That's because you probably are not used to having attention placed on you, so all attention is "wanted." If you are a male, you almost never have had to deal with unwanted, persistent, obsessive attention, and so you are unaware of early cues that can indicate the person you're speaking with is a creep. Things like, "this person extensively investigates my background before having met me," "this person obsesses over me," etc.

I maintain a website for some short films, and as part of that I look at the access logs for the search keywords that bring people to the site.

Female actors often have a lot of searches coming from their original hometowns. Sometimes the same ip address over a period of months. I guess that might be mom back home, but I tend to think of it as a little more stalkery.

Male actors can have the same thing, but it happens much less often. Which is another argument against it being mom back home.

A lot of heterosexual men can experience this by going to gay bars. You'll see what its like to have people start at you and try to chat you up.

If you go to a gay bar it's expected. If I went to a gay bar for some reason and got chatted up, I'd just make it clear I'm not gay. Problem solved.

Instead of shooting out a reaction formed entirely from your intellect, while sitting at a keyboard: go do it first, then come back and tell us if you think the problem was solved by a simple "no thanks."

The gay bar scenario is telling -- males can be very aggressive, and simultaneously, willfully oblivious to "back off" signals. Your polite request for privacy and unwelcoming body language might protect you from, say, 90% of approachers. The remainder can be very overt and dominating in their attempts.

So yeah, if you're so confident that you've solved the problems of every attractive woman, everywhere: try it out.

Obviously problems happen. Personally I don't care to be approached, generally, and I think it's better than being afraid of everybody. I've been approached by gay men and didn't suffer any trauma. I don't mean there cannot be psychos out there, but if you assume anyone who checks you out or looks you up in the net to be a stalker, I think that's completely over the top and that kind of paranoid attitude will cause more harm than good.

Have you done what you suggested would be a quick way to solve the stated problem? If not, then we're still dealing with your rectally-sourced speculation.

Additionally, what you're offering is like me -- suppose I live in a nice house in the hills -- going down to the ghetto and asking why people bother locking their doors at night and putting bars on their windows. I don't do any of those things and I don't have a problem with home-invasion roberries -- why are all these people so paranoid and afraid!?

Put another way: you would have no clue if, say, you were riding a bus full of predators, because you are not prey -- a woman more likely would.

I could type an entire essay here explaining how and why women have different motivations and risk profiles than you, but I doubt you would respond with anything more thoughtful than "obviously, problems happen." Instead of speculating as to why you might be so obtuse here -- I would guess it's because you are resentful of the seemingly inconsistent and inexplicable behavior of women -- let me just offer this: stop fixating on how things should be and start understanding things as they are now.

This is really no different than entrepreneurs bitching about how risk-adverse investors are, and how they won't respond to 99% of cold calls, even if only to politely decline. Or how investors vastly prefer known founders, even when they have been previously burnt by them, rather than taking risks on unknown quantities. But at the end of the day, investors have the money and women have the vaginas, so they make the rules and they don't have to be fair, scrutable, rational or consistent -- they only have to be advantageous.

I'm talking about a very particular case and you are pestering me with sweeping generalisations.

Each one should make his or her own risk assessment. I was talking about dismissing people from your environment who look up your public information as stalkers.

The problem is that the "harm" that can happen can be terrible terrible harm. Some gay (or other LGBT people) can be literally killed if the wrong person approaches them. There is an element of danger that straight cis men rarely are able to notice.

Stop trying to tell marginalized groups that they are silly to be worried. We know our own lives and our own experiences. We've seen the odd stare or remark someone has made. We all worry that sometimes this person will go very far. Work on reducing the amount of hatred that spewed out by some groups which encouraged the people that attack us.

I've been to a lot of gay bars over the years, and I have never had a problem once I've made it clear I'm not gay. This may be in part that I've grown up having a lot of gay friends, plus I'm quite a confident and friendly person. I know quite a few confident women (not arrogant) and they never seem to have any problems with being harassed by men.

Now imagine 90%+ of bars was a gay bar and saying "I'm straight" won't work. This is similar to what women will face. Apples and Oranges.

After all if a woman says the same ("I'm a lesbian"), often that'll encourage some idiots.

And sometimes there are loads of "straight" men in gay bars. Why do you think many lonely heart / hook up ads some gay men will say that they cannot accommodate (the sexytimes in their house)? They don't want the wife or girlfriend to see. :P

I'm not sure if you're missing the point willfully or accidentally, but you are either way. No one should have to expect to be sleazed onto if they're at a bar.

The weird/stalkery part of it is checking them out extensively on Facebook first instead of just talking to them.

If I was a girl in college and a classmate did that first I think I'd be a bit weirded out that he felt the need to try to come up with interests to talk about in advance instead of just starting up a conversation and finding out stuff about me.

But there's a lot of social conditioning in this—like, if I was a guy in college, and a girl did that to me, I'd be more understanding because girls in the US generally aren't encouraged to cold-approach guys in the first place, and so it would be cool for it to happen, period.

You can pretend to have shared interests at first regardless of how you find out about the other person's interests, so it's not restricted solely to that sort of creepiness, but it still feels like an awfully roundabout way of talking to someone you want to talk to compared to just talking to them.

Doesn't everyone invite everyone to stalk everyone now by putting their information everywhere online? Stalking your crush is the original purpose of Facebook according to that movie.

The main thing e-stalking reveals is how interested the guy is, and maybe how smooth he is (smooth guys don't do as much research, or they know how to hide it better). So if he brings up the horses, she knows he's into her and maybe a little awkward, but it doesn't tell her he's definitely a psycho- she'll probably judge his weirdness from his appearance and manner.

