An acquaintance’s blog recently featured an unusual post that was, essentially, a direct message to a person who was stalking the blogger. The blogger has removed the post, though he did send an email to me about the story.

So, when does it become stalking?

I never know. I jokingly throw that word around a lot. I mean, internet stalking could just as well be regular readers, the only difference being if they creep you out or not.

I suppose, when you find yourself Googling a person and trying to find out all kinds of information, where they live — things beyond what they provide on a blog, for example — that might be delving into stalking.

I have had a few instances in the past where I’ve snapped and said “enough!” in regards to what a reader was doing. But…what is it, really? Stalking, I mean, on the internet.

There seem to be different kinds of “stalkers” of blogs. There are those that mean well and somehow want to help you and just get all up in your life. There are those who start to think they are the only reader, a kind of ownership of you, that you’re talking directly to them. There are those that want to be “in” on the secret or something. Writing a blog like this one, where I talk about life in general and give off the perception that I’m your best friend or that you really know me, probably confuses the issue more than if I were just poli-blogging. Hence, my ever-growing and admonishing blog EULA.(Which comes off a bit sharp, but comes from past experiences over the years of blogging.)

The key to all of it and where it stems from, I’m thinking, is that the person who doesn’t know you feels that he or she does. And then, they carry that just past the line of being OK and just reading and following the blog into the real-life land of trying to get into your life somehow, uninvited.

Reading a blog is the invited part. Beyond that is sketchy, I suppose. Sometimes, I connect with readers (and fellow bloggers) and we become friends. Sometimes a reader is a friend I know from “real” life. Other times, a regular reader is still just a reader.

I’m formulating a few new additions to the giant tome that is my blog EULA involving a policy not striking up quasi-romantic relationships with anyone I initially meet via my blog because, as I discussed with my friend Naomi, it isn’t fair to me, nor wise in my own personal judgment. I would put it there for myself (as a reminder) as much as anyone else. The thing is, I don’t think it would happen if a person met me at the grocery store, for example, but merely the medium of the internet and blogging and the web site and the ability to check in on someone and “peep” on them creates a kind of elevated picture that isn’t at all accurate. As I say on the blog EULA, I’m pretty average and normal and unexceptional. The filter of the computer screen sometimes negates that common truth about everyone.

So, stalking. I never know for sure, but I tend to all of a sudden feel uncomfortable with a situation or a realization and that’s when I know it’s gone from enthusiastic reader and entered into creepy-land.