The end of every semester marks the rebirth of my virtual stanning self a.k.a. that version of me which does not sleep, eat, and what-else in order to stalk-fangirl over the interweb. While the rest of my colleagues prepare for a well deserved break, I start with a grueling regimen of 24/7 cyberspace stanning. Stanning comes from the word stan (but of course) which means stalker-fan. It is an act of pure, unadulterated obsession over Perfect Creatures (a.k.a. biases mentioned by another blogger in this class).
Virtual stanning is both an art and a discipline. It requires a certain degree of Boolean logic in order to come across the right Google hit words and an undying commitment to stay in front of the computer no matter what. The world may end but your stanning session should not, that level of commitment. A stan’s civic duties include following who should be followed, liking what should be liked, reserving an infinitesimal amount of memory space for thousands of gifs etc, and tweeting in ALL CAPS to tell the Perfect Creatures how they are the air that you breathe.
In the world of virtual stanning, everything is just AFGHSGFKLY-worthy. It is a happy place so imagine my horror when I heard that my alter-life is being threatened by the new cyberspace stalking bill being developed by Congress. What is frustration.
But no, this is exactly what my legal education prepared me for: to defend my obsession. It is arguable that stanning can sometimes be harassing. But let me delineate it from cyber stalking in the most obvious manner I deem fit: stanning involves public figures while cyber stalking involves private individuals serious about their constitutional right to privacy. If the object of the stanning is a non-celebrity, it makes the act less stanning and more of cyberspace stalking.
I agree that cyber stalking should be made a crime. But stanning? Leave my happy place alone please.
Regine Tenorio; Entry # 2
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