I get it, I'm an older brother, I would wanna go ballistic too. But the fact that these guys skipped over "notify the police" and went straight to "seek out in-person confrontation" is insane!
Stalkers are not people in their right mind. Staking out and planning to “citizen’s arrest”(???) someone who has repeatedly visited late at night to threaten and harass is NOT SAFE FOR ANYONE INVOLVED.
Do not ever physically escalate with a stalker! Collect evidence and get the authorities involved!
I thought this too. But you can feel incredibly powerless if all you do is “let the police handle it.” Even in this instance, nothing would have come of it had they not traced the guy. Prosecution of crime happens after a crime is committed. Cops can’t do much if you’re worried someone will harm you or a loved one. Even if stalking is illegal, cops won’t / can’t feasibly spend the resources investigating and punishing stalkers. Even prosecuting sexual assault (ie. after a serious crime has been committed) is extremely difficult.
What actually effective steps can you take if someone is harassing a female in your life? Speaking from personal experience, the lip service of “cops are there to protect you” is inadequate. It didn’t provide any safety, and I can’t see how, structurally, it even could.
> nothing would have come of it had they not traced the guy
Notify the cops. Track the guy down. Go to the station and request someone come out with you. This takes cops off the desk, which they’re rarely against unless you’re a nutter.
Where do you live? In SF, last time I tried to get the cops to come out of their desk (to arrest a bike thief who was selling my stolen bike literally 3 blocks away from the station), they told me that they couldn't do it. One of the excuses they used was that it was too far: if I could get the thief to enter the police station then they would help me.
SFPD is notoriously, maliciously useless. It's a political tactic that they've used to wring more funding, less oversight and fancy surveillance gadgets from the city. The previous DA had to rent a U-Haul himself to seize stolen property from a shady business[1] that was involved in organized car breakins. In 1975 they set a bomb off on the mayor's lawn to get him to concede to their strike demands[2].
They're not there to help you, little bike owner. They're there to ensure the value extraction and capital accumulation machine stays lubricated.
Or undocumented, or a member of another group for whom interactions with the police are potentially dangerous.
Or for that matter, what if you are "a nutter?" People with mental illness also get stalked, and also deserve protection. Going in person to the police station is unwise for so so many reasons for so many people.
If this approach works for you then cool, for you. It's not going to work for most of us.
These all seem like situations where you'd just risk making things go EVEN WORSE by getting directly involved in a confrontation that might result in a police response to a violent situation...
Have you tried? I've seen women friends of mine try this more than once. Go through lot of effort to collect evidence and all the police will do is take your statement, promise that they will "look into it", and then promptly ignore you.
>This takes cops off the desk, which they’re rarely against unless you’re a nutter.
Is this something you have actual experience with? Because it doesn't sound plausible to me. Of course, I don't know where you live so it could be different there.
Yeah, but like... they didn't even "let the police handle it." They just went straight to "late-night stakeout."
> Cops can’t do much if you’re worried someone will harm you or a loved one.
You're right, and that would be a scary situation... if they didn't have more than enough evidence for the police to get involved. Repeated, late-night visits to leave threatening messages would be plenty for a restraining order in the U.S., or at the very least to spur further police investigation.
> What actually effective steps can you take if someone is harassing a female in your life?
In this case, her brothers could have taken turns driving home from work with her, walking her to her car, sleeping over at her place, while they waited for police to proceed with investigation. They could have helped her get connected with a self-defense course, or bought her mace (depending on legality).
Stalkers/harassers can make people feel extremely helpless, and yes, there are a lot of really horrible situations where cops are useless despite an obvious threat.
> Repeated, late-night visits to leave threatening messages would be plenty for a restraining order in the U.S., or at the very least to spur further police investigation.
Restraining order against whom exactly? The masked man? Also, what tactical protection do you think a restraining order provides against someone with actual intent to harm?
> In this case, her brothers could have taken turns driving home from work with her, walking her to her car, sleeping over at her place, while they waited for police to proceed with investigation. They could have helped her get connected with a self-defense course, or bought her mace (depending on legality).
