Wes launches Facebook Competitor

"Being a Stalker"

Well guys, in an unprecedented feat, Wesleyan has thrown itself onto the forefront of progress on these internets.  Instead of outsourcing to Google, we’ve beat them to the punch.  Google has been trying to craft a Facebook competitor, and everyone knows Facebook serves one and only purpose: stalking.  If you want to talk with people, you can just go to the ACB and be a homophobic, antisemitic misogynist even though you’re a female-bodied queer Jew in real life.  Or maybe you could interact with people in real life (yeah right, bro).  The Wesleyan version cuts to the chase, giving you a picture of the person and where to find them.

We’ve always had the stalker guide, but on September 15th, it’ll be new and improved!  Based on Dean Culliton’s email this morning (let’s not kill the messenger), let’s look at the pros and cons:

+  It includes campus/local addresses, so you can find out where that guy you made out with against the wall on Psi U (and never spoke to you again) lives this year.

– That creepy kid who sits on his WestCo balcony with a joint and watches you sneak from Olin to Late Night and hears your obnoxiously loud hag screaming your full name will be able to find you.

+  It also includes home addresses, so you can find your mystery man over winter and summer breaks and casually run into him a few times a week, even though he lives in Texas and you live in New York.

– You guessed it.  When you finally go home to make a shrine about your mystery man, that creepy kid will be waiting.

+ WesCard photos are going to let you figure out who’s the hottest chick in class when your professor emails the whole class before the semester begins.

– And they’re also going to let her decide you’re too ugly to bother with.

And this is just the new information that’s going to be available.  Don’t forget the lovely phone information that was already on the online directory, and allowed the Argus to hunt you down.

The email does state, “directory settings are automatically set to exclude the new data elements. You will need to select which directory information you would like to show in the on-line directory. You have the discretion to change your privacy settings at any time.”  I love the ability to control all my data.  Just like on Facebook.

There’s some missing features though, like an iOS/Android/BB/WP7 app that identifies people by their image and tells you their real time location.

To be honest, much of this information was already available on printed stalker guides that everyone called a waste of paper and then hid under their beds.  It’s nothing really new.  So, what are you going to make available?