I’ve seen it mentioned a few times and googling just comes up with possibly problematic stuff.
It's tragically untreated schizophrenia about half of the time
This. It's a persistent delusional belief that some nebulous conspiracy of multiple people or agencies is stalking you. Pretttttty closely tied to paranoia and schizophrenia.
It's this idea that people have that the government or other bad actors are spying on them 24/7, usually for reasons they don't know. It's different from stuff like cointelpro which targeted political dissidents. The people claiming to be stalked generally aren't very radical in their views. Sadly most of it is just mental illness and paranoia, at least from what I've seen.
You've probably already seen this because it's the top search result, but here's a great series of articles on the subject. You should read that, but to summarize, it's mostly paranoid delusions. The specific manifestation of paranoid delusions are always culturally influenced; their typical representation today, due to this online movement, are often of constant government surveillance and harassment. Things like being followed by black vans everywhere, every person you meet being a government agent, even government mind control through specialized radio signals. These reflect very real fears, but are nonetheless delusions. The author of those pieces also argues for an element of mass hysteria.
Thanks! I didn’t want to just assume it was mental illness and discount other viewpoints.
You know how sometimes you might notice someone's walking the exact same way to work as you, or that the same van has been parked out front of your neighbours every day for a week? Now in reality it's coincidence, maybe your neighbour is clearing out their back garden or whatever.
If you believe that a powerful, clandestine organisation is spying on you and attempting to influence or pressure you in some way, those coincidences are going to start adding up and reinforcing your paranoia.
It's also not helped by the fact we are all being spied on all the time. It's just that mostly it's so Amazon knows what sort of cheap plastic shit to sell you, or your boss is making sure you aren't slacking off beyond an acceptable amount.
Additionally, almost none of us are going to merit anyone from some shady government agency taking a notice but that doesn't mean it doesn't ever happen. All of that reinforces the belief too. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't sow the seeds of the belief in the first place in some cases.
That’s a really good way of making it easy to understand, thanks
No worries, I mean I'm not a psychologist or anything so I am prob missing a tonne of stuff but that's what I understand it to be about.
As many have pointed out, a lot of it is paranoid delusions that become amplified by online communities of like minded people. However, it does also happen for real - Scientology has a long documented history of gang stalking defectors and critics and they're definitely not the only ones.
"Gang stalking is a delusion"
CIA/FBI/NSA/big tech: :side-eye-1: :side-eye-2:
Also if you actually read first hand accounts from people who believe they are being gangstalked, they don't describe normal government surveillance. They describe friends, family, neighbors, passerby, and nearby drivers on the road all conspiring together against them personally. They talk a lot about psychic or telepathic attacks, or about "energy weapons" that are being used against them. Tracking implants in their bodies, stuff like that.
I assume everyone has a file and for the most part they're basically empty.
If you're referring to the person I'm thinking of, he's still active on here, so let's be kind
Paranoid delusions, ego-inflation - the predictable outcomes of increasing amounts of surveillance and atomization.
