I have been lurking in 2 Facebook groups for “targeted individuals”, often also known as “gangstalking”. This one, and this one. These aren’t the largest such communities on Facebook and they certainly are not the only such communities on Facebook. Here’s a screen shot of what I get when I ask for groups about Targeted Individuals (left) and Gangstalking (right)

And these lists just scroll and scroll. There are probably hundreds of these kinds of groups which are searchable on Facebook. Most are private groups, but some are public. And as with any conspiracy movement or really any movement at all, we can assume there are countless secret groups which do not come up in any search. If I had the time and the emotional energy to create a fake Facebook profile that behaved as a TI, I could probably get myself invited to one or more secret groups, but honestly, what is out there more or less in public tells the story pretty well in my opinion.

The community seems to be a hodgepodge of different conspiracy theory beliefs that all eventually link back to the belief that the TI is being watched or even assaulted with electronic measures, either completely randomly, on some kind of schedule, or at all times to a varying degree. Some believe that 5G is part of the targeting program, some believe that chemtrails are a part of the program, some believe that their “Smart Meter” for their home’s electricity is part of the program. Some believe their neighbors are in on it, some believe that the people they see regularly around town at the train station or bus stop are in on it. There is not that much in this community which is consistent, just the belief that the TIs are in fact being targeted.

Here’s a couple screen shots from one particularly prolific fellow in one of these groups.

In this case, it appears that this person believes in some version of Pizzagate or QAnon, and that the gangstalkers will eventually kill the victims to shut them up. The methods he believes may be used are electronic weapons or maybe even some kind of gas attack. Quite unsettling, but no real call to action here. This next one is a bit more troubling:

Assuming this person is not trolling, Poe’s Law being a cruel cruel bitch sometimes, this person is suggesting that folks should fire projectiles against the people doing the gangstalking, or perps as they are often called in this community. Even if this person is trolling, the people in these groups are not really in tune with that. Hell I am not in tune with that and I am always looking to spot a troll. The rest of the screen shots from this person also provide some context, especially the last one in this series of images:

Telling people who believe they are being targeted or stalked to go to their local university is pretty fuckin scary if you ask me, and the account in there telling this person not to do that is my fake Facebook account. I couldn’t not try to discourage this person and others reading from doing this. But over time, for whatever reason, in the groups I joined, I have seen a bit of an uptick in the call to action type posts, and, well, it’s a bit concerning.

The point of this article, in this fancy magazine (LOL Betty Washam), isn’t to alert you to the presence of this or to point out that this is very likely undiagnosed illness. Many others have done that, and done it well in video form even. Here’s an example if you want to check it out:

The point of this article is that this is happening on the biggest ad platform the world has ever known. Facebook knows these groups are there, they know what the content is. They know that there are people in these groups making calls to action. They know all of this. They know that there is undiagnosed mental illness in the TI groups and in many other conspiracy groups online. They know that these groups serve to insulate their members, to re-enforce their delusions about gangstalking or being targeted. They know that these groups are yet another hurdle in the path of loved ones of the TIs who want desperately for their family member or friend to get help.

We’ve seen article after article about how YouTube is radicalizing people and spreading conspiracy theories. I don’t even need to link them here, just look it up yourself (do your own research lol). And that is true about YouTube. But what’s not talked about nearly as much is the places that the hateful and conspiracy content on YouTube gets posted, gets spread, and even goes viral. Twitter? Sure I guess, but estimates of Twitter users are less than 500 million, including all the bots and fake accounts and brand accounts. Facebook has almost 2.5 billion monthly active users. And Facebook has groups, tons of groups. Groups for everything. And that’s where a lot of the traffic going to extremist and conspiracy content comes from, be it links to YouTube, BitChute, or any number of conspiracy theory websites. In the conversations about Facebook we see in the press, the group feature almost never comes up. But that’s where all the TIs meet each other. And this is just our first example here. And if I were on Facebook’s board, I’d be mighty glad that this has more or less flown under the radar.

if Facebook were to shut these groups down, these people, most of whom desperately need mental health treatment instead of a Facebook group, will spend less time on Facebook and we can’t have that now can we? Can’t serve ads to people who got help instead of spending all day on Facebook scaring the shit out of themselves and others, right? So fucking what if one of them, encouraged by members of their TI community, takes these matters into their own hands and hurts someone or multiple someones? It’s all in the game, baby, and the game is stochastic terrorism as part of a core business model. It doesn’t have to be this way, I doubt that anyone intended for it to be this way, but this is where we are. And it’s only going to get worse.

Next up, hopefully sooner than later: Anti-Vaccine groups on Facebook. You know, the ones Facebook said they were gonna do something about during one of the measles outbreaks? Well they didn’t do shit. Also, there will be a Scientology tie in, because the cult is starting to use Facebook groups to recruit conspiracy theorists to help fill the ranks of their organization which has been hemorrhaging membership for a decade or more.