Fellow conspiracy realist, We return to you from literally around the world with a classic episode that remains oddly relevant today. We were talking about this off air, Matt, and you and I both agreed that this is sort of an eternal subject or an eternal concern for a lot of people.
Oh yeah, the concept of being a targeted individuals, as we're going to get into in this episode. This is it's sensitive, right, because you're dealing with potentially mental health, You're dealing with potentially actual human beings that are under some form of investigation. There's all kinds of things that go into this, right, and we still people still write to us and ask us to do Gang Stocking episodes like updates to this and this is back in October twenty nineteen that we covered.
Yeah, it's an experience that a lot of people have had to degree or another. Who is that person who seems so similar? Right? Is that the same person I saw at the grocery store?
That hat looks Wait, I know I've seen that happ before, right, right? Am?
I gaslighting myself? Is something afoot? Who is after me? And why? More and more people as we recorded this were claiming that they had been stalked by not a single individual, but by some enigmatic group.
And that group is interchangeable. You never know who it could be.
Let's roll the tape from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt nol Is. Where is he on a nol somewhere?
Perhaps a grassy one. Yes, they call me Ben. We were joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission control deck, and most importantly, you are you. You are here and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know? Matt. How's it going?
It's going?
Well.
I'm wondering what you are doing out there right now as you're listening to this. Are you driving? Are you walking? Are you sitting at your desk? If you are able to If you look around right now, is anybody paying attention to what you're doing? Did somebody just dart their head down as you glanced at them.
Is someone on a phone but not appearing to speak into that phone? Are they making eye contact? With you or looking in your direction while they're on the phone.
Do you think that they're actually using the phone? Do you think they're actually calling one eight three three std wyt Well, you know, we have a lot of We have a lot of hang ups as a species, right, and many of those are the inevitable result of our great intelligence or the problem of consciousness and sentience or consciousness sabiens, whatever you want to call it is its own bag of badgers. But our fears drive so much of our you know, our failings and our triumphs, our innovations,
even our music. You and I were talking off air with Mission Control about various songs that are catchy but strongly paranoid. You know, yeah, sure.
Do you always feel like someone is watching you?
Do you feel like private eyes are watching you.
So they see here every move? What I thought you were going to say? Poop again?
Oh? Yeah, no, we worked on an alternate version of that song. Yes, Today's Today's episode is about a troubling a troubling feeling, a phenomenon that everyone has experienced to some degree at one point or another. And this this is the feeling of being watched, the feeling of being stalked. And if you were one of the lucky few who are thinking, oh, gee, man, I've never personally felt like someone was following me or stalking me, well, then strap
in because you're going to feel that way after this episode. Okay, So I will give a I don't talk too much about the personal stuff, but I will give a personal example of when I was actually followed or stalked. This was when I was living in a different country and I was interacting with some political activists. Let's keep it at that, sure, okay. And I was not in any way a lynchpin of this organization, nor was I involved
in any criminal enterprise. I'm very much a dudly do good when I am in someone else's geopolitical house, and it's the best policy. But I noticed a few, you know, a few weeks after I had met with a group, I was at a fairly I had a fairly predictable routine. So I was always sleeping more or less in the same place, and I was typically going to do things in more like the same area, often with predictable times of day, which any PI can tell you is not
the best strategy investigator, right right, Thank you? And I started noticing I started noticing the same people at the same time, and eventually, eventually somebody very politely make contact with me and asked me some questions about the folks I met a week or two ago. Wow, and nothing ever came of it. And I you know, the story ends there.
But you're fairly sure you were being surveilled or stocked.
I'm certain, yeah, And it wasn't. It wasn't in a threatening way. I think. I think these folks just wanted to see what I was going to do next. Sure, what I mean, is this just hanging out? These just some friends hanging out in a coffee shop or a wine bar, or is this a public meeting that leads to something else? Yeah, and that's not I have to also be very clear, it is not illegal for intelligence
agencies or law enforcement to do that. As a matter of fact, at least on paper, the US has some laws that are meant to constrain the unchecked use of those powers. Other countries do not, and as often to the peril of many unfortunate people. But let's go away. That's a little scary, but it all's well, that ends well, you know, here are the facts. Have you ever been followed.
Like we said, you know, we've all we've all experienced if you are savvy enough to be listening to a podcast, you have experienced some sort of how would you describe it matter as sense of surveillance.
Yeah. Sure, Again, it doesn't even necessarily mean that it's true, but the perception that something like that perhaps is going on. You maybe have felt it before. We certainly you and I I think in particular, maybe as well as Noel a little bit to a lesser effect, have experienced kind of a fluctuating feeling of being surveilled over the ten years, the decade of making this show, where it waxes and wanes. We even had a joke nsa intern there that we've mentioned several times in the past.
Ah, shout out to Steve.
Yeah, who's tasked with listening to our episodes and all the ideas that we put forth into the universe. Honestly, they're worried about, you know, the next season of Rick and Morty, Like what's gonna come on there? Like is he getting influenced? Like what are we gonna do?
Right? Right? Let's sign up? Is this and also shout out to you, Steve, if you have not graduated yet. If you are still an intern at one of the Spooky Alphabet agencies, then it can only mean you're pursuing a PhD and good luck.
That's all right. But again, to our knowledge, we have never really experienced overt surveillance on this show, at least for making this show. Again, we don't have knowledge of it at least, and we certainly haven't encountered what would be considered a stalker. Now.
We have received a number of cryptic and order troubling emails, a couple of texts on mobile phones, things.
