Life, love, loss, lust, heartbreak, humiliation, happiness/pretend-happiness – it’s all online these days, right?  If you want to learn about someone’s past, you can scour through his or her Facebook profile and search for any signs of craziness, unhealthy habits or illicit affairs.   You can read a person’s blog as a way of gaining some insight into how his or her brain operates.  You can simply Google someone’s name and swim in a sea of articles, images, public praise, and even some dirty laundry if you’re really looking for a reason to circumvent any mystery.

Celebrities have been dealing with such scrutiny ever since society began embracing the work they do and devouring the fodder they feed us. Why do we celebrate these ordinary people with extraordinary jobs?  Because it helps us forget about our own lives.  Escapism and fantasy-addiction will never get old, and today’s onslaught of hyper-produced content and social media is tempting us to dive into an even larger abyss of gossip and sensationalism, encompassing our peers and us.

I’m an avid user of social networking sites, and as a writer I spend a good deal of time online conducting research on story ideas and interview subjects.  However, when it comes to people I may be getting personally involved with, there are just some things I don’t want to know.

If I meet someone and we hit if off, I don’t want to do any investigative reporting into his life even if he’s put it out there publicly.  I don’t want to immediately add him on Facebook, and I have no desire to follow him on Twitter.  I don’t want to know who his last girlfriend was.  I don’t want to see flirtatious online exchanges he’s having with different women. And I don’t care if he just became mayor of Canter’s Deli on Foursquare.

Recently, a friend of mine asked me how I couldn’t have known about a certain someone’s reputation for being a philandering fool.

“Didn’t you see all those Facebook and Flickr photos of him with his hands all over multiple women?” my friend asked.

“I didn’t look through his pictures,” I replied.

“Why in God’s name not?” he asked.  “Didn’t you want to know what you were getting yourself into?”

“I wanted to see what he was like in real life first,” I said.  “I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Maybe I’m too much of a romantic to really take advantage of social media the way so many of my friends do.  (I don’t judge them for it.  I actually think they’re smarter for it.  Online due diligence can eliminate painful time suckage in the long run.)  Or maybe having a career that has had me on a constant quest for truth and knowledge has finally stripped me down naked on the bedroom floor for all to see.

Eight months ago, I fled Los Angeles with a bleeding and broken heart.  After working as an entertainment correspondent for CNN for four years, I had finally reached a place of insurmountable ickiness over having to write and report about an industry headliner, whom I had tragically fallen in love with in the most clichéd manner.

I defiantly disregarded my own advice. You know the old adage, “don’t shit where you eat.”  Perhaps I should have listened to my little black heart at the time, and not gotten emotionally tangled up with a multi-millionaire who shits everywhere.

At the time, I couldn’t see past what I wanted.  I didn’t want to let go of those cinematic stolen moments – the ones we shared parked in our favorite spot on Mulholland, laced in each other’s arms on the floor of his recording studio, kissing outside The Dresden, while Marty and Elaine sang so eloquently off key.

Somewhere down the line, the babes, the booze, and the bourgeoisie became too much for me.  The sheer force of everyone around us wanting a percentage of him was palpable and oh-so-gut-wrenchingly-ugly.

While I was at work checking my e-mail one day, my best friend sent me a TMZ picture of him having lunch with another woman. Later that night, he and I had a seething argument about a story a potential employer wanted me to write about him and his tabloid-speckled shenanigans.  The next day, my love was arrested and taken to jail for a crime I will not get into here.

I was greeted at work the following morning by piles of videos and articles about his life in the limelight throughout the last 20 years.  My assignment was to produce a piece about the incident and the details of his detainment.  I felt lower than dirt, and asked my supervisor to be put on a different story.

I wouldn’t do the story for the same reason I gave the philandering fool I mentioned earlier a chance to see the me behind the words and any online ornamentation. I didn’t do it because in this world of non-news, the opportunity to go beyond the surface of pre-conceived notions derived from the media and the wonders of Web 2.0, hope, faith, feelings, and second chances are still sacred.

Rumors are often true, but that’s no reason for romance to be completely dead.