visitor data this probably looks like stalking, but from my side the intention is different. I don't think much of Blahston/Lamebridge, and so I keep tabs on a number of local blogs as a way to reassure myself that there are interesting people living here. The intention is more anthropological than voyeuristic. No doubt, given the history of anthropology, this will not overcome your misgivings about objectification, but I'm not sure that that can be helped.
Hmm, a lawyer with an anthropological interest in an anthropologist's musings. How very interesting.
Indeed. I did not know (or failed to notice) that the author of this blog is an anthropologist. Irony springs eternal. I work at the law school, but I'm not an attorney or even an academic. Now, for what it's worth, I've traced my discovery of this blog to the incestuous "world" of Friendster. It was the bit about grammar that caught my interest.
Ok, so you're not a stalker. It is way more fun to muse in that direction however. It's just that I've not been able to identify unknown repeat visitors so easily before... the harvard.edu domain sticks out among a list of random IP addresses. I'm glad you find it a good break from boredom. It's fun to have outside readers. Maybe I can become a blogstar. Ha!
Believe me, blogstar, real life stalkers are not fun. Now maybe they would be "of interest" to an anthropologist, but they are not fun.
Who is Richard Ramirez and why does he know so much about stalkers? I would have to agree that the idea of having a stalker is more scary than genuinely fun, but sometimes scary is fun. Usually not. On anthropology, well, yes, it has become voyeuristic and objectifying, but that's part of the beauty. From my perspective anyway, you have to take it with a grain of salt understanding that it is not a perfect picture, but at least a somewhat objective picture. Objective in that it is outside. Oh anthropology. Where are you in my world of databases and CUSIPs?
I don't actually consider myself an anthropologist on a day to day basis, and I certainly wouldn't be interested in any traditional anthropological jobs. Traditional meaning actually post-modern or what have you--the whole ethnography/participant observer thing. Well, the participant observation thing is still key in my mind, but I don't need to go to some underwater alter-culture to do that. I can do that in an elementary school or an office. There are ways to use these skills and ways of thinking to do things other than break into people's remote cultures. They can be used to discover problems in schools, in the way people work, and less attractively, in the way people consume. Well, the consumption thing would be cool if it were for the right reasons, but the most prominent in my mind is marketing/advertising which I think sounds like hell on a stick. Let's get people to buy things they don't need... I'm more into "let's get people to buy less and more efficiently." How do you sell that? A value added service?
Take my ideas and I'll stalk you.
"A Good Boy"
(How Ramirez became the Night Salker)
In 1978, eighteen-year-old Ricardo Leyva a.k.a. "Richard" Ramirez moved to southern California from El Paso, Texas, his hometown. He'd dropped out of the ninth grade and had been living the life of a slacker, smoking marijuana and living on convenience store junk food, according to UPI reporters Aurelio Rojas and K. Mack Sisk. His diet was so rich in sugar, his teeth eventually started to rot, which made his breath foul and offensive, buthis halitosis fit in with the demonic personality he was intentionally cultivating. His habitual pot-smoking led to several arrests for possession as well as a misdemeanor theft charge. In California he was twice arrested for auto theft, in Pasadena in 1981 and Los Angeles in 1984.
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