Like that I have a few pieces of physical paper in my desk that I've kept around. Oh yeah, that we're a bit odd with the symbols and everything that was on there and mapping connections to things that I didn't understand.
Yes, yeah, we've received some odd posts too, But we haven't encountered what would be described legally as a stalker or stalking situation, which can happen. It's a real thing. The Department of Justice defines stalking as engaging in a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to fear for his or her safety or the safety of others. Or suffer substantial emotional distress. And we have some statistics about this too.
Oh sure. If you look to the CDC, they've got a thing called Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Violence, stalking and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization. This is a National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey within the United States twenty eleven. Okay, that's a lot to get through there. It's through the CDC, that's what you need to know. And it's a survey, and this whole thing is commonly referred to as the NISVS.
According to this thing, seven and a half million people were stalked in one year alone in the United States, And of course this is the twenty eleven survey, so this is data from twenty ten. Now, a lot of these victims were stalked by either a current or a former intimate partner. That would be sixty one percent of
female victims and forty four percent of male victims. And if you look to the population overall, an estimate of fifteen percent of women and six percent of men have been a victim of stalking throughout their entire lifetimes, which you know, is statistically fairly low. But when you think about that number of people seven and a half million human beings that experience stalking in a single year, it's pretty staggering.
In the US alone. Yeah, and when we say stalking, we're not talking about you know, creeps on the Internet sliding into your dms. We're talking about the sort of stalking that is defined by the DOJ. For a lot of US. These numbers seem surprisingly high, you know what I mean? This is like cape fear, single white female kind of thriller stuff. But critics of this survey believe the CDC is used an overly conservative definition of stalking, and honestly, I tend to agree with some of the
problems here. Survey respondents were classified as stalking victims if and only if, one they experienced multiple stalking tactics or a single stalking tactic multiple times by the same perpetrator. That part makes sense. Or two they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed as a result of the perpetrators stalking behavior. And this comes from the Stalking Resource Center. They say this definition fails to address the varying levels
of fear reported by victims. Right somewhat fearful, maybe distressed, disquietened, or slightly fearful. And no stalking law in the US which goes these stalking laws pretty much goes state by state unless you're talking about interstate stalking. These stalking laws don't qualify fear the way that the CDC is. And so they say that using this conservative definition of stalking results in an inaccurate depiction of the practice. But wait,
as Billy Mayss want to say, there's more, folks. You see, we have piles of disturbing facts and statistics about this phenomenon, this type of crime according to the Bureau of Justice statistics during a twelve month period. You'll notice these statistics don't all agree during a twelve month period, and estimated fourteen out of every one thousand people age eighteen or
older or victims of stalking somehow. And again the definition changes, right, But let's keep in mind these are different organizations of the same government.
Well, and really, you're you can only use surveys, right, So depending on who you're surveying, even as random as you want it to be, you may get very different statistics.
Right, Right, So it's true because we have to ask ourselves about the methodology. One survey may just be going
off self reporting right. One survey may be going off only reports that have been made to law enforcement, and as we know, quite a few people do not report things like that to law enforcement unless unless it exceeds a certain threshold, Like most people are not calling nine to one one every time they get an unsolicited again an unsolicited maybe message on Instagram or something you know.
Sure or you know, a robo call, or you know, consistent robo calls from the same number or something.
About half of stalking victims, around forty six percent, said they experienced at least one unwanted contact per week. Eleven percent of victims said they've been stalked for a long time five years or more. The risk of being a victim of stalking was highest for individuals who were divorced or separated. That's thirty four out of one thousand individuals. Women were at a greater risk than men for being for stalking victimization. However, women and men were equally likely
to experience harassment. Nearly three and four stalking victims knew their offender in some way. That person you go to school with, who's kind of quiet and ex significant other.
Even if it's just a neighbor, even if it's.
Just a neighbor, just a face woman in some way. So, you know, when we see these crimes or these situations depicted in works of fiction, people go to the police, and predictably, especially if it's a thriller, the police ignore them. Our hands are tied. They say, we could get a restraining order. That's the extent of it. Now, that's you know, oversimplified for the sake of plot and narrative. But it is unfortunately true that not all states treat stalking the same way.
Yeah, currently just over half fifty one percent of states. They'll require that there are at least two or more instances. We kind of talked about this a little bit, but there have to be at least two instances where this perpetrator, whoever the person is, that's perceived as a stalker, as either following, harassing, watching in some way the person who's the victim, right, But then some state laws actually specify the victim has to be frightened by the stalking. Like
there again we're talking about fear here. It's kind of what we mentioned earlier, like if you were walking into a police department to make a report, and you are not fearful of this stalking is just a nuisance perhaps or something like that, then it wouldn't necessarily be considered stalking. Some others require that the stalking behavior must have caused a reasonable person to experience fear. But again, a lot of these states vary on what fear is, like what
are we defining fear as? Is it somewhat fearful, quite fearful, very fearful? And some state laws even require, you know, a prosecutor if they were gonna take somebody to court and charge them with stalking, they would require the prosecutor to establish that fear of death or at least some kind of you know, serious harm was at least felt by the victim, And you know, others just require that a prosecutor established the victim suffered some kind of emotional distress.
And that is generally going to be experienced by anyone who feels at least that they are the victim of stalking.
And we'll get back to a problematic, challenging issue with that definition. But first we've painted the scene right. The broad context, being stalked in North Dakota is not the same as being stalked in California or Oklahoma.
Right.