The creepiness of normal stalking depends on how attractive the target finds the stalker. If you're a hot, rich, 100 year old vampire, you can watch a girl sleep every night for months and she'll think it's awesome (but the vampire didn't admit he was doing it until after they were dating).

If he realized "horseback riding" was the key she'd used to encrypt all her passwords, then that'd be a serious red flag. So there's certainly a point where stalking becomes creepy no matter how hot you are, but looking at someone's Facebook profile isn't it.

I'm not denying stalking exists. I'm just saying that her "stalking detector" is utter nonsense.

Someone who knows enough about you to find you online (knows your name, has seen you, has probably said hi to you) actually saw you online either by searching or by FB suggestions, and saw the part of the profile that you left public. So far nothing stalky about this. This is just someone who wants to know more about you or wants to strike a conversation with you.

Now, if this was a complete stranger who followed you to your locker to find out your name, has it tattooed in his or her butt, slept in his or her car outside of your house, etc, then yeah that's pretty fucked up.

But the fact that people look up what you make public about you isn't stalking. Looks to me like someone with a precious princess complex. Checking on someone's FB and not directly admitting is normal if there's not much confidence, as in not enough to actually send a friend request. Trying to avoid awkwardness is completely human.

Well, it's not a big investment in time to check out somebodies Facebook profile. Besides you might not have an opportunity to talk to them face to face right away.

Besides if you check out somebody you might like and find that they are into Scientology or extreme right wing politics or whatever you might reconsider asking them out in the first place.

What is the point of having interests listed on Facebook?

It's so that people can discover things you have in common that may not have come up in your conversations.

That's why it's there at all.

Well, that and better ad targeting, but they sell it to us for the reason above.

As reddit puts it: if you are handsome it's "so sweet", if you are ugly it's stalking.

As typical of reddit: sounds clever, but ultimately shallow. And obviously written by nerdy boys.

The real world is far more complicated. I'm sure most girls would agree that less attractive gents can be considered "so sweet" and handsome gents can definitely be creepy.

Sure, but it's much more difficult.

I have a friend who is quite unattractive, women seem to get creeped out by him if he so much as sits near them.

Yes, but this is the internet where words take on nuanced meanings. Back when I was visiting colleges (pre-FB), there was a school that had a social network that was very similar to the early Facebook. Looking for possible dates on there was referred to e-stalking. And since Facebook has taken off, I've heard the word used in the same context fairly often.

As with all pre-mating rituals (both new and tech-based and old and non-tech-based) someone looking you up on a social network is simply part of the game if the person is attractive to you. If they are unattractive to you, it is [e-]stalking.

And for some people, someone looking you up online so that they can "casually" steer an initial conversation to a pre-researched interest is itself a signal that makes that person less attractive to them.

EDIT: I've known otherwise-attractive guys who've done things like that and provoked "creepy" as a reaction; I've known otherwise-attractive girls who've done similar things and provoked "desperate" as a reaction.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but in general the further you get past just talking to mutual friends for "research" the more you're risking coming off bad. The real trick is trying without looking like you're trying. "I dunno, fly casual."

The thing that gets lost in all these attempts to come off good initially is that just being able to talk to someone entirely off-the-cuff and carry a conversation is a very valuable skill—one that's worth practicing!

It can come off as creepy if you know a lot about a person, but that doesn't necessarily just come from FB stalking.

For example I have a friend who has an extremely good long term memory , he can recall the smallest details about the most insignificant events and conversations that happened many many years ago. He also basically carries an encyclopaedia of trivia around in his brain.

He eventually learned that he had to pretend to be dumber and more forgetful to avoid being thought of as creepy and pedantic.

Ha! My wife has this problem.

She was teaching (as a grad student) and realized on the first day of class that she already knew the names of almost all of the students in the class, and little bits about them, from random encounters (like "I was sitting behind those two on the bus a few months ago").

She pretended to be learning their names, anyway, because that's just way too creepy, as you said.

Her memory serves her well in life; she writes fiction. She's also really useful for me to have around -- I have a terrible memory for data I'm not actively using (possibly due to lots of general anesthesia as a kid...), so she remembers tons of things for both of us.

Certainly YMMV greatly on these things. Speaking for myself, if someone simply looks up public information on the net about someone else they are interested in, that's pretty normal and anyone who claims to have never done it is likely full of shit (or very old).

The creepiness comes in depending upon how they use that information. If they use it to lie and suggest their interests are aligned in ways they aren't or in other deceptive ways then yeah that's creepy but in a way that is actually independent of the so-called "e-stalking". It would still be creepy if they learned the information they used from a friend or whatever other old-school method.

If, on the other hand, the person sees on Facebook that you're a huge fan of some hobby and they too are actually a huge fan of some hobby and they mention that, I don't see that as being creepy at all, but again YMMV.

To some extent, yes of course. But I think one consequence of this kind of easy to access information is the term has become much less pejorative.

So you would want men to look up your interests online so they can intentionally deceive you by pretending they like the same things? Even if you don't consider it creepy, it doesn't sound like the basis of a strong relationship.

The point of posting your interests online would be to attract other people with similar interests. That girl was anticipated a stalker, but what she got was most probably a perfectly normal guy who checked her out beforehand to ensure compatibility.

He was probably a perfectly normal guy, but I doubt that he checked her out to "ensure compatibility." It is perfectly normal for young men to pretend that they are interested in things which they aren't in order to attract a girl's attention. Maybe some of the guys who approached her were genuinely interested in horses, but the majority probably just wanted to give a good impression.

There's nothing wrong with trying to give someone a good impression, but when you research someone's hobbies so you can feign interest in them, you are starting your relationship off on the wrong foot. If you can't be yourself around someone, then things probably aren't going to work out anyways.