All good suggestions. Unfortunately, everything other than self-defense is a temporary (and likely not sustainable) countermeasure. Regarding the self-defense strategy, barring effective weapon use, the odds aren't in the target's favor given 1/ the size discrepancy (they even talk about how burly the stalker was) and 2/ the fact that the assailant has the element of surprise. It's sad that the only viable option seems to be "carry a weapon, train in martial arts, wait for an incident and hope you're able to defend against it." This is not preventative. It's reactionary.
Also, in "this situation", they already have camera footage of it being one guy coming on his own.
3 burly overprotective brothers vs some creepy stalker dude who shows up late at night like a coward? Those are odds that I'd totally put on the brother's side. Since the cops had already "Sorry, not much we can do"ed the sister, I'd happily be big brothering up and taking that confrontational risk.
(I'd also happily do it with barley plausibly denial "sporting equipment" in hand as well - 3 burly Scottish brothers carrying cricket bats vs one cowardly late night creepy stalker? And if ever needed I'd try on the "Why yes officer, we were all on our way back to our sister's house from a late night cricket practice when we discovered a man interfering with our sister's car!" line.)
As per the article, they definitely did call the police beforehand. Clearly the police had taken little, if any, action. It's hidden, but it's there: "my sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents".
What did they do besides doxing him and confronting him online that helped? None of their 'let's catch him' antics were helpful and were actually stupid.
The confession was online, and they already had the vehicle ID (written down initially and then confirmed on camera). Don't be patronizing please. Hiding out in the car did nothing that they couldn't have done with cameras, without risking violent confrontation and a high speed chase.
You asked "What did they do besides doxing him and confronting him online that helped?"
> The confession was online
The confession was made possible via their "antics", because he knew he'd been caught. Without the experience of being cornered and having to escape, he'd have likely ignored the message as a fishing expedition.
What do you think a restraining order would do, and against whom?
Car chase & citizens arrest is where we can argue lines were crossed, sure.
But, the cops were not going to do a multi-night, multi-hour, multi-man surveillance operation to catch the guy in the act.
At the very least, the brothers needed to do this to collect evidence about who the guy was, and hand that over to the cops. Or contact him by phone/social media to let him know they know who he is and what he has been doing.
The problem with this is trusting that the situation won't escalate enough in between the time the police are contacted and they maybe collect enough evidence to come up with charges, and that when charged the suspect would actually be held pre-trial, actually found guilty, and actually sentenced to time in jail.
The path from "call police" to "bad guy caught" to "bad guy in jail" is non-linear.
The practical mechanisms to handle stalking like this are restraining orders and trespassing laws. Trespassing is the easier of the two to utilize. If it's your land, you can tell the police who's allowed on it. Once either of those things has been set up, the police can arrest the offender the next time he shows up.
Beyond that, move somewhere with a strong castle doctrine, where you can own a firearm.
This isn't a new problem for societies and there are good solutions, which have been eroded over time. If you can't shoot intruders in your house without consequence, you are living in a failing state. If the police can't be relied upon to keep repeat offenders away from you and your property, you are living in a failing state.
>> If you can't shoot intruders in your house without consequence, you are living in a failing state.
What nonsense. I live in Japan, where it is practically impossible to obtain a firearm. The same would be true for the OP in Scotland. Neither should be considered a failing state except under your ridiculous definition.
I’m not sure if this is a regional thing; police are like this just about everywhere. In my region, most of the people in my community have all stopped calling the emergency services line to report crimes in progress because the dispatch yells and screams and berates the callers. There’s a Facebook group for my local town with dozens of people who say they don’t call anymore because of this. At some point, the police transitioned from preventing and fighting crime to arguing in court that they don’t have the duty to protect. Not sure how it happened or why, but it’s making things worse. Many people no longer see the police as part of the local community but as an organized gang that terrorizes people for small infractions while ignoring major crimes in progress. No amount of patriotism, flag waving, or bumper stickers can change this perception.