We know that stalking is reel. We know that it is by itself a frightening phenomenon for the people involved. Yet over the course of recent years, more and more individuals are coming forward, often forming communities online, claiming that they have been harassed, stalked, terrorized, not by an ex lover, not by a single creepy obsessed neighbor or former school chum, but by groups of people, coordinated groups, acting in concerts and behaving as though they have a plan, a gang
of stalks. So today's question is what exactly is going on?
And we'll get to that right after a quick word from our sponsor.
Here's where it gets crazy. Gang stalking. Yes, gang stalking. This is something many of our fellow listeners have written in to us about over the years, and I do mean years. As we've established earlier, stalking has a few common characteristics. Tends to be highly personal and individualized. Tends to be measured at least partially in subjective emotional terms, at least as far as the letter of the law
applies in the US. And that's a tricky thing. We cannot objectively measure a subjective experience, especially because we know that emotions are malleable and to a degree in ephemeral. Often right things, we feel different ways about the same thing at different times, which sounds elementary but is incredibly important for this. It reminds me of you know, how the Sackler family and other criminals of that ILK had put in you know, it'd spent.
I love that you just phrased it that way.
It's true, sorry, criminals who are not going to be convicted, right people, drug dealers. I don't know what you want me to say.
No, no, I'm completely honest. It's refreshing to you hear it stated in the.
Well those are unfortunately true things. But but the these like these organizations, the opioid mongers, had spent millions making a standardized pain reporting scale that medical professionals were more or less forced to use. And we've all we've all kind of heard it before. Describe your pain on a scale of one to ten right.
On comfor it's basically comfort or.
Yeah yea yeah, yeah yeah. And so we're asking we're asking people to subjectively rate something. So if we're asking people to subjectively rate their fear after something incredibly frightening has happened to them, you know what I mean, Like, I just got an envelope full of like hair and a picture of my kid at the playground. Oh do you think I'm somewhat discomfited by this? You know it's insane?
Well it is. I mean, when you're speaking of perceived stalking, as we're going to find a little later in the episode, it ranges from a glance from somebody that perhaps you don't know, to I mean, I can only imagine the nth degree. There would be someone holding a weapon to your body and you know, threatening you, Like, that would be the range I'm assuming if you're talking about levels of fear within stalking, right.
Yeah. Yeah, that's the problem with that definition because different people will have different thresholds right of what they consider frightening. And this is not at all in any way shape, form or fashion meant to diminish or minimize the experiences of people who are victimized by stalking. We're saying that some people will behave differently, and there's not really a one size fits all for you.
Yes, some people behave and perceive differently.
Yeah, there we go. That's incredibly important. So here's the strange part. For people who believe that they're victims of group stalking or gang stalking, the same rules apply with but not in the same way and with even higher stakes, like they may feel there is a highly personal, individualized motive behind this group of people stalking them, but they may not have known these people before. It's just the guy who's always now at the bus stop around the
same time as you. And because the definitions of the term gang stalking can be a little tough to come by, we found some pretty pretty comprehensive definitions from the subreddit on gang stalking, And there is a dedicated subreddit to this and I like their definition. I think it gives us a good lay of the land.
Oh sure. It says that gang stalking is an umbrella term, and it describes a series of techniques utilized by a group to instill mental instability within a victim. So that would be a particular individual with the intent to discredit, sabotage, harass, extort, and even drive a victim to suicide or at least to mental distress. And it goes on to say the victims of this practice are often described as targeted individuals known as TIS.
For short, So we will no relation to the artists.
Correct, and we will be using TI sometimes targeted individuals moving forward.
Yeah, and according to the TIS who feel that they are victims of gang stocking operations, the stalking can take multiple forms, right.
Oh, yeah, there are lots of different perceived things here that have been described by multiple people. So this isn't just one person's account of what it's like to be gang stalked or the perception of what is occurring. So let's get to something called mobbing. Let's hit that first.
So this is an intense and organized harassment, sometimes in the workplace, but mobbing can also occur outside of the workplace, where it's just a whole bunch of people that appear to be around you or paying attention to you or watching you all at once. Like again, if you just if you imagine the concept of mobbing, it's a lot of people all at once with their attention focused on you. But then but then their attention will go away and they'll come right back to you.
Yeah, and then there are black bag jobs, which would be a residential break in where maybe something is stolen or something's messed with, but your house is not valuables aren't necessarily taken. It's not like a burglary.
It's for me. My understanding is it's a perception that your inner sanctum, your place of safety, has been disheveled or messed with or looked at by somebody who physically, you know, breached the perimeter or whatever.
And maybe they altered something, or maybe they installed something to monitor you.
And generally it's to mess with you, right, right, right, I mean that's the perception, is that somebody broke in here just to mess with me, not like you said, not to take something of any value.
Right, maybe in some cases to leave something. The idea is that the idea here in both of those cases is that someone is attempting to compromise the victim's sanity or their perception of reality. This term we commonly encapsulate this in the term gaslighting. Yeah, right, So gaslighting is when someone attempts some person or some group attempts to convince some other person or some other group that they are in fact mentally unstable, they are losing their mind,
and so on. It comes from a play nineteen thirty eight called Gaslight. In the US, it's known as Angel Street, and it's about a woman whose husband slowly her or gaslights her into thinking that she is losing her mind. There are other things like a street theater.
