Past the painful user interface, the site hosts links to petitions, current activist efforts, general discussion forums, and PDFs that purportedly prove the existence and proliferation of mind control and surveillance technology.

Another site, titled “GangstalkingIsMurder,” hosts FOIA’d documents relating to stalking that supposedly prove that gangstalking is real. The site encourages visitors to call their congressperson, saying that if you don’t, “your silence will ensure that [gangstalking] will not end in the foreseeable future.”

“Targeted Individuals Canada” has advice for those suffering from gangstalking on how to get through the difficulties. It reads:

“First, stay healthy, eat well and exercise. Second, if you decide to be active online, no matter what you do, make sure you present yourself well. This is always about perception. Do not make yourself look you are losing it. Your sanity is the number one goal, do not lose it. Third, live your life, do the things you enjoy. Fourth, do not isolate yourself to everyone. Final word for you, no matter what you do, Learn to filter and ignore. Stay positive and refocus to the good things. Do take care of yourself.”

The gangstalking community, like any burgeoning socio-political effort, has some prominent activists. Targeted Individuals Canada hosts content produced by one of these activists named Eleanor White. White’s name can be found referenced across the gangstalking world in blogs and videos.

White made a series of comics called “Targ the Target” that illustrate what it felt like for her to be a subject of gangstalking. Reading them offers insight to the strange mindscape of conspiracy believers.

Over 23 “episodes,” the story explains how stalking starts, then drives a person to appear unstable, and finally takes away things that are most important to them. In Eleanor’s case, her children.

Episode 1

Episode 2

(skip to) Episode 23

A more current activist developed a modern-looking website titled, “Stop Gangstalking — Awareness Group.” The site’s administrator was referred to via pseudonym in the previously mentioned story from The Outline. As gangstalking sites go, the Stop Gangstalking — Awareness Group has a broad focus.

It tackles everyday stalking and abduction related crimes, though its greatest emphasis is on the conspiracy theory version of gangstalking.

In an email, the administrator of the site explained that while the group’s in-person activist efforts are at a standstill, his online content is still receiving attention through the website, social media, and the sale of merchandise such as the t-shirt below.

Along with running social media pages and the website, the site administrator is a moderator on Reddit’s gangstalking forum called “r/gangstalking.”

The forum has only 8,000 subscribers, but forum statistics show that it is growing exponentially and it currently receives about 3 posts each day, emblematic of a modest but steady community.

Some of the most popular posts on the subreddit actually express concern about the influence it might have on people with paranoid delusions. One such post, titled, “This sub is so toxic for people with delusions,” reads (edited for clarity and grammar):

“I’m going to get a lot of downvotes for this, but this place makes me so fucking paranoid I cant stand it. Everyone is just feeding each other’s delusions. I’m scared to leave my house and live a normal life. I’m scared I’m always being watched.” The top posts of all time on here are saying this exact same thing. This sub is unbelievably harmful. For those of you who are prone to delusions and paranoia, just leave. This place isn’t going to help you. It’s going to make you worse.”

A similar post is more direct about the concerns of schizophrenia. It is titled, “How can you support this?” And it reads in part:

“Most of these posts describe symptoms of acute psychosis or schizophrenia. The thing about these illnesses is that while it’s happening you have no idea, you only realize how delusional you were after you begin to recover. I’m disgusted by the mods feeding these delusions, you could be responsible for something very serious because these ill people are being pushed further and further into this fucked up headspace by a whole community of alike people.”

But aside from these posts, most of the content is from believers in the conspiracy.

The community consists of people brought together by an earnest need for someone to trust, yet it is fraught with dysfunction because undiagnosed or undertreated paranoia has made intra-group trust impossible.

The result is bizarre.

One post contains a tirade accusing all of society for being part of a plot to make the author seem delusional. It reads, “It’s not just gangstalkers, everyone in your community and in communities at large are against you and wouldn’t bat an eye if you were disposed of (through any means).”

The comment section of that post exposes the rampant mistrust between community members. One commenter, somehow convinced that the post was by a stalker, wrote, “This is literally the message that the gangstalkers throw at people you dick. Fuck you. I would advise you to make this your last post here. You outed yourself.”

Another post muses about the genders of targeted individuals, asking whether it’s only cisgendered people who become targeted, adding that, “I started to notice that the people gangstalking me exhibit traits of in-utero transgendered people.”

A terse response reads, “Transgender agenda? OK bigot. Do you believe in white genocide too?”

Other posts in the forum expound on the utter strangeness of the conspiracy.

One user claims that their stalkers are part of a “neighborhood watch type thing or something similar” that have been putting the same license plates on different cars and then using those cars for stalking.

Another user wrote that they were feeling genital pain caused by gangstalking, writing (edited for clarity), “I thought some super strong UTI was coming on, but I couldn’t even get on to the bus. I had to go to my boyfriend’s and take pain killer and it calmed down. And it happened when I was right near a bunch of power lines.”

A commenter responded (edited for grammar):

“It’s possibly nanotechnology they attack people with. It enters through the skin and around fingernails. Gives people that crawling insect sensation. It first goes to the brain and begins sending and receiving signals, causing the ear to ring and buzz. The nanotechnology has many capabilities. I removed it from myself and since that day, 9 months ago I have had zero health problems, and zero harassment.”