Obviously police are a diverse group, but certainly no white male police officer in his right mind would risk a violent encounter with a minority suspect in today’s political environment. If I were a cop, I’d get another job ASAP and focus on paperwork until I found one.
That's about the same almost anywhere in the world, the above user probably has no experience being stalked, despite the assertive phrasing. Also not to turn this into an identity debate but if HN had significantly more female users one of the highest upvoted comments wouldn't be just call the police bro.
I don't think anybody skipped "notify the police". He mentiones police was informed multiple times about incidents with a car.
They just didn't bother to do anything until the guy was served to them on a silver platter.
Even after police was given plates of the guy (seen on two consecutive days) they said, you must be wrong, car's from Yorkshire, as if the main feature of the cars wasn't that they can move from Yorkshire to wherever.
Hi, this is my article. I know it's a long read, but I presume you didn't read the whole article.
We certainly didn't skip notifying the police. The whole point of the article is that we did the opposite - gathered enough evidence so that the police could do their job.
The police were never going to do a stake out like we did.
Citizen's arrest is not such a unusual thing to do. We would not have messed with him if he produced a knife.
I note that when I published this article a week or two ago, much of the feedback (mostly from Americans I think) was that they would have skipped the police and just kicked the guy in! I would say we were quite sensible overall.
Additional context for Americans: we basically don’t have guns in Britain.
The most dangerous thing these guys did was nearly get run over by the stalker fleeing in his car.
However it is worth noting that the sister had been to the police quite a bit by the sounds of it.
"Now it was time to call 999. My sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents, so they knew there was a problem linked to her flat and came round pretty quickly."
It was buried, so you might have missed it: "My sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents." They didn't skip the police at all: the police simply weren't doing anything until they had more information.
>I get it, I'm an older brother, I would wanna go ballistic too. But the fact that these guys skipped over "notify the police" and went straight to "seek out in-person confrontation" is insane!
Unless you have independently evidence (that can be independently verified) of a better than misdemeanor crime police almost certainly aren't gonna do squat other than put you on a list of "people with motive" to check up on when the dude you're after gets shwacked by someone else he's wronged.
Its an information/risk asymmetry problem too right.
For an individual its better to be safe than sorry on something like a stalking incident.
For the cops dealing with a plethora of complaints, on average, most of these resolve to nothing..
Further, these complaints often come with unspecific information thus requiring some amount of surveillance, some of which is easier for the victim to do (put cameras up your own property) than they are able to do legally, especially without a warrant.
Further, with some information in-hand from surveillance, the victim also has access to all their own social media/etc accounts that you can try and make connections between whatever information you collect.
Most people are probably not going to be be OK with "sure we can help you, but we need to put cameras on your property, car and permission to login to all your social media accounts / email / texts, is that ok?"
Obviously this is not ideal, but the vast majority of cops are not detectives. They aren't sending out their best to every seemingly minor call.
I had a friend involved in a domestic incident and when the cops showed up, because she had fought back enough, they both showed evidence of a struggle, and the guy lied about incident. So the cops spent less than an hour on site, shrugged their shoulders and dragged them both off to lockup to go sort it out with a judge in the morning.
One alternative is maybe she didn't fight back and the cops would have seen only marks on her neck and took only him away, maybe. The other alternative is, she didn't fight back, and he choked her to death.
It's often better to fight back than to let yourself get killed while waiting for law enforcement, but there's also a risk that whatever contact with law enforcement you make will not go precisely your way, immediately, without side effects.
>Now it was time to call 999. My sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents, so they knew there was a problem linked to her flat and came round pretty quickly.
I know this story is in the UK, but at least in the US you absolutely should assume they will not help, and depending on the circumstances will make the situation even worse. They have no duty to do anything to help, and no consequences if they don't.
> "Masked guy repeatedly visits at night to write threatening messages on car of single woman living alone" is... about as explicit as you can get.