Yeah, now this is this is one that you can find videos of online in a lot of places in YouTube, where it will be a group of people that if you're watching objectively, it feels as though it's just normal activity out on a street, particularly or it doesn't have to be a street, it can be just in any public space. And you know, but for the person who believes they're being gang stoked, everything feels inauthentic. It feels like it's a bunch of theater people, theater kids putting
on a play. It like it's organized in some way for specifically the purpose to agitate the person who's perceiving it as being as stalking.
Right, And this goes into the concept of some performance art. Some of us listening might say, well, what about things like improv everywhere? Yeah? Have you seen those clips?
Oh yeah, it's like.
People spontaneously freeze for sixty seconds in train station where everybody starts in a flashmob, dancing and stuff. It's not like that. That's not what people who have encountered this. They don't feel that they're watching some NDO artsy performance. They feel like that person's pretending to read a magazine, pretending to be on the phone. How long is that person going to keep, you know, looking at different pairs of sunglasses?
Oh yeah, you know what I mean totally. And then another thing here that I want to just talk about. We're gonna have some examples moving forward, a little bit
of personal experiences with this and or accounts. But other way gang stocking takes shape sometimes is when you're driving your car and there's a there's the feeling that several cars around you may maybe the one in front of you is slowing down to keep you going a certain speed, but then there are also cars next to you, so you can't change lanes to go around this person that seems to be controlling you. And then maybe another car will box you in from behind and prevent you from
really doing anything, especially if you're on a freeway. There are instances where people will believe their home is wherever they wherever it is they live, and sleep is being consistently surveilled by the same people that walk by the house at certain Like you said, kind of at certain times, or maybe wearing a very specific hat sure, or are wearing the same clothes. That's kind of the way it
takes form. And there are a lot of reasons that they're There are several categories of reasons people believe they're being gang stalked. And before we get into too much of that, let's just I think we should give some examples of people's accounts, like personal accounts.
Yeah, yeah, that's probably the best way to depict this experience. Let's look at some first hand accounts of people who feel they have experienced gang stalking. James Crockett has a great quote on this in his article for Medium, and he describes it thusly. In one video, a TI takes a GoPro that's a GoPro camera on the New York subway and narrates his journey to try to prove the
existence of his stalkers. He notes a man in an orange jacket who occasionally looks at him, another tall man who enters the train and makes eye contact with the man in the jacket, and a lady who he thinks he's giving him dirty looks whenever he looks away from her.
For several stops, she just stands there. He says, these people really do perform a vicious act. They don't care if people are driven to suicidal depression, like I almost was. It wasn't until after that I realized this was some kind of sick game I am in.
So there's another possibility there, you know, the saying it's a sick game. There's the idea that maybe this is a recreational activity for some people. Maybe the cause is just to just to mess with people, you.
Know, perhaps, And you can also go online and see videos of people with a camcorder in a public space filming other people that they believe are gangstocking the person with the camcorder. And we're gonna have to get into that a little bit later too. But just that concept of being in a public place with a camcorder aimed at strangers that you don't know, I'm gonna say it's likely that you are going to bring attention to yourself
because you're doing that. Many of us, when we're in public spaces will notice if there is a camera aimed at us, right, and again, it's tough to know whether or not that attention is brought upon by the actions of the filmer or if it's I mean, it feels that way to me, but it's not conclusive, so we'll get into that a little bit later too. There's also a Vice short documentary that was created in twenty seventeen
called The Nightmare World of gang Stocking. It's a video that's available on YouTube right now, and there are several people in it who describe their experiences. So let's first turn to Billy Bee, who is a makeup artist and a self described gang stoking victim, and in his particular account, he believes he's a victim of culture stalking, which is kind of an offshoot of gang stocking functions in the same way, the reasons that he's being stalked are a
little bit altered. So in this case, he is a man who identifies as homosexual, who is living in a very let's say, conservative area, and he believes there's some conservative Christian group that is in an organized way stalking him and doing these things like street theater that are
making him feel uncomfortable. Where he will be parked in a fairly empty lot somewhere, and then a lot of cars will pull in, and each one that pulls in a heterosexual couple gets out holding hands, being all cute to you, right near his car and on purpose making eye contact with him or flaunting it in front of him, and it would happen over and over and over and over and over. So this this is the way he describes it.
You're in the middle of this ridiculous, irrational impossibility that is real and is happening, and it's stranger than fiction or anything that you can imagine, and it's just terrifying. It pisces you off, it frustrates you beyond anything that you can imagine, and it changes you.
I mean, that's that's rough to be feeling that right at an individual level.
And what do we know what part of the country this person, mister B is in. This is California, This is California, and there's a conservative area of California which does exist. Some people outside the state might be surprised by that. And the question then becomes, is this a
situation where everybody in a community knows each other? You know, like if you go to a small town, right, people make eye contact, people wave, And if you go to a small town where people don't care for outsiders or don't care for you specifically, it becomes very clear very quickly that's is that gangstalking or is that just people being jerks? And people don't have to like have a meeting beforehand to be jerks. They naturally take to that.
Yeah, well, and this is gonna be a common theme here. No matter what even the truth is about what's happening, these targeted individuals believe that this is happening so wholeheartedly that it's affecting them, you know, mentally and emotionally and physically sometimes, so you know, you're right on the money. But there have been like the way that I'm thinking about these, you know, some of the statements and some
of the things that people are describing. So let's just turn to another person who was also from that Vice documentary named Richard Bruce. He he's a guy who I believe was living out of his RV and he is describing his where he's lived over the course of several years in different places, those like apartments and you know, the car and where he's living now in the RV. All of these places were constantly surveilled by groups of
people as well as by helicopters. Police helicopters that would fly over all the time law enforcement vehicles that would
pass by his living spaces all the time. When he was being interviewed for this documentary, he had a small device next to him and I don't know if it was a radio or some kind of monitor or something, but when he would begin to talk about certain subjects or in certain ways, the device would make some noise, and he believed that he was being listened to by electronic surveillance, and specifically when he would bring up certain topics, that's when they were like recording or you know, established
the connection or something like this.
