Gang-Stalking/Targeted Individuals Article In NYT

the new alien abduction? you never hear about the aliens anymore.

also, that first picture in that article should win an award for most arresting image of the year. that picture is A+!

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/11/health/gang-stalking-targeted-individuals.html?WT.mc_id=D-NYT-MKTG-MOD-81830-6-14-PH&WT.mc_ev=click&WT.mc_c=

sorry if this was already linked on some paranoia thread i don't know about...

this also reminds me of the threads in the skin thing.

i forget what that was called though...

also, if you live in san antonio, you might want to check and see who your anesthesiologist is gonna be before your surgery....

Except now victims are connecting on the internet, organizing and defying medical explanations for what’s happening to them.

new board description

I guess the précis of that article is :
"hey you know how people get paranoid delusions that - a la Rockwell - they are constantly being watched? well now they form communities online to confirm and strengthen these biases of their delusional minds".

it's not that surprising i suppose, but certainly sad.

for the record: i do not discount or make light of the pain these people are feeling. i just find mass movements/phenomena interesting. like how the alien abduction stories all became similar stories with little variation. and likewise it seems like these people are circling the wagons and telling very similar stories.

(and it would give me pause to have that guy in san antonio put me under. that wasn't a joke...)

that is legitimately pretty scary. like he literally might think that you are involved in a conspiracy to stalk him and he's pumping you full of drugs :/

this also reminds me of the threads in the skin thing.

― scott seward, Wednesday, June 15, 2016 8:30 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

morgellons, which one of the ppl in the article also has

my theory has always been: some people are way more sensitive to electricity than other people. and that the electricity around them interferes with the electricity in their brain.

it's only a theory though...

the most horrifying thing about morgellons is the theory that the strings ppl find when digging in their flesh are nerve endings that they've excavated from burrowing too deep

it's very sad. and in the groups folks encourage one another /not/ to seek care, which is deeply unsettling.

morgellons, which one of the ppl in the article also has

― just sayin, Wednesday, June 15, 2016 3:51 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"has"

yeah obv

Trespas' blog is unsurprisingly difficult to read: https://timothytrespas.wordpress.com

my theory has always been: some people are way more sensitive to electricity than other people. and that the electricity around them interferes with the electricity in their brain.

Not an unreasonable conclusion, especially after findings like: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2009/03/16/power-lines-disrupt-the-magnetic-alignment-of-cows-and-deer/

Now, the same team have found that high-voltage power lines, which emit strong magnetic fields of their own, disrupt the orientation of cattle and deer. Near these lines, their neat alignment goes astray and they position themselves at random. This disturbance becomes less and less pronounced as the animals stray further away from the power lines. This is yet further proof that cows and deer have a magnetic sense that’s only just become apparent to us.

my theory has always been: some people are way more sensitive to electricity than other people. and that the electricity around them interferes with the electricity in their brain.

to be honest without any real evidence for this it sounds about as wacky as morgellons.

they were on Usenet back in the 90s, these folks. I always felt like the internet was bad for them - insofar as the worst thing you can say to a delusional person is "don't let anybody tell you you're not experiencing this, it's true" - but these days I feel like, if the delusion isn't going away, what's the harm in there being a support community? (a: obviously, possibly plenty, but...idk I have a lot of post-working-in-mental-health feelings about how best to approach situations/conditions/people whose baseline is necessarily hard to understand.)

It certainly doesn't help things when tech like this is around: http://adage.com/article/news/hear-voices-ad/122491/ (from 2007)

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- New Yorker Alison Wilson was walking down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman's voice right in her ear asking, "Who's there? Who's there?" She looked around to find no one in her immediate surroundings. Then the voice said, "It's not your imagination." No, he's not crazy: Our intrepid reporter Andrew Hampp ventures to SoHo to hear for himself the technology that has New Yorkers 'freaked out' and A&E buzzing.

Indeed it isn't. It's an ad for "Paranormal State," a ghost-themed series premiering on A&E this week. The billboard uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an "audio spotlight" from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium. The technology, ideal for museums and libraries or environments that require a quiet atmosphere for isolated audio slideshows, has rarely been used on such a scale before. For random passersby and residents who have to walk unwittingly through the area where the voice will penetrate their inner peace, it's another story.

Ms. Wilson, a New York-based stylist, said she expected the voice inside her head to be some type of creative project but could see how others might perceive it differently, particularly on a late-night stroll home. "I might be a little freaked out, and I wouldn't necessarily think it's coming from that billboard," she said.

"the most horrifying thing about morgellons is the theory that the strings ppl find when digging in their flesh are nerve endings that they've excavated from burrowing too deep"

arghghghg this seriously just made me freak out

xxp isn't there a difference between a support community and a self-advocacy group, though? obviously there are ways that sufferers should be legitimately advocating for themselves whenever possible, but it sounded in the story like the new hazard afforded these people by the internet and the possibility of finding the people to form 'communities' with is that, self-selectable community identity in hand, they could use the machinery of bureaucracy/modern liberal democracy to advocate for themselves against their own best interests, a la pro-mia/ana people.

i keep going back and looking at that first photo of that guy. seriously, reminds me of a renaissance painting or something. iconic. maybe something biblical. that face.

great framing too. with the mirror and the reflection and the lamp. vermeer would have approved.

The way his face is lit from the side and slightly behind, with the front side in shadow, creates a strange effect.