Or alternatively its an invitation for a police officer or a department to suddenly need to do a lot of work that they could just...not do. No skin off their back if someone is being harassed or stalked, and if something worse happens, they can investigate then. Why spend the resources now after all?
Why would they? They get bombarded with people them to f-over or harass someone they got beef with all the time. And most of those sob stories they get told have two sides to them. The false positive ratio is too high to be worth taking these complaints seriously let alone at face value.
Do you have sources about false positive ratios of stalking, vandalism, etc? My understanding is that sexually-oriented crimes actually have a very low rate of false accusations, but I didn't look into it deeply and I only heard of it like 5+ years ago so maybe something's changed? Let me know if you have updated data.
> my sister updated the police on our significant evidence haul and the police agreed that they had enough to at least arrest him and question him
There’s no evidence the cops would have acted on just a complaint. Anecdotally, I know several people who’ve struggled to get the cops to take stalking seriously.
The post indicates they had previously notified the police.
"My sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents, so they knew there was a problem linked to her flat and came round pretty quickly."
The instinct to defend yourself and your loved ones is a heuristic policy trained over millions of years. Certainly there is a good reason for this.
By the way, remember when less than a year ago 376 police officers stood around while a deranged gunman murdered 19 highschool students, serving no other purpose than to prevent anyone from entering the school and saving the students?
Nobody cares about your safety as much as you and your family do.
While I do agree that what they did is risky, the article does mention that the police had already been notified after previous incidents. Of course if they failed to alert the police after they had the video evidence of the same guy vandalizing the car night after night then I will fully agree complete idiots, otherwise I can sympathize with their desire to go above and beyond to help their sister.
"Complete idiots"might be a slight exaggeration, but hey no offence taken.
iirc they knew we had video, but the video of the car vandalism was never going to be enough to do anything. They had not seen that specific video. In the end it was only a small part of the evidence package.
Thanks for the response. Just to clarify, the 'complete idiots' comment was only applicable in the event you had completely ignored the police while gathering the evidence. Since you seemed to have been in contact with them and realized they were not going to act I honestly applaud you and brother for taking steps to ensure your sister doesn't end up as a 'statistic' as they say.
This is only good advice in a society of law and order where crimes are prosecuted and punished appropriately. Whether that fits the UK is a matter for debate. For reasons people might believe that see the incredibly long thread linked below. There’s no Spanish reason to believe the police would have investigated and arrested a stalker just because there was copious evidence to prosecute.
> Norwich man leaves his victim with permanent facial scarring after glassing him in a nightclub row over his feet being on a seat. Ordered to pay £175 compensation with a suspended sentence edp24.co.uk/news/23243869.… via @Norfolkforever
> Disqualified driver kills a cyclist while doing 80 in a 30mph zone, leaves him to die while he escapes, Despite ten prior convictions for 20 offences, gets less than 5 years (so will serve 2 and a half) Also banned from driving - for 5 just years
> Last year at least 58 people were murdered by criminals let out early on probation. Many of those had been let out early for extremely violent offences express.co.uk/news/uk/172127… (*55 killers, at least one killed multiple people)
"Collect evidence and get the authorities involved!" is excellent advice.
Though if other options were exhausted, I'd be more prepared to "give it a go" in the UK than in the US. Stricter gun laws mean you're unlikely to be confronted with a firearm, and if outnumbered and tempers are kept at bay the person would be more likely to run or surrender. Think I would have had more than two people on my side.
So you confront someone you think is a criminal with a group of men and get into a brawl. How much time are you willing to spend in jail?
Even if the gent is a stalker and you are right - you still instigated a brawl! You still assaulted (or more) someone.
If your thought process is "ah but he won't have a gun! My lads and me will really have an easy time now!" that may be a sign you are doing something unwise.
And what if he does have a knife or improvised weapon? Are you looking forward to explaining to your buds wife why he's room temp in the morgue over a stalker?