And he does a fantastic job, at least in this quotation or in this interview, showing metacognition right thinking about thinking. He's self aware, and he understands how this may to someone hearing about this for the first time. He understands how this may sound a little bit off kilter.
Yeah, he says, it's confusing to humans trying to understand gang stalking. Why would they do this to me? Why would they do these weird, petty little things that may even just irritate me at some moment. This happens to you enough, believe me, you will feel stress. You will get that feeling of helplessness. This is not just like a gang of random people just doing this. This is procedural. If you were to ask me what gang stalking is, it's a way to slowly kill people using their own decisions.
Which is fascinating, right, And from that interview, I think we can all feel the as if we're looking through a window into the hopelessness and the terror and anxiety of this person's life. If you want to read more of these personal accounts, which again are anecdotal and are not you know, they don't contribute to a quantitative study
of any sort. But if you would like to read these first hand accounts, again without us being able to vouch for their veracity, we recommend heading toward reddit dot com are gang stalking reddit dot com slash are slash gang stalking all one word speaking words. We're going to pause for one from our sponsor, and when we come back, we're going to address the elephant in the room motive. We have returned. We hope that if you're listening to this show while you're in a public space, you are
not getting increasingly weirded out. But there's a big problem they will see with a lot of these, Well, problem isn't the most accurate word. There is a big question that remains unasked, and a lot of these firsthand reports and a lot of the literature you will see about the concept of gang stalking, it is this why why would you do that? Right? Would you do it for
just pure evil twisted recreation? You know? Is this a situation where Mission Control, Matt, you and I get together and we say, hey, you know, the four or five of us should just just find someone on Facebook who lives in our town and you know, just stalk them. Yeah, I just poke the bear, right, We're so tired of
playing board games. Let's let's do something different with their friendship. Yes, which may have happened, but that doesn't seem like it would be the normal thing for people to do, not because people are inherently so great or noble, just because it feels like a lot of work for a lot
of people unless they're getting something out of it. So another question, or another possible motive that we see cited a lot pretty often by people who believe they are being gang stalked is the idea that these activities are occurring at the behest of the US intelligence community. And this again goes to a lot of US reports. So there's a site called fight gang stalking dot com and according to you can tell from the title that to them,
this is a legitimate, real phenomenon. And according to fight gang stalking dot com, gang stalking is quote most likely a disinformation term created by US intelligence agencies. It refers to the intense, long term, unconstitutional surveillance and harassment of a person who has been designated as a target by someone associated with America's security industry WHOA.
And it goes on to say, quote, the goal of such operations, in the parlance of counterintel telligence agents, is disruption of the life of an individual deemed to be an enemy or potential enemy of clients or members of the security state. Arguably the most accurate term for this form of harassment would be counter intelligence stalking.
So there's a problem here, though. The problem is this the tis or targeted individuals are rarely unified in what
exactly caused them to be stalked. While it is absolutely, inarguably true that extensive and illegal surveillance has been used by past and current governments should not be a surprise to anybody, there's relatively little follow up reporting in these gang stalking stories, and there's relatively little coherent explanation for why these people would be driven to fearful actions or to mental instability, or at the worst, to self harm.
Yeah, well you have to apply the motive problem then to the security state or to the intelligence agencies, right, what is their motive for targeting that individual?
And then this goes to the trench coat clad, fedora wearing elephant in the room. Is this a genuine phenomenon occurring the way in which it's described and are the people experiencing it describing it accurately or are people some if not all, these people experiencing some kind of delusion. Not that that could be considered an offensive question, but it shouldn't be. It's a necessary question.
Absolutely. If we're going to talk about this, we have to at least think about it.
So what do we have to go on? Where can we look to for some answers like what even is? What do we mean when we say delusion?
Well, let's jump back to that Vice documentary Again, huge shadow out to the team member's advice that created that documentary. It really is fantastic and there's a lot of insight here and things to think about to chew on philosophically. So they interviewed a fellow named Josh Basil or Bazell. He's a physician and an author, and he's discussing the psychiatric definitions of delusion, and he's saying that these tend
to focus really on two principles. The first one is that the ideas, if you're at least if you're experiencing a delusion, the ideas that you have are not vulnerable to evidence. So if someone shows you look this thing, you believe it is not true. Because of this I have evidence, that wouldn't matter because you would still believe it. Okay.
The other part of a delusion is that people in your immediate sphere of influence, perhaps the people in the culture at large, or in your town, or in the case of Billy b maybe the conservative neighborhood where he's move to. Those people don't share your beliefs, so they don't believe that what you believe is happening is true. That would be one of the ways we get to
considering someone to have a delusion. Now, he goes on to say, the question becomes this is a full quote the question becomes, if you can find ten thousand people on the Internet who believe the same thing as you, is that then a delusion? Is it even bizarre? Quite possibly not if everybody believes this stuff at least, this would be the question you ask yourself as you stumble upon ten thousand other people that share your in this case, what he's calling a delusion, is it in any way insane?
