This morning, I read this article on the famous Eleven Madison Park restaurant in New York. Prior to the dinner hour, the maître d’ googles the names of every guest, giving him the ability to comment on personal details. With this level of familiarity, he can greet guests with their names or congratulate them on a special occasion. “If I find out a guest is from Montana, and I know we have a server from there, we'll put them together. Same goes for guests who own jazz clubs, who can be paired with a sommelier that happens to be into jazz. In other words, before customers even step through the door, the restaurant's staff has a pretty good idea of the things it can do to specifically blow their minds.”
“All that Googling pays off when the maître d' greets total strangers by name and wishes them a happy tenth anniversary before they've even taken off their coats.”
This attention to detail reportedly makes the guests feel welcomed at the restaurant. Eleven Madison Park takes service just as seriously as the food they serve, evident in the way they carefully stalk every guest before they walk through the door.
When did this become okay to do? Rather, when did online stalking become associated with feeling welcome in an establishment? Let’s be real, we’ve all stalked someone online (probably on Facebook) at some point in time. Of course, I use the term “stalking” loosely here. “Researching” may be a more appropriate term, but it doesn’t quite do justice to the action of this extreme research. Furthermore, since you can discover an abundance of information on a person based on their Facebook, the terms “online stalking” and “Facebook stalking” may sometimes be used interchangeably. Stalking someone on Facebook may include searching their name and attempting to discover as much information about them as possible, for example, their job, interests, photos and opinions. Although motivations for this stalking differ, it’s usually kept a secret from the person you’re stalking. Most people don’t continue this process; once they find out as much information as they can about a person, they move on.
“The art and joy of the Facebook Stalk is unavoidable, even for the most of the “light” Facebook users out there. Just dipping your toe into the shallow end – the News Feed – can result in a bout of creeping so thorough that you feel adequately prepared to give a PowerPoint presentation about the last few years of your victim’s life.”
Is online stalking so normal that we’re now incorporating it into restaurant service? Sure, it could make a guest feel special if they were dining at Eleven Madison Park, but it could also really freak people out. These searches also raise the issue of online privacy. If you Facebook stalk someone prior to meeting them, you probably won’t introduce yourself by letting them know how much you really discovered about them (you may even pretend to not know certain things about them). There is little difference between this scenario and greeting guests based on what Google told you about them.
For a funny (and somewhat far-fetched) representation of “Facebook stalking,” watch this video.