Why go in with an assumption that violence is going to occur? That's a recipe for trouble. You would have to pick your friends carefully, so none of them loose their cool. If there is going to be violence or any contact, let the stalker initiate it.
I'm not arguing that it would be risk free or a lark. It's a case of accepting the risks and being happy that the likely outcome would justify the risks.
The point of going with a group of friends is to make it clear to the person you are implicitly threatening that if there is a fight they will lose. The more unbalanced the forces on each side the less likely the weaker side is to initiate violence.
I agree, which brings me back to my original point - why are you seeking out violence via street brawl and are you ready when you or your buddies goes to the morgue or the jail?
These people use the implicit threat of violence to get someone to stop doing a thing they don’t want to continue. They believe that the chance of going to the morgue is very low and the chance of going to jail is also extremely low. So they do it because they think the expected benefits outweigh the expected costs. They would be less likely to do so if they lived in a country where most crime is punished and reports of crime are generally investigated. That’s not Scotland though.
Do you have experience getting the cops involved in something like this? Because from what I've read, it's at best hit or miss depending on jurisdiction and circumstance.
That's not to say that a citizen's arrest is a good idea, mind you. Just that getting the authorities involved may not be effective.
At least she got someone to defend her. If you're a dude who can't help yourself in the same way literally nobody gives a shit about you.
Also, after reading the article:
* They make a citizen's arrest with little evidence that the guy they observed the other night is the same dude as on video other than their word
* The night they actually observed the guy, he didn't actually do anything wrong (even if putting on a mask is a pretty solid link) but it's still all on their word
I feel like the stalker dude is a dangerous scumbag but these vigilantee a-holes are no better; as a short gay dude I've run in with too many of these dude bro white knights who may get things right now & then but can otherwise screw up. Like dudes that assault you in a club bc they think you're harassing some chick when in actuality you're just plain not interested.
aye, exactly. I presume most of the people criticising our "citizen's arrest" idea are form the US, where I indeed would not have contemplated doing such a thing.
In Scotland I do not really have the same fear. Not sure I would do the same thing in Glasgow or London, but still, we are not idiots, we were not going to take any crazy risks but we figured the risk to us was worth it to stop the risk to our sister. We weighed the risks up.
definitely get it on record with the police, but you must realise that the police will do fuck-all about it until it escalates into something much more serious, and often, it's too late at that point.
Taking matters into your own hands is often the only way of dealing with it -albeit there are safer ways of going about it.
From the article: "Now it was time to call 999. My sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents, so they knew there was a problem linked to her flat and came round pretty quickly."
You call the police a few times in your life and learn they are useless. Then you either experience or hear about times when calling them ended worse for the caller than if they'd just never bothered at all.
Maybe this isn't true for where you live, your income bracket, or your skin tone, but it is definitely true for a lot of people.
Trying to confront chase the perp was indeed a dumb idea. Though if you read the article they appear to have made multiple reports in the past. Thing is with police reports like this is by the time they arrive they only "see" vandalism which is all they can put in their report. Anything else you tell them is taken with a grain of salt, they arent psychics. In order for them to become actively involved they need to see the crime in progress or be presented with solid evidence. In the latter case you need to hire a private detective or DiY which is what they chose to do here.
Also from a legal standpoint, if you end up in court trying to get a restraining order or by pressing charges, it's going to look awful if you did something like this.
Unfortunately, you want to look like a perfect victim if you're going before a judge over something like this.
Same goes if you want law enforcement to take you seriously. It's hard enough to get them to take stalking victims seriously as it is.
But I also get it. The chances of the law doing anything about the stalker are slim to none even if you are a perfect victim.
This is highly context dependent. The police are not reliable in many (probably most) places in the world. In many places you're much better off with a direct confrontation.
Eh, the police are pretty useless. Unless the situation is obvious, easy, and very serious, don’t expect much.
Yea confronting a stalker isn’t safe, duh. I don’t know who would go into an endeavor like that expecting such. What you need to do is make sure that you aren’t inviting serious legal consequences on yourself with your plans (or that you know and accept the risks).