And the answer would be no, because it is not delusionable. Look at all these other people who are experiencing the same thing, and I think this is It's a fascinating way to look at it. Because then does it get into the realm of group delusion or is it still on the personal level of because it is a very personal experience. Gang stalking like the perception that I am
being gang stocked. It is not as though gang stalkers are looking at my whole neighborhood or looking at my whole you know, cul de sac or whatever it may be. It's generally a targeted thing. That's why they are called targeted individuals. I don't know, it's a tough thing. It's a tough egg to crack there.
For me, at least, it also goes into philosophy. Yeah, that's really what the psychologist is doing here is looking at the problem of perception and reality.
Oh yeah, no, you're right.
So that's that's a that's an egg that our species has yet to effectively crack. We know that things can become normalized for people at a cartoonishly quick rate. So we know that our concept of what normal is is very malleable, and we know that our species tends to look to anything we perceive as peers for confirmation of things. And also at the weirdest times, we're very talented and
big up in each other. I mean, maybe that's just my experience, but I've had I've had some conversations with absolute strangers that confirm some deeply held quote unquote crazy things that I believe. You know, and having someone else, whether you meet them in person or whether they're just a block of text that you can assume is a person talking back to and confirming your beliefs. Having somebody else say that is a light in the darkness for a lot of people, you know what I mean. And
that's a huge that's a huge thing. That's a trope in fiction, that's a common experience in individual reality to have someone else say something to you that lets you know I'm not the only one. We do that in the smallest, like the smallest, most seemingly insignificant situations, you know, like let's say you and I and Paul are like recording in a studio, Matt, and then all of a sudden, there's this weird you know, where'd you come from? Where'd you go? Where did you come from? Cotton Eye Joe.
We look around and we check even thow and we're a relatively sane mental stuff arguably, but even we still check, like, Hey, does anybody here cotton eye Joe? Or is this finally that psychotic break that we all knew was coming? This? And I don't want to get too far off topic there, but I can see the power of that, certainly, and it's reinforcement all.
The way, right.
And then there's also set and setting, which I think continues in the quotation.
Oh absolutely, And just before we jump into that bed, I want to talk about a concept of hypervigilance, and it's something that Josh brings up in that documentary, and it's the concept that for our own self preservation, if we are experiencing something or we believe we are experiencing something, we err on the side of safety for ourselves, for our personal safety, rather than on whatever the social morase would be, whatever the standard actions to take would be
for someone. And it all occurs when there's a perceived connection that may or may not be there. So we're talking about seeing somebody walk by and then seeing that
person maybe walk by again. The hypervigilance within a lot of people experiencing this would be, oh, that person may want, you know, maybe a part of this thing that I'm already feeling or already believe I'm experiencing, rather than perhaps that person went to go get you know, something down the street and then you didn't see them walk by, and now they're going back down again, or you know,
something to that effect. But ultimately, what this is or what that means is that people experiencing this are going to be more hyper aware of things like that because they are so worried about their own safety already because of the anxieties that are brought up by feeling this way.
It's almost like it just builds on itself. So then Josh goes on to talk about how there are real world instances of surveillance, either targeted or mass surveillance, that maybe we should be worried about that are They are very much real, They've been proven, they exist around us every day. And I'll just read this quick quote from you, he says, because this reminds me of stuff they want
you to know. He says, given that the world is filled with groups of people operating in secret or trying to to divorce us from our money, our power, or whatever they want from us, one thing that might be helpful to ask from a psychiatric point of view is what's wrong with the rest of us? Why am I so relaxed? What's wrong with me? Why don't I feel
like I'm being gang stocked? Is it that I'm living in the matrix where in order to feel more comfortable, I've decided to ignore a lot of the evils in the world and a lot of the potential threats to me. And there he's referencing the NSA's mass surveillance of citizens within the United States. He's referencing other countries such as the UK and England over there where you know, they're the most CCTV cameras per capita anywhere on the planets.
He's mentioning that this stuff is very real, and why aren't more of us worried about that kind of thing? If you apply more general sense, what these people who believe they're targeted of individuals are feeling to on a mass level, let's say that.
Yeah, So let's spend just a second on that concept, because it's the other side of that coin, right, It's the other side of the argument. If you feel like you are being gang stocked, and then you go somewhere and you find ten thousand other people to say, yes, it's true, then how are you supposed to feel if you don't believe you're being gang stalked, and then you're surrounded by people who are saying, yeah, no, it's true. It's they're out for all of us. Why are you
so chill? What is wrong with you?
Yeah?
It's an interesting question because it hits on that It hits on that need for consensus that is just baked into every human mind. I want to go back to the concept of hypervigilant because it's another concept that is baked into the human mind, and that is a pattern must exist. Yes, and so much so many of our even relatively mundane activities, especially our observations, there's this little
voice in her head. May not be able to hear it all the time because it's tough for us to listen to ourselves, but the little voice in your head is always going A pattern must exist, A pattern must exist, right, and this is a crucial skill. We have to have it to survive in the world. Ever since we were not the Apex predator and we were running around trying to figure out what our A to b's and if then's were that would keep us alive for the next day.
