Rear Browser Window?

Am I becoming a website voyeur?  Not in the sense of looking at porn sites as a substitute for real life Peeping Tom antics, obviously.  It's just that, of late, I've found myself looking forward to lurking around other people's forums, hoping to witness some kind of massive online bust-up between members - like on that other satire site's message boards last weekend.  Before that, there was this amazing row on a webmaster's forum, which went on for several days - it really was spectacular and fuelled largely by one member who didn't have English as a first language, but kept raging at other members using syntax, grammar and vocabulary which made him sound like a comic strip caricature of an angry World War Two Japanese soldier.  Brilliantly entertaining stuff - and all free!  But after watching Rear Window again the other day, I'm left with the growing suspicion that I'm turning into James Stewart in that film: obsessively and anonymously monitoring the activities of my web 'neighbours', in order to gain some vicarious pleasure from their affairs.

Yep, before you know it, the arguments over Google's algorithm changes and breakaway satire groups founding their own rival sites, won't be enough for me and I'll find myself pointing my telephoto lens, sorry, browser, at all manner of dubious message boards, in the hope of spotting someone murdering their wife.  From there it will be a short step to sending them anonymous messages telling them that I know what they did, as part of a ploy to expose them.  At which point they'll undoubtedly work out who I am and come hammering on my door, hell bent on killing me.  But, joking aside, there is an analogy to be drawn between my lurking in forums and James Stewart's activities in Rear Window.   Confined to his apartment by his broken leg, the frustrated Stewart finds the full range of life going on behind his neighbour's windows: romance, despair, friendship, artistic creativity and even murder.  His rear window is, quite literally, a window on the world.  In microcosm.  It's the same with those forums.  Trapped in my parochial existence by work and other responsibilities, those message boards provide me with a window onto the life activities and interactions I no longer have.  With the added advantage that I can just be a spectator and not be forced to actually participate in all those passionate arguments and debates.