Citizens Arrests are very dangerous and pretty much never worth the risk. Even ignoring the many physical dangers of such an act, if the person “arrested” doesn’t get convicted (also pretty sure it has to be a felony conviction, at least here in MA, though IANAL), it opens you up to a false arrest, or possibly a false imprisonment, charge.
>Even ignoring the many physical dangers of such an act, if the person “arrested” doesn’t get convicted (also pretty sure it has to be a felony conviction, at least here in MA, though IANAL), it opens you up to a false arrest, or possibly a false imprisonment, charge.
In England and Wales you merely need a reasonable belief, the person not being convicted does not automatically open you up to trouble any more than it would open up a police officer to trouble.
Right but the point is you at least need to notfiy them first and give them the chance to do something. If you're unsatified with what they've done, or lack thereof, then sure.
The point isn't a point at all, since their sister had already notified the police and given them a chance to do something. Read the article: "My sister had already had a couple of police visits about the previous incidents."
Copy written lyrics so they can't be stolen
If they are, Snap! Don't need the police
To try to save them, your voice will cease
So please, stay off my back
Or I will attack, and you don't want that
They acted as brothers are expected to act - outraged at the mistreatment of their sister, determined to catch the guy, doing everything in their power to keep her safe.
It's arguable whether the police would/could help, and how far they'd go/have the resources to pursue the matter.
In older times, three brothers knocking on your door would be the end of it. Either total capitulation, or some kind of accident.
Firstly there’s zero chance this was the guy’s first rodeo. Second, without a custodial sentence it wont be his last. When these stories end in tragedy there’s always the part of the story that goes something like “…X had previously been reported on no fewer than Y occasions for similar behaviour.”
My thoughts exactly. If this guy was going through so much trouble to stalk someone over six months, a fine isn't going to stop him. He probably considers it to be a worthy cost for his obsession.
A part of me feels that this guy should be humiliated and beat to within inches of his own life. His behavior certainly deserves that, in a karmic sense. But that probably isn't the best way to protect the victim here. Probably the best way is some sort of custodial sentence, house arrest/monitoring, and compulsory therapy and/or medication.
Indeed the same though crossed our minds (as I write in the article) that it is unlikely to be his first offence.
We actually did not want to humiliate him, and believe me we had the opportunity, because we did not want to "push him over the edge". I kinda hope he has kept his job so he can try to get help and stop himself doing this again.
Stalkers and rapists act knowing that they have approximately zero risk of getting caught. And if caught, a less than one percent chance of conviction.
> The breakdown between the modus operandi of the rapists also tells us a lot about how wrong the script is. Of all 120 admitted rapists, only about 30% reported using force or threats, while the remainder raped intoxicated victims. This proportion was roughly the same between the 44 rapists who reported one assault and the 76 who reported multiple assaults.
> If we could eliminate the men who rape again and again and again, a quarter of the violence against women and children would disappear.
> The vast majority of the offenses are being committed by a relatively small group of men, somewhere between 4% and 8% of the population, who do it again … and again … and again. That just doesn’t square with the notion of innocent mistake. Further, since the repeaters are also responsible for a hugely disproportionate share of the intimate partner violence, child beating and child sexual abuse, the notion that these predators are somehow confused good guys does not square with the data. Most of the raping is done by guys who like to rape, and to abuse, assault and violate. If we could get the one-in-twelve or one-in-25 repeat rapists out of the population (that is a lot of men — perhaps six or twelve million men in the U.S. alone) or find a way to stop them from hurting others, most sexual assault, and a lot of intimate partner violence and child abuse, would go away. Really. [0]
And:
> The result is a criminal justice system that shows an unexamined bias toward accused sexual predators—particularly those from the dominant race and class—by protecting them in advance from punishments that (in practice) very rarely materialize. And this is a hypercorrection that occurs again and again even though false claims remain statistically minuscule, and even though less than 1 percent of rapes result in a conviction. [1]
Maybe. Or maybe part of the sentence was mandatory mental health treatment. Maybe this is the rock bottom that leads to this person getting the help they need and getting their life together.
