Eww..Yes, inspired by a recent incident, lets learn a little something about Stalkers. In this case, online stalkers.
What counts as stalking ( cyber or real life)?
Stalking is defined by most as the willful, malicious and repeated following or harassing of another person. The acts are malicious, repetitive, personally directed, obsessive and premeditated.
Malicious~> the person has the intent to annoy, harass, harm, or even cause you fear for well being. Actions may include spamming, impersonation, or jokes.
Repetitive~> More than once, often with a pattern you can discern over time.
Obsessive~> This is when the person will not stop. You can ask or even have them ordered to stop the harassment, and still they persist. They continue the harassment even in your absence by posting or commenting openly.
Personal direction in attack / vendetta~> The person seeks to cause you harm or distress because of real or imagined acts. Most of the time this is all in the stalker/ harassers head, they have no reasonable reason, and use your defensive actions/ reactions to justify their further abuse.
Premeditated~> this means the harasser THOUGHT about and PLANNED to annoy, harass, stalk, abuse you. This includes looking up personal information on the internet, newspapers, etc, includes the creation of chat or email ids with your information, and includes repetitive actions. Heat of the moment "attacks" that occur once do not fall in this category
There are three main types of stalkers. Intimate partner stalkers, delusional stalkers and vengeful stalkers. I will just get into 'Delusional stalkers.'
"The typical profile of delusional stalkers is that of an unmarried and socially immature loner, who is unable to establish or sustain close relationships with others. They rarely date and have had few, if any, sexual relationships. Since at the same time they are both threatened by and yearn for closeness, they often pick victims who are unattainable in some way; perhaps he/she is married, or has been the stalker’s therapist, clergyman, doctor or teacher. Those in the helping professions are particularly vulnerable to delusional stalkers, because for someone who already has difficulty separating reality from fantasy, the kindness shown by the soon-to-be victim, the only person who has ever treated the stalker with warmth, is blown out of proportion into a delusion of intimacy. What these stalkers cannot attain in reality is achieved through fantasy and it is for this reason that the delusion seems to be so difficult to relinquish: Even an imaginary love is better than no love at all."
Hmm.....That is what makes it so tough. With one act of kindness, these deperate people take it as an act of love. So it's kinda hard to distinguish who to be nice to or not. Well teh beauty of it being online is that you can ignore them, so no biggy.
"Delusional stalkers frequently have had little or no contact with their victims. They may have major mental illnesses like schizophrenia, manic-depression or erotomania. What they all have in common is some false belief that keeps them tied to their victims. In erotomania, the stalker’s delusional belief is that the victim loves him. This type of stalker actually believes that he is having a relationship with his victim, even though they might never have met.
Another type of delusional stalker might believe that he is destined to be with someone, and that if he only pursues her hard enough and long enough, she will come to love him as he loves her. These stalkers know they are not having a relationship with their victims, but firmly believe that they will some day."
