Am I a creep? Sure, maybe I once took a picture of a girl tanning, and maybe I’ve stared at some chests.

But despite these casual crimes, I would never actively attempt to be creepy. Times have changed, however.

Thanks to Facebook and the Internet itself, my generation has the ability to creep like never before. In an instant, we can meet new people, see their pictures, start up a conversation, and, eventually, file a restraining order. I like to think of a friend as someone I’ve met in person, so I am quick to deny any friend request from a stranger.

But because I would never do it, I had to do it anyway. I began to friend-request strangers from all over the country and I then tried to talk to them. I was creeped out. I friend requested strange people from strange places.

I began with Duke from Texas, who said “dis” instead of “this,” making me wonder had his parents actually named him Thuke?

Then I talked to Ebnul from Sunnyside, New York, who had surprisingly little to say even though, according to his Facebook, we shared a common love of the movie “Mean Girls.”

Most people were normal people; in other words, they were unresponsive to a seemingly creepy “hello.”

My first success was in talking to an international student: Jon from Montana, which, I believe, is a small country in Europe (though I’ve been told I’m wrong about that). In Montana, according to Jon, people like to eat turducken, which is “a chicken inside a goose inside a turkey.” (He may have been describing a turgoosen.)

A diet consisting of this meal alone would render Montana’s bird population extinct, so I asked the all-important question, if Montanans ate Taco Bell. I nearly cried for him when he told me he had never seen one.

Jon was a cowboy, which I assumed meant chick-magnet in Montana. But apparently that’s only true if by “chick” you mean 800-pound cattle.

And like I did not know much about Montana, Jon did not know much about California. He assumed we had a large population of Spanish women, not Mexican women. He didn’t understand what “it” was when I mentioned an It’s-It.

I shared my knowledge and he shared his. And though Jon and I were two strangers with little in common from very different places, we shared something: We were teenagers living on the Internet, and that’s all we needed to connect.

So I know I shouldn’t talk to strangers and I know the Internet is dangerous. But now I know something else: the Internet can be a bridge. Talking to Jon from Montana was easy; we just talked about food and girls.

So what if I am a creep, talking to strangers and ogling women? I would say being creepy has expanded my horizon. So tomorrow, be a creep. Talk to a stranger. And then afterwards, feel free to stare at any part of my body you want.