Facebook Photo Stalker

I've said it before and I'll say it again- a picture tells a thousand words. And nothing can be more true than on Facebook. Being able to get a glimpse into an old friend or frenemy's life without any actual interaction provides a thrill like no other. Maybe it's the voyeur in me but this is actually the ill-fated reason I joined Facebook in the first place.

Learning that Michelle- the girl from high school who had cheetos stuck in her braces everyday after lunch- was married with twins was surreal. Seeing that Julie married someone other than her high school sweetheart and that Melissa was her maid of honor (I can't believe they're still friends!) was astonishing. A photo of John with his new husband helped explain a lot. But in order to see anything more than a profile pic, you actually have to "friend" these people- something my ego would never allow me to do.

My sister has no problem with this concept and is constantly friending people she hated in high school just so she can gain access to their inner sanctum and scrutinize their most precious memories displayed for all their "friends" to see. My boyfriend is on the opposite end of the spectrum where he doesn't care enough to look at other people's photos.

Well neither of these two options satisfied my morbid curiosity. That is until now. Facebook recently launched Photo Stalker, a new application that allows you to see the photos of users who have left their photo album security on the default setting of "everyone." Most people unknowingly leave their photos open to "everyone" assuming that everyone means all their friends when in fact in means the entire Facebook population. The Photo Stalker software is the only way to pull up photos that are posted to "everyone."

Apparently there are a lot of prideful Voyeurs out there. So far Photo Stalker has attracted about 2,000 users since it was introduced in February.

To access photos of people not on your "friend" list, all you need to do is enter their name, Facebook ID # or url into the application and bam- you're in! Now I can see pics of my 4th grade ex-best friend's husband or my college ex-boyfriend's wife. The entertainment is endless! And each picture will cause me to feel increasingly nauseous as I compare my life and achievements to that of people I haven't seen or spoken to in years. But isn't the the sadomasocistic point of Facebook?