He's also now known to the police for this sort of behaviour. If anyone reports anything even minor about him, he's lost any benefit of the doubt.
Truly, what compels a person to do such a thing? I too have struggled heavily with depression in the past, but I've never once felt the urge to repeatedly vandalize anyone's property.
In the past I have been obsessive. Had I not got help I could have ended up like the stalker in the story.
It starts out innocent enough. Dating involves lots of subtle signals and cues. I remember calling someone many many times in one day, thinking "There's a possibility I'm being strange, but there's also a chance that she's just not home. If I don't call and call again I could miss my chance. And this is my only chance, if I don't make sure she knows I want to date her I'm going to end up alone forever". I'm sure you can see the cognitive distortions at play here. I certainly acknowledged that my behavior was unusual, but I was so fixated on the person that I couldn't stop myself.
I suspect this is what happened with the person in the story. They noticed the sister and became obsessed. First trying to do things "the right way" with super-likes etc within the dating app. After that, finding the instagram and so on. It slowly ramps up. The damage to the car etc I have less insight on, but perhaps it relates to the fact that being ignored by the target of your obsession feels so bad that any kind of reaction, good or bad, would feel better. Or perhaps it's revenge for "making me feel bad". I think the stalker probably doesn't have much insight to their own behavior. I only gained insight years after the fact.
In general, I think dating apps don't help with this kind of behavior. They perpetuate the idea that there are "perfect matches" and that once you find your perfect partner everything will click into place. It's just like Hollywood movies, the couple gets together and then the credits roll. In reality, that's the very beginning. We should be talking about the work and effort that goes into building a relationship, as well as giving people the tools to notice when their behavior is not acceptable.
thanks for posting this insight, I would add that there are positive feedback loops from some parts of your behavior and would also counter the brother's conclusion that "sending an additional message never works"
in these kinds of threads, everyone is already primed to the worst case toxic scenario, or some other uncollaborative toxic scenario, specifically from the idea of the lowest denominator man harassing women
the reality is never so rigid
many dating profiles advertise their instagram, many times that is just a vanity project to gain followers, many times sending a message on Instagram or some other way to get noticed on Instagram can lead to agreed upon in person interaction such as dates and hookups, many times sending a message is fruitless because that person gets so much attention and their inbox is not useful, or because that person just hasn't checked their messages yet
I have absolutely had one night stands with someone I saw on a dating app, never attempted to match with, messaged them on Instagram and told them I saw them on the dating app, and went out the same day.
I've done that with women that I never even mentioned that I saw them on a dating app first. Beautiful people. The proverbial "thirst traps".
Sometimes we never even follow each other on the social media site. Just all DMs.
I've had flings and relationships with people that only reply sporadically. Or who give one word responses but are completely talkative in person. Or who apologize about not responding often because they are actually busy people who aren't trying to send a hint at all.
and the most important part of this? I have dozens of these low effort threads out there. For every one where its supposed to be interpreted as "a woman changing her behavior to be offstandish because they can't tell which man is a creep" there is "a woman thats not trying to send a hint at all collaboratively communicating like everyone else, good thing you tried again"
I would wager that most people do not keep track of whether they sent one girl 4+ unreplied messages in a row over any time period and its freaking her out, versus the conversation that will be replied to eventually. I try to be cognizant of "how it looks" no different than trying to be cognizant of how walking past a playground on the walking trail on the way to the grocery store looks. But changing my behavior because people can't tell which guys are going to go full stalker mode and assault people? Unlikely.
You must be tall, white or project a lot of status/coolness in your own instagram, because honestly this approach doesn't work for 99.9% of men that try (and it's not because of lack of trying!)
Not white and personal instagram doesn't suggest my height (almost all posts are archived, stories only), but there is validation on cool. Honestly, the intentionality of having few posts can be part of that. But I forget that I’ve done that and don't think about it.
