Photolurking

battery-like
Haliyana Khalid and Alan Dix at Lancaster University have developed this idea of photolurking to describe that addictive habit of looking through the pictorial ephemera of strangers’ lives which seems to go along with the more upfront social networking made possible by Flickr. It seems to add another dimension to the way in which we position ourselves in relation to others. I found this in the rather light-hearted exploration of ‘modern maladies’ in this article. Some of these maladies and the new coinages are quoted below:
‘Blog streaking - revealing secrets or personal information online, which for everybody's sake would be best kept private;
Crackberry - the curse of the modern executive, not being able to stop checking your BlackBerry even at you grandmother's funeral;
Cyberchondria - a headache and a particular rash at the same time? Extensive online research tells you it must be cancer;
Egosurfing - when "just checking" gets out of control;Infornography- you're beyond being a healthy "infovore": acquiring and sharing information has become an addiction for you;
You Tube narcissism - not even your closest family want to see hours of your holiday videos;
Google-stalking - snooping online on old friends, colleagues or first dates;
MySpace impersonation - many of us pretend to be someone we're not when we are online, but some will pretend to be a well-known figure;
Powerpointlessness - one too many flashy slides;
Photolurking - flicking through a photo album of someone you've never met;
Wikipediholism - excessive devotion to a certain online collaborative encyclopedia.'