The commenter later explained his method for getting rid of the nanotechnology. It involved cinnamon, olive leaf extract, turmeric capsules, cocoa powder, a chocolate syrup scalp massage, and some very hot water to submerge the hands and feet.

While weird, the process probably didn’t cause any lasting harm. However, cases like this have driven conspiracy believers to attempt self-surgery to remove what they think are government implanted harassment devices.

This, obviously, is extremely dangerous.

The Reddit forum offers a look at the conspiracy through the eyes of the believers and it provides evidence that the gangstalking conspiracy is of a new breed — one with potential for unprecedented harm.

There is no common narrative, no shared set of facts, and no agreed upon bigger picture. The only force that brings together the believers is a sense of profound fear of everyone else.

Gangstalking content is on traditional social media as well.

On Twitter, users post with #gangstalking to show they are part of the targeted individual community. Some tweets contain statements of solidarity with other believers, while others contain alleged evidence of their stalking.

In one particularly overt instance of misled paranoia, a gangstalking Twitter account posted a screenshot of a Google search result for “gangstalking.” The image shows a job search website that autofills its headline to match the user’s google search, but the user read it as a legitimate result.

Visiting the link in the image does not elicit any employment opportunities related to gangstalking — but somehow, through 50 retweets, 52 likes, and 11 responses, only one user (a self-described T.I.) pointed that out.

On Facebook, content is found on the personal profiles of proclaimed gangstalking victims, on pages, and in groups. Subjects in groups often share videos of their supposed stalkers, though as an outsider, watching those videos reveals nothing out of the ordinary.

The conspiracy exhibits many characteristics similar to internet cults — adding an extra level of danger for those who fall for it.

The Gangstalking Cult

Cults often develop their own vocabulary that is common to the members of the in-group, but alien to outsiders.

Shared rhetoric strengthens the sense of belonging in a group. The time invested in learning it raises the bar to entry and, via the sunk cost fallacy, raises the bar to exit.

One obvious example is the identifier “Targeted Individuals.” By calling themselves T.I.s, members implicitly state that they aren’t alone, and that at the level of their identity, they are part of an exclusive group that is innately different from everyone else. A “chosen” group.

The community also has abbreviations and acronyms that they use fluently.

For instance, “Psy-Ops” refers to a type of surveillance operation that supposedly remotely transfers information to the brains of targeted individuals to affect their emotions and logic — in other words, mind-control.

And the acronym “V2K” stands for “Voice to Skull” technology that gangstalkers supposedly use to make targets hear voices. In reality, the voices are caused by auditory hallucinations related to schizophrenia.

One self-described targeted individual quoted in The Outline explained how V2K technology allegedly feels:

“It’s not like you’re being zapped, but you just hear a noise. But the noise, it doesn’t sound — you can tell when you hear it, it doesn’t sound like it’s external. You hear it as a sound, it has a clear property, like a noise or a sound, but it doesn’t sound like it’s coming from around you. It’s hard to describe, but it’s real. It’s totally real.”

The conspiracy theories, some of which are intricate enough to almost be a type of paranoia-infused lore, also have cult-propagating properties.

The theories are intricate and time-consuming to learn. Once accepted, they are difficult to discard. They consume a person’s entire world view, casting doubt on everything they once believed.

Among these theories are the ideas that COINTELPRO and MKUltra are still in robust operation, that freemasons are a prominent conspiratorial force in society, and (in an extreme example) that lizard people have quietly conquered both Hollywood and the U.S. Government.

The cult aspects are also evident in the way the members of the in-group are told to view the outside world.

On many websites and internet forums, readers are discouraged from visiting psychiatrists, as they will be told they are crazy and may be institutionalized. In some instances, readers are warned that their harassers will design their harassment so a target will feel like they have all the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, thus, all advice from healthcare professionals should be ignored.

One comment reads:

“They are attacking you. You are not paranoid. You do not need mental health treatment. The system is rigged. The TI community will help you. It’s OK to stop the meds. “Don’t expect anyone in your family, police or mental health to understand. There’s a long and successful campaign in place to make you look crazy to those people. … “Find the TI communities on reddit, youtube, social media. There’s a podcast called [name omitted]. Join these communities. Tell your story. Ask to be understood. They will believe you. They will validate your experience. They will never shame you, because your response was 100% human, and there’s no shame in being human.”

Content like this drives people away from healthcare professionals and the help they need, while hurling them head first into the cult and its associated perils.

Conspiracy believers feel persecuted by the outside world, and it’s clear why.

They are constantly disbelieved, and the louder they protest and try to explain their situation, the more they are ridiculed and ostracized. They might see other believers losing their self-determination and, fearing that they are next, decide to keep their beliefs between themselves and other internet conspiracy theorists.

Together, these many factors create a storm that sucks susceptible targets into the conspiracy and keeps them there, all while cultivating distrust in the people who can actually help. Believers quickly find themselves completely alone — save for the echo-chamber of online gangstalking communities that repeatedly tells them that terrifying, powerful forces have conspired to ruin their lives.

GANGSTALKING IN THE MEDIA