Lurking

-by Dan Bruun

A few years ago a young boy from my neighborhood approached me and asked me what a lurker was. Apparently he had overheard some of the neighborhood gossip about me and was wondering what this lurking thing was that everyone kept talking about.

I was faced with a bit of a dilemma. I knew I was a bit of a role model for this kid. He would always come out and sit on the curb and watch me when I was riding my skateboard in front of our houses. He would sometimes ask me questions like, Have you ever met Santa Claus? I did not want to lie to the kid about who I was and what lurking was. I felt like the kid had asked an honest question and did not deserve to be jerked around. At the same time, I felt like the boy (he was about 7) would definitely start to lurk if I explained to him exactly what it was.

Now I don’t think there is anything intrinsically wrong with a 7 year-old boy lurking on other seven year-old girls on the playground or wherever. In fact I think that its pretty cool. What I worry about is the way our society teaches us from the very youngest of ages that lurking is weird and that people that do are not normal. I did not want to start this kid down a path of being an outsider. Its much easy to become a lurker, like I did, in your early twenties when you can pass it off as a joke to your friends or possibly even as something cool, unique, and eccentric about you that most people just don’t understand. When you’re a kid, its much harder to convince your peers that lurking is cool, and your bound to get labeled as the guy in the class that is most likely to end up as molester. So to protect the kid’s future, I lied. I told him that lurking is when you make farting noises with your armpit. I don’t feel good about it, but at least now he has a skill that will get him respect from his classmates. I just hope that I made the right decision.

Dan Bruun is a freelance writer and world renowned lurker. He has lived and lurked all over North America, Italy and Great Britain. He has never had formal charges pressed against him and advocates a safe, low impact style of lurking which distinguishes him from the mainstream of the North American school.