Don't know, don't care

I saw a commercial for a search website the other day. A woman was sitting on the couch with her laptop. While surfing the web, she clicked on something and suddenly discovered that several people were searching for her. Her face instantly lit up and she exclaimed something to the effect of: "All of these people are searching for me? Wow!"

Wow indeed. You have a bunch of stalkers.

Okay okay, not all people who search for someone are necessarily stalkers. We've all probably been guilty of googling folks, unbeknownst to them.

Interestingly though, there are a quite few websites that search for those who are searching for you:

http://www.whoissearchingforme.com/
http://people411search.com/
http://who-me.com/

Honestly though, I don't think I would ever sign up for that kind of search service. I don't want to know if people are searching for me. I don't care if it's an ex-boyfriend, some guy I had a huge crush on in high school, an old friend I lost touch with, or someone from the missed connections page from Craigslist. If they are important to me, I am already in touch with them.

Which brings me to an interesting thing I just learned. I was on LinkedIn, just checking up on my contacts, when I decided to view my profile. On the lower right hand corner of my profile page, there was a box that read, "Viewers of this profile also viewed..." and listed other random people who may or may not be connected to me.

I then saw a name that looked strange to me. I clicked on it, and it was obviously a fabricated LinkedIn page (zero connections, nonsensical name, fake employer name). However, I saw just enough clues to realize who it was: Some crazy dude I had a fling with years ago.

Now, perhaps, it was some random third party who happened to view my profile and this other fake profile. But remembering how crazy the guy was back then, I knew better. He had created a fake profile and was looking at my profile.

Needless to say, it freaked me out just a little. In terms of level of freaked-out-ness, it wasn't quite the "Oh crap, I'm pregnant!"-level, but closer to the "Oh crap, I left my passport on the airplane"-level. Harmless, nothing life-altering, but creepy nonetheless.

The question is, why create this fake profile, only to plant those clues for me to see? He picked a fake name that was eerily similar to his name. And the fake employer name was also a permutation of his employer's name. So instead of "Bill Gates" working at "Microsoft," it said "Williamford Tages" working at "Macroshaft." If he wanted to completely hide his identity, why didn't he make it "John Smith" working at "Smith, Inc."? What would it accomplish to give me clues that he was searching for me? And why is he looking me up years later?

It's a little creepy because the flingship ended pretty badly -- lots of drama, lots of hard feelings, lots of third parties getting involved, which bloomed into more drama. To this day, it remains a black mark on my permanent dating record.

So, seriously, this -- [insert vehement hand-gesturing] -- is why I don't need to know if someone is searching for me. Because it raises all of these unanswerable questions. Questions I don't want to think about. Questions I don't want to know the answers to.

Which leads me to my next point: Don't you wish you could take all the people you dated in the past, and transport them into another dimension where you would never have to see (or worry about seeing) them again? This is a little more humane than hoping they were all dead. They would all be unscathed, but in a separate universe where you would be completely unbothered from eery LinkedIn search results, Facebook friend suggestions, or accidental/misdialed phone calls.

I know the universe does not revolve around me, but if it did and I were omnipotent, that would be one of the first tweaks I'd make to existence. (God, if you are listening, this is a hint.)