Adventures in Internet Dating, REDUX

So lately, my OKCupid profile has been languishing. I've been in full-blown hermit mode, spending my evenings snuggled into my (brand-new, absolutely beautiful, and far-too-expensive) sheets (from anthropologie) with Netflix and hard cider. (I'm twelve episodes into the first season of Roswell. Also, The Man Who Cried is currently streaming, and I highly recommend everyone out there watch it. It's a gorgeous little gem of a movie that was terribly under-advertised and under-rated, probably because it was directed by a woman, but it is intense and beautiful and it has a great cast.)

But my profile is active and everything, so I still get email notifications of certain kinds of things, and I totally got an email when this guy that's friends with this guy that I maybe kissed a lot a month ago was checking out my profile.

I may have laughed inappropriately loudly and for an unacceptable length of time.

But it did get me to go back to the site to see what else had been up lately, and WOW. Apparently, September is the month where people scope the dating site profiles of people they peripherally know in real life.

Stop it, people. YOU ARE CREEPING ME OUT. Also making me feel like a loser. Why do I have a profile on OKCupid again? Weeks like this, I forget. Seriously. Why do I? All I want to do is lie in bed and watch Netflix. And I am not going to invite some random internet stranger over to do that with me. I mean, real talk, I've had entire relationships during which I wouldn't have invited the person I was dating over to do that. Netflix in bed is serious business. Netflix in bed is more or less the absolute pinnacle of intimacy.

But OKC. Right. It's a little disconcerting to look at my visitors list and see so many familiar faces. I mean, it's funny and all for about 30 seconds and then I rapidly go into a shame spiral for even having the damn profile to begin with, and then I become concerned that these familiar faces might want to sleep with me, and then I get all nervous and all it does is reinforce my decision to become an agoraphobic hermit shut-in who watches Netflix in bed every night.

I'm sure in a week, when my extroverted tendencies have again conquered my introverted tendencies (I am constantly at war with myself, it's really unpleasant) and I'm all social butterfly again, I will be flattered by all these creepers. But right now, I'm just weirded out.

P.S.- You should probably keep a throw-away OKC profile with no pictures so you can scope out your friends and your friends' friends without causing existential meltdowns in the people you're checking up on. I mean, I totally understand curiousity, I'm more curious than a cat that's only got one life left, but really. A little courtesy, here. It's the internet. You can TOTALLY BE ANONYMOUS if you just put a little effort into it.