English edit

Etymology edit

photo +‎ lurking

Noun edit

photolurking (uncountable)

  1. The practice of viewing online photos, especially those of strangers, without leaving comments, but possibly discussing them with third parties.
    • 2007, H Khalid, Alan Dix, “I know what you did last summer: what can we learn from photolog”, in Workshop: why CSCW:
      Another interesting phenomenon that emerges from photolog is photolurking. The activity of photolurking is rich involving both personal browsing and searching and also social activity. Photolurking is browsing and looking at people’s photographs without participating in discussion or addressing the owner of the photographs or photologs, whilst still discussing them in other avenues.
    • 2007 January 23, “Online snappers told to beware photolurkers.”, in The Guardian:
      But perhaps most disturbing of all was the detection of a phenomenon known as “photolurking” which involves an obsession with browsing the online photo albums of complete strangers.
    • 2012, Roderick Weener, Photolog Viewing on Facebook, (Masters Thesis - Universiteit van Amsterdam):
      With the indulgence of photolurking, the viewer experiences engagement and emotion, the viewer experiences engagement and emotion
    • 2016 October, Engin Karadağ, Şule Betứl B Tosuntaş, Evren Erzen, Pinar Duru, Nalan Bostan, Berrak Mizrak Ṣahin, Ịlkay Ċulha, Burcu Babadağ, “The Virtual World's Current Addiction: Phubbing”, in Addicta: The Turkish Journal on Addictions:
      A recent trend, called photolurking in the literature, in which an individual takes another person's photograph and, without his or her knowledge, discusses its details with a third party in a different setting (Khalid & Dix, 2007) has become yet another aspect of phubbing due to smarphones' ever increasing capabilities and iniquitousness.