Problems with Preeing - Why it's actually slightly worrying

You have 20 minutes to find out as much as you can about a random stranger. If the Internet was your only resource, how much do you think you could find...?

This entry is ambitious. I'm hesitant writing it and I've deleted it and started again almost a dozen times. Perhaps it's because I am myself guilty of excessive preeing on multiple occasions, or maybe it's the fact that many of you won't see preeing as a necessary topic of discussion, since it doesn't really harm anyone; either way, I'll give it a go.

This week I was 'binging' the heavily commended hit US crime-drama 'Mr Robot', winner of the 2016 Golden Globe for 'Best Drama Television Series'. While the show is predominantly in its infancy with just 10 episodes released, it has already covered a vast range of modern day issues, causing me to think deeply, perhaps in excess, about the virtual society we live in today. I'll take the same approach to this piece as Sam Esmail did when creating the show: This is merely food for thought...

The Positives

First off, let's actually discuss why preeing is possibly one of the most useful Internet concepts of the 21st century. On a serious note, it makes it simple and easy to identify whether someone is who they say they are, limiting the risks of catfishing and scamming. It's not difficult to recognise if the person behind the screen is real, as long as you ask yourself these key questions:

1. Do they constantly post on and update Twitter/Facebook just like the average person?

2. Do they upload Snapchat stories?

3. Do they use profile pictures?

4. How realistic is their Instagram/other photo uploads? Let's be honest, if they never upload pictures of themselves, or they upload clearly edited pictures of models and claim it's them... They're not who they say they are.

On another note, and I hope I speak on behalf of most teenagers (else this will probably stain your view of me), preeing is absolutely essential for determining someone's appearance. While there are a frequent cases of deceit and manipulation on Instagram, with filters and angles, preeing someone on more than one form of social media helps us to create a well-formed, detailed mental image of what someone genuinely looks like. (Sidenote - never, ever solely judge someone by their Instagram - that's criminal). And if you're one of those people having a moan at me for judging someone just by their appearance on social media - Twitter is genuinely a good way to judge someone's personality.  

Why it's worrying...

Ponder on how much effort you really need to put in to 'pree'. When you peek into someone's private life online, how hard is it for you to dig deeper? When I think about it, if I was given 10-20 minutes, I could find out where someone lives, where they go to school, what their hobbies are, who their friends are, where they ate dinner last week, what music they like - I could do all that in 20 minutes. And unless you lack basic computer skills, so could you. Be honest.

so awkward when you meet someone you've stalked and don't know whether to play it cool or ask if they enjoyed dubai in 2011.

— carlos (@b0redinbucks) November 1, 2015

Okay, at the end of the day 999/1000 cases of preeing are harmless. But the other week someone was trying to find the location of a party and I offered to help. The only tool I had: The host's Instagram. Truth be told I failed to find the location of the party and ultimately didn't succeed, but I did manage to find his ex-girlfriend's house, his dad's house and 3 places he went on holiday in the last 4 years...

Thankfully, I'm no online groomer, so I didn't do anything with the information I found; nonetheless, you surely get the point. If anyone ever had serious, threatening motives, analysing someone's online footprint would lead them straight to vitally important information.

The frightening anonymity of our 'preers'

In the modern day, every single on of us has built up an online clone of ourselves, which makes us increasingly at risk. Every online bank account, Facebook profile, Twitter page, Instagram feed, Tinder, Tumblr, Vine, LinkedIn etc. adds to our online footprint. The fact is that the more websites we subscribe to, the more Tweets we post, messages we send, pictures we add, the more and more detail we add to our online personas. By existing in the online world, we scarily make ourselves more vulnerable than ever before. All it takes is one password for your entire world to unravel, think about that. 

"Real? You wanna talk about reality?
We haven't lived in anything remotely close to it since the turn of the century"

It's true, we live in an online, virtual world. You're essentially communicating we me right at this moment by reading my article. You can take that a step further and turn my message to you into a conversation, by commenting.  But before commenting, let it occur to you that everything you comment on nowadays is realistically a public conversation. If you were to comment, anyone in the world with access to the Internet will see what you said about my post, and there are almost 3 billion Internet users worldwide. Imagine that, one click of a button and 41.9% of the world's population can read what you said. Crazy, isn't it?

What am I trying to tell you?

Honestly, this post has no moral substance. I'm not telling you to take courses in Internet safety so that my friends don't crash your party, I'm not saying you're all vulnerable to paedophiles and rapists and I'm certainly not implying that we should all shut down our various forms of social media. No, that would be pointless because no matter how many times we are told about the problems of the Internet, it's simply too entertaining to stay away from. Really, I should be writing a history essay right now, but instead I'm scrolling through Twitter because watching 45 angles of fan footage of Liverpool fans fighting Man United fans is thoroughly enjoyable. 

So no, don't take this article any more seriously than I mean it. It's food for thought, something interesting and relatable. My ideas all sparked from Mr Robot, and I began this article by talking about the show, so it seems fitting that I end in similar fashion: The following clip gives you an insight into the show, and it sticks with the topic of my discussion today. So sit back and enjoy 71 seconds of pirated TV:

Oh and by the way, it goes without saying that Mr Robot is a stroke of television genius which I thoroughly recommend watching. Rated 8.8 on IMDb and with 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, you know it's got to be good.

Synopsis: 'Young, anti-social, morphine addict Elliot Alderson works as a cybersecurity engineer during the day, but at night he is a vigilante. He is recruited by the mysterious leader of an underground group of hackers who strive to take down the heads of multinational companies that he believes are running -- and ruining -- the world.'