Saw a dude at the grocery store today wearing a printed t-shirt that read on the back

PSYCHOLOGICAL HARASSMENT IS A FORM OF TORTURE. SHAME ON YOU.

And I'm like, what the fuck is this billboard? Other than the shirt, the guy didn't look too intense. He was just moseying through the dairy aisle, bopping along to the same 80s hits I was enjoying. But I wanted to learn more about his shirt - was there something on the front that could further elucidate? It was tougher to get a look at the front of his shirt, but I kinda followed him around the store, trying to predict his movements up and down the aisles, until I could catch a glimpse. I finally did, and it read in part

STALKING FOR SOME CAUSES IS ORGANIZED CRIME.

Which was kinda jarring to me considering I was just now stalking him in order to read his shirt. I wanted to try to stalk him some more to read the rest of the text on the front, but I had ice cream in my basket and had to check out. In the car, I did a quick google search to try to figure it out. Didn't find the actual shirt, but it seems likely that this is some gang stalking , targeted individuals type shit.

GIS brings up this

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/organized-stalking-vancouver-1.4813916

signs that feel like they were created by Infant Sorrow

During the lockdown there was a guy who would always be on the basketball court in the park by himself shooting baskets when I went there in the morning to walk my dog. I say he was shooting baskets, because he was usually holding a basketball and occasionally would take a shot with it, but most of the time he would grimly stalk the court with the ball under his harm, glowering, muttering and occasionally getting into arguments with anyone who came too close to the fence surrounding the court. Sometimes if someone got too close he would take out his phone and start videoing them, usually while cursing them. As much as I could make out the muttering, he seemed to think that he was being stalked. That people in the park were actually there to spy on him. It was a bit creepy.

I just drove by an apartment building with three signs in the window: “stop gang stalking” “occupied” and “targeted lives matter”. Kind of want to go take a picture of it but that will only feed their paranoia.

You should park outside with a really long camera lens

i feel like this is something i'm seeing a lot more of in various places. my local nextdoor has several people. one guy claims that planes from a local airport have started to intentionally fly over his home in retaliation after he made a gesture at one (the planes are a couple thousand feet up), and another woman claims the local police are in league with her neighbors to target her. just saw someone else post on an IG account i follow about needing to flee the country because she's being hunted by various individuals. idk if this is something i'm more aware of or if it's really increasing.

stuff like this really does little more than distract from the very real threat of actual stalking, which is a rarely prosecuted and oft-committed type of life-fucking crime. why cover kooks when there are real people in real danger and very few legal avenues toward justice?!?!?

there's such low-level, microaggressive danger around. my wife goes in to work early and there's a front desk security guard who is always hitting on her when she shows up (but only when she's arriving alone.) she usually wears a mask to work, but when she's not he'll say something akin to, oh i love it when i get to see your face, etc. or some comment about her dress or whatever. another female co-worker came in today and he said something inappropriate to her too, but clammed up when he noticed he hadn't seen my wife's (male) boss standing there, so focused he was on this other woman. i told my wife that was a good opportunity to report him, if she felt uncomfortable doing so, since her boss is not a creep and fairly fearless about making waves regarding shit employees.

anyway that's for another thread i realize...

Agree to a point but I do think it is worth covering that paranoid schizophrenics, people experiencing psychosis, other “kooks” have this delusion-reinforcing network that wasn’t always there. And it can pull them into some very bad spaces

It’s tricky too because gangstalking “victims” might also be victims of actual stalking

that's true
they are not well, that is clear (and that's ok -- we can have both and i am sorry i called them kooks?)

one thing i have noticed on the nextdoor posts is how many people are supporting them, in terms of reinforcing their paranoia. there are also a lot of people cruelly insulting them, and an equal number who are cautiously suggesting they should try to seek some type of help, since it might not be actually occurring. so they deal with a lot of outside noise from people commenting on these posts, too. plus occasionally someone who has similar delusions will chime in. i don't necessarily think it's related to the increase in conspiracy-theory thinking, but maybe? plus the future shock of technology and the very real fear of being tracked by our devices and our information being sold.

I sometimes look at the reddits for this & yeah there are a lot of people coming in to tell members they are deluded and rarely in a kind way, tho a few seem to have their hearts in the right place

Sorry to be prickly LL, i dont object to kooks! Just sensitive around this topic

no you're right! i am sensitive about stalking being rarely prosecuted.

It’s tricky too because gangstalking “victims” might also be victims of actual stalking

To follow up on this I don’t just mean this might have happened before their break into unwellness, also talking about how predators zero in on vulnerable people

❤️ xp

so many people are posting this sort of thing very publicly for all to see, and you believe there are many people who would want to worm their way in claiming to want to help, but will only take advantage, and then use the fact that these people are legitimately unwell to give themselves plausible deniability if they're accused later on.

There are definitely scammers selling Mickey Mouse anti surveillance tech/cybersecurity products that are essentially tinfoil hats

another woman claims the local police are in league with her neighbors to target her.

I completely understand that anecdotes aren't evidence, and the context of a person's story matters a lot here. I happen to know someone that was harassed by NYPD, pulled over and ticketed enough that she completely stopped driving, after she was identified as a leader in Occupy and racial justice protest movements. /shrug emoji

But yes otherwise, per my usual, people are not well and I think there is something about the appeal of casting yourself as significant in fantastical ways the more insignificant you feel.

Cops are cops but “in league with her neighbours” is the tell there