greenhorn said
I can relate to this! I was that kid who looked on as a group of other kids played really fun games and would think to myself, "That looks fun, but I'm too scared to join because it looks complicated". This was back in another forum that used to be pretty active. I've followed a number of RPs before I jumped in. From an observer's point of view I figured out there were certain types of RPers I didn't like and certain I really liked. My stalking habits have considerably lessened since jumping into the fray myself, but some habits die hard I guess.
Well, I'm not much of the roleplay-stalking-type myself*, but I've had other people stalk my roleplays so I at least know that it's a thing that other people do.
*That is, assuming that we're defining "roleplay-stalking" as just reading the IC of a roleplay you're not in. Cuz on oldGuild, I participated in a very different kind of roleplay-stalking...
Cuz see, back then they had a forum search feature, and, since I liked to keep tabs on such things, I would regularly search my username to see if people were ever talking about me anywhere outside of threads that I was already involved in. Every so often, I would find that I'd been mentioned, typically by some friend or acquaintance, in the OOC of an RP that I wasn't a part of and in which I wasn't familiar with most of the members. So, when this happened, I would very often pop into that OOC, uninvited and unexpected, post
this gif, and respond to whatever had been said about me without any other acknowledgement of the fact that I had just strolled into any place where I did not belong. The reactions from the other thread members tended to be quite amusing - and thankfully the GM's usually had a good sense of humor about the whole thing, too.
tl;dr - I miss the forum search feature.