A stalker is someone who pursues another party in an unsolicited manner. If a person makes a website that is open to the public (blog, twitter, facebook, myspace, etc), uses it to converse with that very same public, and makes a gluttony of photos of themselves available to be looked at by that public, how unsolicited is the attention really? If you replace "person" with "athlete" or "public figure", how much effort does anyone really need to put in to admire them; These stars are giving them the keys to the house, no questions asked.

You don't need to be a national headline grabber either. We all clearly want the attention that these social sites provide us or else we wouldn’t have these sites in the first place. If you know someone who has a social site and they claim to not look at anybody's sites and they just use it to “keep in touch”, they’re lying. To claim looking at friends, and friends-of-friends photo's is any different than looking at a public figure, is insincere. It's also important to note that as crazy as it sounds, very often fans feel the players are their “friends".

I’m a college student. I go to school a solid distance from home, and although I go back for
holidays, I see my family a handful of times over the course of my school year. In contrast, I watch Sports Center habitually and make a point to catch as many of my favorite teams' (Jets, Yankees, and Nets, don't hold the latter against me.) games as possible. That means that over the timeline of my year, I will see more of Devin Harris than Dad. If you couple that with the news I read about my teams routinely like most fans do, it isn’t that implausible to feel as if you know these players on a personal level. I’ve been watching Derek Jeter for fourteen years now, frankly, it would be odd to not feel any sort of attachment.

So when the possibility arises to communicate with these players, no matter how small the
communication may be, a lot of fans will feel fully justified in doing so. social sites let them feel they are figuratively closer to those they adore. With that adoration comes many levels of emotions, one of the biggest being the fear something they say/do will displease those they admire.

appease him, he took the juvenile route of placing blame on “the friend” for his completely valid question.

Oh, “the friend". How often was that dear companion blamed throughout everyone’s
respective childhoods. I know for me personally, my “friend” drew on my father's drawers with crayons and markers, and ripped my mom’s sheet music to shreds.

Typically that friend dies with maturity, but in this arena of conversation, that growth doesn’t apply nor should it. That level of maturity comes with life experience, and how many fans have experienced player interaction enough that it doesn’t faze them?