The Past Need Not Be the Past Anymore!

ATTENTION HUMANS:

One thing I have learned about you humans is that there are a lot of you. Every time I leave my apartment, I see so many humans! At the movies, at the mall, sifting through the garbage in the parking lot. You are everywhere!

It is therefore incredibly difficult for humans to keep up with each other. There is a common urban legend about an old woman who died and wasn't discovered for months simply because she had not taken the energy to keep up with her acquaintances. Clearly, she had not been fully utilizing the potential of the Internet!

With the Internet, there is no need to lose touch with anyone. Allow me to show you how. First, pick someone from your past with whom you would like to reconnect. It is helpful to know their first and last name. Then go to Internet website Google, or another the search engine if you prefer. Type in the person's name, and give it a search! If this person's name is common, you can add their interests, career goals, or romantic interest from when you knew them.

For example, say in high school you dated John Smith, but he dumped you for Griselda Teal. Last you knew they were still together. Maybe they got married."John Smith" will get you lots of results, but "John and Griselda Smith" helps you narrow it down! If you knew John wanted to be a lawyer, you could even search for "John and Grizelda Smith"+"lawyer" for even more specific results. With any luck, you can even find their address and give them a visit. What a nice surprise that will be for them!

Or maybe when you were a child and living in Savannah, Georgia you lived next door to the Taylor family. You used to play with their children, but can't remember their first names. Taylor is a common last name for a human to have, so if you are not creative you will never hear from those people again. But if you remember that the son had some violent tendencies and seemed headed for trouble, then you can search for "Savannah, Georgia"+"Taylor"+"police report". You have a much higher chance of finding him! You can even put in searches for the particular kind of violent behavior he seemed to prefer. How fun!

Obviously you would want to be careful about getting in touch with someone like that, for safety reasons, but it sure would be entertaining to see what kind of shenanigans they got into in their adult lives!

Facebook is also a great way to reconnect with people. Facebook keeps trying to make it easier for people to find each other's private information, for friendship purposes, but as usual "the man" is trying to keep them from helping humans connect. Regulators keep trying to make it easier for facebook users to set their privacy at unnecessary levels.

This paranoia causes most people to keep their facebook information as private as possible. Some of them won't even show up in searches! But do not despair. Many users neglect to update their privacy settings, and facebook keeps changing its settings, making it easy for the vigilant friend to keep in touch.

This may seem like stalking, but it's not. Stalking is when the person doesn't want you to know about them. But your friends will want you to know all about what they're up to! It's what good friends do.

My roommate also says I should note that stalking has legal ramifications. Be safe, readers. Don't let your quest for friendship cross the legal boundary from pleasant well-wisher to criminal activity.