Lurkers' Anonymous

Hi, my name is Thora, and I lurk on other's blogs. People who don't even know me. And I like it. Even worse, I have no real intention of stopping.

Now, I don't randomly surf the net, looking for other blogs to read all the live-long day, but I will occasionally follow links on my friend's websites, and the blog will happen to be so interesting/funny/applicable to my own life that return to it; sometimes often, sometimes only once a month, but read I do.

I've always felt somewhat guilty in this, which is funny, in a way, because I've always liked the idea of random people reading my blog; it makes me feel famous, or well-known, or something, even if they did only come to look up if eating corned beef while pregnant is safe. (The vast majority of Google inquiries that end up at my blog are looking up some form of this very question, because of my corned beef post of several months ago, I suppose. My answer to all of those people is that of course it's safe, if you're eating American corned beef that's a proper beef brisket. If you're eating it out of a can, it's never safe, no matter who you are).

But you never know when someone feels very private about their blog (which of course leads to the question of why they put it on the Internet for the whole world to see if they care to), and would be offended by my lurking. I never post comments on these other blogs, because I don't wand to be the cause of offense, and I always hope that unlike me they don't have Google Statistics, and can't tell that someone from Oxfordshire visits them often. (I do love having Google Statistics; it lets me know all sorts of not really useful things, like 12 times "Yarnton Manor" has been entered into Google, and then led to my blog).

Then this very week, my favorite (unknown) blog to read asked who was reading their blog from Oxfordshire. I felt very ashamed, but of course I promptly wrote a comment and assured them I wasn't a terrorist (they were concerned on this fact; for one thing this blog author is a better updater than most of my linked blogs combined, and so I check it every day or so, so it did have certain unsettling stalker-like tendencies), and that I wouldn't read their blog anymore if they didn't want me to.

I felt so embarrassed at being caught lurking that I almost thought of giving up my secret habit then and there. But then the author of the blog wasn't concerned at all that I was reading it, just grateful that I wasn't a wacko (my word). So now the lurkings continue.

I've long wondered if there are others out there like me. Surely among my many readers, known and unknown, there are those who enjoy reading about someone's life that they have never, or only very peripherally met. If so, step forward and let me know, and we can start a lurkers' anonymous together.