Psychology of Cyberstalking: Mind & Motive of the Stalker
Overview of Motives in Stalking
The following overview is a roadmap to the rationalizations, motives, and deep-seated needs for cyberstalking. Links to detailed reports on each of the major motivational classes can be found in the section titled "Stalking Motives." The primary goal of the cyberstalker is to achieve greater control over the life of the victim. Some instrumental or propogandistic cyberstalkers (e.g. stakeholders in a business or academic community) defame and disrupt critics and other sources of unconventional wisdom to preserve the public image of an institution which which their own identity is (necessarily or unnecessarily) bound. We see this kind of affiliation flaming all the times on message boards devoted to sports and politics, but these pale in comparison to some of the cyberstalking associated with the defense of Psychology's academic and professional communities. In many cases, psychological profiles of this kind of cyberstalker reveals a "community complex," an intolerance and sensitivity to single-source thought production (i.e. original thinkers whose views were not approved by a consensus or committee of certified professionals). The stakeholder leverages cyberstalking to manage knowledge and perception desirable to self and community.
Some skilled cyberstalkers are highly evolved forms of do-gooders who stretched their anti-NAMBLA hacktivism or anti-SPAM DNS blocking into campaigns against all "kooks" using the Web to promote a unique point of view. Or at least this expanded cyberstalking is what they do more socially. This genre of gang cyberstalking represents an opportunity to "do good" "being bad." While they love to manipulate others and meddle in their affairs, they nurse a vigilante image not unlike that of the modern dark superhero with a moral justification to punish.
Once the Internet drove masses with no knowledge of pre-lectronic Usenet into the news groups (e.g. through "Google Groups"), many territorial Old Guard Usenetters had plenty of "clueless newbies" to cite for trespassing. The victim's personal point of view (and links to his or her Web site) is treated as a variation of commercial SPAM and attacked with a vigilante-size chip-on-the-shoulder. The Usenetters who have managed to find a home in a participant group can turn in their old public enemy # 1 personas and harass go-it-alone posters as a public service (i.e. cyberstalking in the public interest as a close cousin of hacktivism).
There are a lot of people out there who are woefully unsatisfied with their station in life and who enjoy lashing out at similar malcontents who would use the Web to attain what they -- and their cyberstalkers -- were denied in the brick-and-mortar world. Despite what they would have you believe, the real lives of some cyberstalkers are very similar to that of their victims (or were similar at some point). But while the victims sought public recognition or revenue through the Web, the cyberstalkers chose to stake their claim to fame on exposing their victims' enterprises as (a) fraudulent -- in the sense the victims are misrepresenting what failed nobodies they are in real life; (b) abusive -- insofar as they are using public capacity like message boards, e-mail, or even bandwidth to promote an idea; and (c) distasteful -- the victims are portrayed as disgruntled failures seeking revenge or saving face, arrogant attention-seekers, or clinically certifiable kooks who are, after all, just promoting themselves. Many of the same cyberstalkers who revile censorship (and moderation of all kind) are anarchists who resort to harassment and mob rule as an alternative means of policing the Internet (e.g. "net coppers," "kook hunters," "spam assassins," and "kook-ologists") and protecting the world from irrational thought.
Cybergangs offer many maintaining factors in stalking: (a) continuous encouragement & reinforcement, (b) precedent & provocation, (c) legitimation, and (d) protection. The anonymity associated with the group emboldens the cybergang member, as well as an opportunity to express friendship by beating up on a common adversary. Mental health professionals and academics operating in a news group like sci.psychology.psychotherapy may confer a sense of belonging and purpose to alienated or uneducated users with little or no affiliation with Psychology. Among this user population are (1) antisocial personalities looking for an adult alternative to plucking the legs off insects, (2) arm chair private investigators who like to use Web-based tools to dredge up information on unsuspecting targets, (3) computer chair potatoes looking for an alternative to late night television, and (4) individuals for whom an Information Superhighway variant of Road Rage causes them to displace their spam-induced anger on anyone seeking attention on the Web.
No review of cyberstalking would be complete without at least a reference to the romantically rebuffed. Though intimate knowledge of the stalker's individual psychology factor into this jilted lover / unrequited infatuation genre of cyberstalking, we can move forward with a few cross-cutting fundamentals. The jilted or unrequited person uses cyberstalking as a means of remaining firmly rooted in the lives of an object of their infatuation. According to some theories, the kind of punishment meted out by cyberstalking serves an expressive function, decrying in a very abstract way the power the victim has to irritate the cyberstalker with his or her physical beauty. In some cases, there's a mystical or metaphysical dimension to the attraction that boggles the conscious mind, furnishing a confusion the cyberstalker can also begrudge the victim (i.e. "if I have to suffer this, so will you"). While romantic cyberstalkers do not know what it means for their cyberstalking to "run its course," they live in the moment of each new rush promised by crossing yet another line they vowed they would not cross. The victim, or more accurately the subjective images and feelings attributed to the victim, becomes a conduit or bridge to a world of repressed or untapped phenomenology, the incarnation of every human instinct / imperative that has not found a place in the life of the individual cyberstalker.
