My wife and I started watching some show on Netflix called "Baby Reindeer", which is a supposedly true(ish) story of a person who was stalked by a woman. We are only a couple of episodes into the limited series, but it brought up some memories of my own stalker experience back in high school, though it was far tamer than that of the show so far. However, it might have been tamer for a reason.
For me, it was a friend of friends who was kind of on the outside of the groups, quiet, quite overweight, and likely from a poorer family. She was nice enough, though I hadn't really talked to her about anything that important, it was more just casual conversation. As one of the only people with a car, I had given friends a ride home and she was there also. As she lived closer to me than the others, she was also the last one I dropped off home, and we drove, me talking light nonsense.
This was in the lead up to the senior dance, and I heard (after the fact) she was going to ask me to take her while we were driving but chickened out, as she had developed some kind of crush. However, even if she had, I had already asked a lovely girl to accompany me and she had said yes, and we had already started dating anyway.
The crush girl was crushed.
And ended up spiraling a bit, following me around the school, sitting down staring at my now girlfriend and I as we ate our lunch, and kind of just being like a shadow wherever we were. My girlfriend was at first kind of laughed it off, but it got to the point that something had to be said to stop it. So, I said to the girl that while I understood she had a crush and that she is disappointed, she was behaving poorly and should stop.
Remember, high school.
But I was never cruel, or mean. Which I think just spurred her on more and it continued, where I constantly felt like she was around, and my girlfriend started to feel like she was in some kind of danger, especially since there was a fair size difference between the two, though my girlfriend was pretty kick-ass fit and could probably hold her own.
It was a couple weeks before the dance, and I ended up in hospital for about a week with pancreatitis, one of about six times I was in there for that. And while hopped up on self-administered morphine, people would come and go from my room, friends visiting and me talking in ways I could barely grasp, and the stalker. No one knew of course she was a stalker, she was just another friend coming to visit. But she wouldn't come in and talk, she would wait until I was asleep or in the bathroom, and would then leave little presents, like teddy bears on my bed.
I didn't keep one of them.
In the end, school finished exams were over, and I never saw her again, but as said, it was a different time. It could have been much worse than what it was, as if it had been ten years later, it would have been at the start of Facebook times, where people were connecting digitally on social networks and cyber-stalking became a more formal thing. The ways to track people, follow people, know where they are and who they are spending time with became far easier. And, in the early days the security and visibility wasn't as robust as it is now, though I haven't used Facebook in many years, so it might be different again.
But, there is more to it than just access to the object of affection, it is also a gateway into building up fanciful ideas and feelings for someone who might not even know the stalker exists. We see this with celebrities often, but it happens to normal people also, where perhaps through some innocuous interaction, an infatuation begins and then there is content and opportunity to keep building it in the background.
The estimate is that 7.5 million people are stalked online annually in the US alone.
Most of these cases are probably where the people are in relationships (probably not healthy relationships) with the victim, where one of the couple are extremely jealous. And, now of course there are all kinds of stalkerware available to monitor activities. Our digital lives on screens, create a clear vector for potential abuse, and I suspect that part of the reason for the amount it happens, is also tied to the degrading mental health and emotional capabilities of people these days. Combine emotional frailty with a mix of loneliness and entitlement, and it is pretty obvious that it is going to lead to some pretty bad outcomes, especially for relationships.
Even if there is no real relationship at all.
I haven't thought about my own low-grade stalker experience for a long time, but I do remember how uncomfortable it was, and I had no physical fear for myself. It must be quite terrible for the people (especially women) who have all the discomfort and also have to fear for themselves physically. There is never an excuse to intimidate people, yet the level of entitlement seems to be playing a big role, where people have been told to do what ever makes them happy, and some are using force to get what they want.
Sometimes, I just feel that humanity is doomed because despite how much potential we have, we also seem inclined to keep creating unnecessary problems for ourselves. Some of these things might be unintentional, but they end up leading into a dark place, like the internet itself. Once hailed as the answer to knowledge sharing and access to level the informational playing field, it has devolved into a for profit ad model, designed to bring out the worst in us, to polarize us, to isolate and break us. And as it does its job, more instances to polarize us further are created, and amplified.
Anytime there is a channel to share an image, fucktards will send dick pics to strangers.
We have degraded as a society, going backwards, turning the random perverted flasher, into just another day on the internet. We have told people to brand, had celebrities put their lives online to generate hype for their projects to generate more wealth, and then have them complain because they attract the attention of the wrong people. And we do this to ourselves to.
