Stalking People on Speechranks

I thought about writing a post on speechranks.com in general, but decided that I wanted to be more specific. In case you're not as speechranks-obsessed as I am, speechranks is that fantastic website where you can see how you and others are doing or have done in a given season at speech and debate tournaments. You can smugly count your green checkmarks or glare at your lack thereof. You can see how you or your speech ranks in your state and in the nation. For example, I was the 13th highest-ranked non-debater last year. Is that an really an official ranking, you say? No, but clearly it should be. However, perhaps the best part of speechranks is stalking other people. 

If you're half as competitive as I am, you probably use speechranks to see who's ahead of you. Sometimes it's fun to know that the guy who beat you in an event has won that event at every tournament that year, but that you came really close to breaking his streak. Or you can scope out who you're ahead of, and that never gets old. :evilgrin:  Then you watch as they jump ten places ahead of you after the next tournament... ahem. You may also use this fantasical website to see if you're friends qualified for Nationals and in what event(s). You could follow trends on speechranks to predict who will be in finals at NITOC and at what event. (For the record, seven of the people I thought would be in HI finals at NITOC were in HI finals at NITOC. But that wasn't too difficult to call.) Of course, you could also play "find the person with the most green checkmarks in one event." The most I've found is 11. Which is amazing.


But I haven't even got into the real stalking yet. Maybe you're just checking out results from some tournament when you see a name, random or otherwise (or you type a specific name in for bonus superstalker points), and you click on it. And you read stuff. Then you click on his debate partner. And you read more stuff. Then you click on her duo partner. And the list goes on and on and on until you hit a dead end. So you start all over.


No, speechranks was probably not supposed to be a form of Facebook without the friend requests and status updates and obnoxious poking. But homeschoolers have to make up for their lack of social lives somewhere.


You're homeschooled, and you're a speechranks stalker. For shame.