GreenBkk Tech | I know what you did online last summer ...

I know what you did online last summer ...

By Andrea Bartz and Brenna Ehrlich, Special to CNN

To confess or to keep mum about personal stuff you read on the internet? Here are a few things to keep in mind.

Editor's note: Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz are the sarcastic brains behind humor blog and book Stuff Hipsters Hate. When they're not trolling Brooklyn for new material, Ehrlich works as news editor at Mashable.com, and Bartz holds the same position at Psychology Today.

(CNN) -- A few decades ago, there weren't many mechanisms for gathering updates on a person.

There was firsthand sharing -- whatever your friend revealed in person or over the phone (or on a postcard or something, I guess). There were newspapers and media outlets, should said person of interest be a big deal. And there was the grapevine, gossipy bits passed from person to person.

So, comparatively, there was little confusion about whether you were "supposed" to know a personal fact or tale.

Nowadays, thanks to the internet, we have the ability to pick up all sorts of details about people without active, firsthand telling. And no one's quite sure how to deal with that.

In a sense, we've set up a paradox: We want others to lap up our online presence, but we feel slightly skeeved out when they indicate that they do.

An example: You had a gaffe-filled date with the clarinet player in that subway jug band and wrote about it in hilarious detail on your Tumblr. A few days later, you're boozing with a friend and you start to tell him the tale.

You're thinking, "Shoot, this has got to be completely boring for him if he's already read it, but I'll sound like an egomaniac if I pause to ask, 'Wait, did you read this on my blog?' "

Your friend, who has indeed read this on your blog, is nodding enthusiastically whilst thinking, "Snooze, I already know the big-twist ending, but I can't cut in to say that because I'll sound like a creeper who stays up late every night hitting refresh on her homepage in the hopes she's posted something new."

Yeah. Awkward.

Admittedly, there are few hard and fast rules for revealing your knowledge of web-sourced intel.

At the extremes, you shouldn't tell your boss you read about his 1984 brush with larceny charges, and you can always talk to a close friend about something he said online. It's the in-between that's a murky morass -- the new bud who might be disturbed by your careful examination of his Twitter feed, the co-worker who may not realize you regularly read her relationship blog.

So. Do you confess or keep mum about personal stuff you read on the internet? Here are a few things to keep in mind as you make yours up. (Consider this your daily dose of overanalysis.)

People put things on Facebook and Twitter and their blogs and so on because they want you to see them.

Has the internet turned us all into vainglorious exhibitionists? It's a popular debate, one the 40+ crowd often answers in the affirmative. (Add this to the duh files: A study from TKTK revealed that narcissistic Facebook users spend more time on the site than less self-obsessed individuals)

So it really doesn't make much sense for modern denizens of the internet to feel shocked, creeped out or intruded upon when something they've posted publicly is later remarked upon -- because let's face it, eyeballs are exactly what they want. (Hence the crack-like appeal of real-time view counters.)

So go on, admit that you care enough to keep tabs on a friend. You can avoid later in-person awkwardness by communicating, promptly, on the same site as the original nugget: tweeting back, liking a Facebook status, leaving a comment on a blog post and so on.

The medium on which you spotted a personal tidbit affects whether you look like a stalker.

Anyone with a shred of self-awareness strives to come across as Not A Creep in interactions.

The stalker factor of mentioning something you read online ("I saw you were in Chicago recently!") depends on two variables: How well you know the person and how hard you worked to uncover said information.

Of course, the better you know someone, the less weird it is to bring up a sound bite from their blog.

As for effort involved:

If you saw the news on Twitter, you're very free to bring it up -- as long as you follow the user. Since Twitter gives all your followees equal billing, it doesn't seem creepy that you read a particular tweet.

But yes, you need to click follow, as just checking someone's public Twitter feed is creepy. This means you should have a Twitter account from which to follow people, even if you never plan to write anything yourself. If you're like Sleigh Bells, you can even garner 10,000+ followers without saying a damn thing.

Finding facts about someone on Facebook is slightly more intense. Yes, your newsfeed appears to be a stream of various and sundry FB friends, but it's actually the product of a complex algorithm that keeps track of whom you care about (sending the most-stalked folks straight to your home page).

So tread lightly. If you clicked through an acquaintance's 113 Costa Rican vacation photos, it might be perceived as fishy.

As for intel gathered from a personal website or blog, you probably had to actively type in a URL to get there, so yeah, mentioning that you really enjoyed that post from last Thursday will be weird if the blogger doesn't already know you're a follower.

Exception: If the writer's hoping the blog will go viral, flatter away. And pass along some self-promotion tips in the process.

And finally: Never, ever, ever admit that you have Googled someone. It is creepy.

Credit: CNN (www.cnn.com)