And we have an alert and notification to keep us updated constantly.
Perhaps we should be developing more notifications for our own behaviors, instead of tracking the activities of others so closely. Maybe then we will see how far we have fallen below the standards we used to hold dear.
I get tired of hearing about all the violence in the world. It is bad enough when it is because of the power-hungry governments driven by profit-hungry corporations, but it is even worse when it is done by ordinary people to other ordinary people, just trying to make the best of what can be a pretty shitty life. More and more I see broken minded people unable to build their own happiness, find ways to keep happiness away from others. The outliers of course, end up in the news.
But it happens out of the spotlight too.
Personal pain is never a reason to inflict pain upon others.
But the entitled seem to disagree.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
I never had a stalker problem, but I'm happy that yours turned out ok. It sounded milder because the stalker was a woman (and your partner was fit), but if the genders were swapped, I think it would have escalated at the onset. I wonder what experiences a person needs to have to become a stalker. They at least must have some mental problems.
For sure if the roles were reversed it would have been worse. Some men can be pretty terrible, especially now that they are so emotionally undisciplined.
It's hard because no matter how nice you try to be it ends up coming off as something else most of the time. I had one myself and I regret the way I handled it, but I really don't know what I could have done differently. I'm not sure I am going to watch that show on Netflix. I have heard the supposed lady it is based on is suing now.
I have heard this too - I wonder how accurate it is. Regardless, it might be a bit of a different show :)
Once a guy who was writing me through a social network and bothering me, even though I never answered his messages he told me he loved me he wanted to go out with me, but it really scared me when he showed up at my work place for 3 days he was waiting for me to go out to ask me out and that really scared me I even had to ask a neighbor who is a cop to talk to him so he would stop bothering me I think there are crazy and accusing people everywhere, but how do you know it could be a friend a relative even a neighbor if you could see a person's browsing history you could really see the darkest and shadiest secrets we have.
Yeah, this is scary. And yeah, it can be anyone and these days, people seem to hold onto tiny details as if they are the most important thing, and then make them bigger.
Jesus, that must've been concerning, especially when you were so young. Glad it turned out okay, though. Hope she became less weird, I guess. It's easy to be weird when you're a teenager, I guess. Concerning if you continue into adulthood, you know. Hard being a besotted teen. Also, you behaved admirably for the situation and your youth and so on. My teenage crushes inevitably bullied me in some way or another, so :)
Amen. I think you're right on the money with our continual downfall as a society.
How's the series? Recommend it?
Only a couple episodes in, but it seems okay. At least it is a bit different than the normal shows out there. It isn't overly high quality or anything though.
That's quite the experience. Loneliness and entitlement...I like it. Perhaps there'd have been others who genuinely liked her for who she was, but she didn't ever try or even consider.
Possibly. I wonder what she is doing now - I am not going to check though! :D
You seem to be an understanding guy with the way you handles the situation with kindness and you weren’t mean. Looks like you set some reasonable boundaries too but I’m wondering what though would have went through her mind
If it continued on too long, I would have had to have got firmer, but it ended up okay.
Lol, I experienced this one. It was like my first months using fb, I was really naive back then because I really accepted all the friend requests that I got. I thought everyone who sends friend requests to me wanted to be really my online 'friend', but it turns out not everyone has good intentions. I ended up accepting the person who sent me those horrid pic. I was even in the computer shop at that time! Thankfully, no one is close enough to see what I saw at that time. Out of shock, I immediately logged out of my fb account, and later I blocked the guy. I really learned the hard way that time. I don't know why he did that, but if he had problems in life, he should have solved them by himself.
This really resonates with me because it relates well to what I've shared. It is never fine to inflict bad things to other people just because you experience them. You shouldn't let your damn pride rule out the humanity in you. At the end of the day, everything you do has a consequence, and if you do something that's really bad, remember that karma is out to get you.
Some men seem to be so starved for attention, they have to force getting noticed. It is very, very sad!
Well, you manage the situation on your on side properly with much understanding. I don't think most guys will do that.
There is no point in escalating problems for no need.
That's a great mindset. Only few people think that way
True. Lucky it's just a minor stalking.
@tarazkp
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So happy that the situation didn't end badly, @tarazkp - you handled it well, and I really hope she was able to move on after school.
I've not watched Baby Reindeer, but I've heard good things about it. I have been stalked by an ex after a very bad break up, and it was really bad for a while. Your point about Facebook and social media struck a chord, as a few years ago, he started following me on Linked In, and it was before you could block people. It totally freaked me out!
Annabelle