I Can’t Stop Googling People

Digital intimacy is no substitute for IRL connection.

Kristin Wong
4 min readMay 31, 2021
Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

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…

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Kristin Wong
Kristin Wong

Written by Kristin Wong

Kristin Wong has written for the New York Times, The Cut, Catapult, The Atlantic and ELLE.