I’m looking at you.

Not you, guy playing Angry Birds on your iPhone. Or you, girl failing miserably at today’s Sudoku puzzle. You distract me, but I can tolerate you.

I’m looking at YOU — Facebookers in classrooms everywhere.

So is everyone sitting behind you.

Melissa Buckman

Professors go on and on about how distracting Internet usage is to other students in class. They might make laptop users sit elsewhere to protect the attention spans of others.

But let’s face it.

If there’s an open, powered computer in front of a student, chances are someone’s on Facebook — regardless of the computer-use policy outlined in the syllabus.

What’s more, chances are that person is Facebook stalking.

Of course, the term “stalking” can be used lightly. It doesn’t take much activity on the beloved ‘Book to make a person look a bit too interested in another’s weekend shenanigans.

That curiosity doesn’t make someone restraining order-level creepy, per se. But it does grant them a level of creepiness so intense it lingers in the souls of those seated behind the active browser.

I’ve noticed many breeds of Facebook creeps — with a variety of different strategies. And I’ve come to a few conclusions.

If someone is searching for a specific non-friend and combing through their available information — he’s a resourceful Facebook creep.

If a girl is reading the entire wall-to-wall between some frat star and another girl — she’s probably a stage-5-clinger Facebook creep.

If a fellow student happens to look through all 56 default pictures of someone I know — he’s a six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon Facebook creep. And no, his secret is not safe with me.

It’s not that I try to judge every person who logs into the website that is the bane of interpersonal communication as we know it.

I — along with many others — simply get sucked into whatever “research” the person in front of me is doing. I’m invading their privacy. And yet, I’m uncomfortably interested in the user whose profile beckons my attention.

But as much as I ridicule public Facestalkers, I still want to help them mend their ways.

I’ve been there.

And during the lowest of my public creeping lows, I had an epiphany: using this site is a science. But I think I’ve almost mastered it.

Allow me to offer you some helpful steps to avoid creepiness.

Step one  — the mini-feed is all you need. Staying on the homepage and doing your recon from there keeps you within the boundaries of people you already know.

Step two — dim your screen and tilt it back a bit.

Step three — your body position is key. Hover over your laptop. That way, you’re boxing out the potential voyeurs — while doing the looking yourself.

With these steps, you’ll be safe.

I know I am.

So yeah, I’m that Quasimodo-positioned ginger with the dim Macbook Pro — but at least I’m not that redheaded girl from your journalism class who opened your roommates’ friendship page right before your eyes.

That seems like a fair trade to me.

It’s important to set the creeping standard to a minimum. I’ve been moderately successful thus far, and I sincerely hope fellow students heed my advice.

But if the general need to openly Facebook stalk persists, I suppose I wouldn’t mind students choosing my profile as a scapegoat.

They could read my publicly advertised blog at their own convenience. I could definitely use the Social Network-ing celebrity.

Oh, right… I mean… scratch that. Ignore me. Pay attention in class!

— Melissa Buckman is a senior from Alpharetta majoring in publication management and film studies