So arguably hypervigilance is just a reflection of that, or just an extension of that much needed survival skill. Now, if it sounds like we're poking whole in the experience of gang stalking, that's because we are asking important questions that haven't been answered. It's not necessarily uniform motive. There's not necessarily a lot of follow up. Right. There aren't very many good stats on the phenomenon known as gang stalking. But speaking of the other side of the coin, there
are things that are like it that are proven. The reality of government in corporate surveillance. According to the ACLU, privacy today faces growing threats from a growing surveillance apparatus. It's often justified in the name of one of our favorite boogeymen, national security. You can do it in a
spooky voice. A ton of government agencies I'm paraphrasing. Now, they didn't say a ton a ton of government agencies from like the NSA, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and so on, along with state and local law enforcement, intrude on the private communication of innocent citizens, and they amass great databases of who we talk to or interact with and when we do, and then catalogs suspicious activities based on very very vague standards. We've talked already about
big data. We've talked about the strange what's that? What's that game? People who like celebrities play six six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Yes, that's that's how Uncle Sam traces terrorist activities. Yeah, you know, associates, right known associates, which extends further and further out. Similar to the DPRK's policy of intergenerational punishment. Oh boy, except now you're it's now
the laws don't apply to you the same way. If a guy you knew in college met somebody and became Facebook friends with them and then they later tried to join isis you know what I mean? And the argument there is that that is that hoover vacuum approach to data and personal information is the best way to prevent a future catastrophe, and that is I mean, that argument does have some sand, but it also it's tough to prove.
It's like the old time travel problem. Like you if you went back in time and you killed Hitler when Hitler was a kid.
Or something, Yeah, I remember doing that.
Yeah, no one, No one would know that. No one would know that you prevented him from playing a part in World War two because no one would know about World War two. You would have killed a child as far as everyone was concerned, So you have committed a great sin. We can't prove to people. It's hard to prove to people that we prevented something from happening when we do it in such a way that it never happened. WHOA,
I know. Sorry, it's virgin into philosophy, but it's it's an argument that we hear pretty often, and it's a fascinating argument. But the truth is, these standards are very vague, and we know that surveillance has been abused in the past. Co intel was is real, right, It certainly was. It certainly was. Let's put that is in parentheses with a question mark. Multiple government agencies have in the past monitored and harassed civilians, even those not suspected of committing a crime.
We just don't like what this person is doing to the status quote, we don't like what they're protesting. Let's keep an eye on them.
We don't like the potential movement of society of this person is let to be successful.
Right exactly. And today's episode has been, you know, necessarily US centric because these we were able to find some of the best stats on, you know, on orthodox stalking, and then we were able to find a lot of information on gang stalking. But this is by no means a phenomenon solely reported in the US. The United Kingdom has a fair share of people who believe they are
being gang stalked or they are targeted individuals. And additionally, it is absolutely true, absolutely irrefutably true, that other repressive governments do have stuff like this happening. They have secret police, there's security agents. You're a journalist in a particularly oppressive country, yeah, you're gonna be followed. You might. I mean it's not It might for you and them. It might not even
be surreptitious. You might land at the airport they do allow you in, and they say, okay, you're gonna hang with these two people the entirety, and they're gonna drive.
It's for your safety.
It's for your safety and for our national security. This also applies to opposition politicians, activist right, somebody fight for a particular type of human rights that the government would rather not have members of non state approved religions like this stuff happens.
You know, I don't want to pile on here as though, like, oh this is all real. There's so much oppression to our privacy and our security, but you know, we willingly let this stuff, especially the corporate kind nowadays, directly into our home. We have whole episodes on this about the
smart assistant that maybe you're listening to this through. Maybe it's just a couple of the apps within your phone where you store all your email, but it's a company, a corporation, the third party from you that is controlling all of that stuff. The social media posts that you make every day of where you are and what you're doing, and the you know, think about that, like establishing patterns.
We're doing that every day. That's what we do, and we just let it out into the world, not only for the corporation but for anybody else who cares to watch or listen. And it also doesn't help, by the way, that there are commercial applications out there that will do the things that people are the most terrified about. Ooh, do tell like a what's it called m spy and flexy spy or two. There's just two of them. But these are two available things applications that can be added
on to your device, whatever it is. And one of them only takes a few minutes. Another one takes about an hour to fully install. Because you have some of them, you have to like jail break phone or whatever your device is it. Yeah, but if some of them you can just if let's just say I was able to get hold of Paul's phone for a few minutes while he went to the bathroom or something.
And you were able to get past the security code.
Yeah, yeah, but specifically in people who are worried about stalking, if you're talking about your significant other or someone who maybe does know the codes to your phone or something, it can be installed like that. Then you can access their email, their texts, there, insta feed there, you know, blah blah blah blah blah. Whatever it is. It's terrifying that that's out there. Don't let people touch your phone, man, I mean that's the.
Rule, yes, and it's it's all true, and it can easily be abused. There's another thing. We just had it in the notes as.
Oh oh and one more thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You didn't want to spoil the surprise. So this sounds pretty sci fi. I don't want to hear whether anyone else has heard of this, but a lot of people own smart TVs right now.
Right, yeah, you may not even be aware that it's a smart.
TV, right, Maybe a smart TV playing dumb and you can tie your phone or you can you know, pair your phone to the television and things of that nature. It turns out that the technology exists such that a smart TV. There's certain types of TVs when they are playing commercials, will send an audio signal out. It's not an audio signal you can hear. If you have pets, good for you, they probably can't hear it either, but your smart devices can. And through this, through this relay
this ping. You know. Of course, one of the big gets is that advertisers know someone's in the room when the ad is playing. And that's big. Someone's actually seen the thing.
They can prove it, or maybe even how many.
