I Can’t Stop Googling People
Digital intimacy is no substitute for IRL connection.
I Google people from my past the way day traders check their stocks. Which is to say, obsessively. I search for childhood friends. I hunt down old teachers. Former coworkers, too — anyone whose name I can remember. Some of them have children or have moved across the country or have started their own businesses. One night before bed, I take out my phone and Google an old college professor who had blazing white curls and a cynical but kind personality — sort of like an edgy Mr. Rogers. Surely, someone like that must have done something fascinating with his life. When I type his name into my phone’s search bar, it appears in a news headline. Local professor falls down a flight of stairs in his townhome and dies. Peering through the window of his front door, friends find him there in the morning. I shut off my phone and slide it under my pillow. Sometimes the things you find online are a chilling reminder of how ordinary tragedy can be. Which makes it all the more chilling.
Our identities are laid bare and condensed into tidy narratives: The story of us.
It’s only natural to Google. It’s strange to see a person every day then never see them again, for no other reason than you graduated or got a new job…