And maybe even who. So the data is, you know, anonymized or whatever. But this this means that for people who are dismissing the idea of gang stocking, don't dismiss the idea of surveillance that you cannot perceive. It's there, it's real, you know, there are It's not like there's one shadowy cabal that knows a ton of stuff about you that you thought was secret. And it's not like
you're doing anything bad. It's more like there are a bunch of people who are trying to figure out how best to predict your behavior in such a way that they can monetize your behavior or at the very sith end of the spectrum, push you to make decisions that you might not have ordinarily made. That's real. That's not a theory. Instead of a theory, it's a huge business.
If you'd If you'd like to learn more about some of this, check out article in New York Times, How Smart TVs and millions of US homes track more than what's on tonight. That's just an opening to the rabbit hole, and then burrow in and tell us what you think. And speaking of what you think. Got to say this leads us some of the key issues with the concept of gang stalking. Number One, Government surveillance, at least here in the US is typically intended to be invisible. That
does not apply to every other country. I don't know whether it's still the case somebody mainland China tell me, but for a long time, if you were using the Internet like you're in an Internet cafe in China when we talked about this on previous episode, every so often there will be a cute little cartoon police officer that comes on just to let you know that the government is monitoring your Internet usage for your safety, to keep
you safe, you know, national security, et cetera. The concept of gag stalking argues that targeted individuals are very much aware of the situation and being and having your target be very much aware of the situation in normal stalking surveillance stuff or in normal surveillance at least, renders that surveillance ineffective because it changes the behavior of a target, you know, like how observing things can change their behavior.
So wait, we might rightly say, isn't the point of this not to observe someone and gather info, but to interfere with their sanity, waging psyops to gaslight them and maybe even drive them to suicide. Sure, but there's a problem with that claim too.
Oh yeah, we know we have proof that the government, at least in this country, and intelligence agencies that are just arms of that government, have at least in the past, done a lot more than gang stocking to terrify and seek vengeance against people that they perceive at least as threats. We know that for sure. So I mean we have to ask ourselves, like, why would a government agency with the ability to literally disappear somebody it's happened before, it's happening,
I don't know if it is. It's probably happening now or next week, at least could it could happen. Why would they bother to just annoy somebody? Why would they do this kind of strategy that is so long term, with so many resources, as you said earlier, that would be required to do it to a target like some of the people who believe they're being targeted.
Right, Yeah, if you can just grab a mouse and snap its neck, why would you play a game of mouse trap? Why would you have this Rube Goldberg esque thing. It could be. I'd heard some people say it is psychological experiment, similar to some of that MK ultra stuff. But still it's something that we would have to explain. It's a question you have to answer. If you think state supported intelligence agencies are just lightly in person stalking someone in a way that is meant for that person
to be aware of, That's that's tough. It's tough to answer that.
Now. No, look before we completely discount gangstocking, maybe you are feeling that way as we're you know, talking about
all of this, which we are not saying that. So if you if that's you're feeling right now, just remember that if you or someone else truly wants to reach someone that believes they are being gang stoked, and you know, even if you if it's your intention is to tell them, look, it's okay, it's not real, or something like that, the one of the worst things you can do is make someone to feel as though they are crazy.
Right, It's very unproductive.
Absolutely, so I would say an avenue, you know, and this is actually stated in the Vice documentary that we keep referencing the avenue rather should be why why do you feel like you are worth you know, being persecuted? What's happened to you? What's troubling you? You know, like that very personal like, let's let's talk about that, Let's talk about those issues, let's start working through those because the perceived persecution, maybe from the outside perhaps is a
factor of that other thing. Just just putting that out there for anybody who's extremely skeptical of this.
And what do you think. Do you feel like you have encountered something like this in your own life or you know what, do you want to join a protest supporting targeted individuals? Because if you have, my good pal Matt has actually found one. Is that correct?
Yeah, there's a website called targetedjusice dot com. If you head over there, you can learn about the October protest. It's they're calling it the Targeted Protest twenty nineteen. It's going to run in Washington, d C. From October eighteenth this year until the twenty second, and it's a registration is thirty five dollars. If you do want to register and go. But but but what do you get a T shirt?
You do get a T shirt.
It's a free T shirt.
I don't think you should call it a free T shirt.
It's a thirty five people. It's a twenty five dollars T shirt with a ten dollars registration.
It's a complementary valet. Valet is complementary if you are a jerk and don't tip.
Yeah, that's true. But anyway, it exists out there, and there are advocates for you. If you believe you are a targeted individual, you can you can find groups online and maybe even go to targetedusice dot com. And I'm fairly certain I saw several resources there and you can follow.
Yeah, and to be clear, I'm making a cheapskate joke about the T shirt stuff. Registration for protests and these kind of organizations typically just goes to keep the organization running.
Yes, we're wholeheartedly joking.
It's but one thing we're serious about. Before we tell you all the ways to find us on the internet and talk to us and we hope that you engage in one of those platforms with us, before we get to that part, we have to tell you the most important part of this episode, the thing we absolutely one one hundred one percent will never joke about. If you believe that you are a victim of stalking, doesn't matter whether it's from a gang, a significant other, romantic partner, anyone.
There are resources, there are people, there are services out there that will help you. You're not hopeless, you're not isolated. You don't have to be alone in this and a solution exists.
Yeah, you can. You can check out the Stalking Prevention Awareness and Resource Center. There is a Victim connect line there. It is one eight five five four eight four two eight four six. You can also check out Safe Horizon. They also have a hotline that is available twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, and that number is one eight six six six eight nine four three five seven.
And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts, right, let us know what you think. You can reach you to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on Facebook x and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy Stuff Show.
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