I’ve also messaged “thirst traps” from one of my meme/popular accounts to great effect. They don’t show me at all and nothing links it to my personal one. People would be surprised what various women respond to, a popular account is very similar effect to shiny material things that suggest currency/external validation/attention.
I would say that when messages get read at all, things go well for me. Instagram DMs are basically broken for hot or in-demand people (I know from how my own meme accounts works) so if I just tried to send DMs to every profile I saw from a dating app, most would go unread and likely never seen. Some targeting works.
(outside of dating apps and social media, I do many other things to meet women different ways, I’m not really preoccupied with the aforementioned methods but they are also there and romance has happened the way I described)
I would say that I too spend more energy than I would prefer in reaching these intimate outcomes with new women.
If you're curious, I recommend the book, "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men". It busts a lot of myths and gives a good explanation of what abusers get out of their behavior.
One important myth is, "He can't control himself". E.g., he's not good at managing anger, so he needs classes. But it turns out a lot of abusive people are perfectly good at managing their anger except when the target is, say, a vulnerable woman. A person who is equally shitty to their boss and their coworkers? Mental illness could be an explanation. But one who's terrible only to the intern? That's just an abuser.
I think the thing that would shock many people is that abusers have often adopted methods of harm and subjugation that they internalized and came to consider normal, justified, and correct. They're executing from a place of intent and necessity, not chaos. They witness themselves doing it from a wildly different perspective than those around them would, and they may think the worst thing they do is get "a little heavy handed" or something. They might say that perhaps they got too loud or angry, but whatever they did was close enough to in line with what was necessitated by their target's bad behaviour.
It could range from keeping a partner "in line" with passive aggressive ridicule, physical violence, abject control (denying access to car keys, no going out past 7pm, can't eat x amount of food, etc), to being so relentlessly discouraging and belittling that the partner feels helpless and trapped. No matter what it is they're doing, they whole-heartedly believe it's deserved and they're operating with as much control as anyone typically has.
When we witness their behaviour we see a monster. And yet they're going about their work as though they are the one being inconvenienced by their incompetent/immoral/stupid/whatever partner.
Many of these people would never dream of kicking their dog or something but they've completely normalized verbally and/or physically abusing people they have intimate relationships with. What would leave you absolutely mortified with yourself is simply necessary to these people.
This is often why it's best to end these relationships. Someone who has normalized abuse could change, but there is a very good chance that you shouldn't wait to find out.
Very well put, and I agree. It's usually not a difference of mental health; it's a difference of values.
One of the wild things to me, though, is the doublethink. It's true that if you ask them, they'll often say it was justified. But on the other hand, they generally know to save the worst of it until they can't be observed by outsiders. They're usually quite canny about presenting a non-abusive face to the world. So there's an important sense in which they know what they're doing is wrong.
> This is often why it's best to end these relationships. Someone who has normalized abuse could change, but there is a very good chance that you shouldn't wait to find out.
Adding to this from my own experience.
People tend to need reasons to change, and an abuser has no such reason, as their behavior gets them exactly what they want from their victims and relationships. They could change if they wanted to, but why would they do that when they're already getting what they want?
Plenty of abusers like to paint "real abuse" as the expectations of treating their partners with respect and as equals, they are fundamentally opposed to the behaviors and beliefs needed to maintain healthy relationships. It is nearly impossible to change those deeply held beliefs, let alone address the behaviors that stem from those beliefs.
I agree with your premise, but I'd replace "very good chance" with "utter certainty" that you shouldn't stick around hoping that an abuser is willing to change.
On Bancroft's site, he has a couple of interesting articles about angry men who take issue with his book.
> The most common rant goes something like this: “The way Lundy describes abuse in Why Does He Do That?, any man can be labeled an abuser. He takes normal reactions to frustration and anger and throws them in with violence and threats, as if they’re all the same. If men say anything other than ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to women, he paints them as evil. Because of ideas like Lundy’s, women in droves are labeling their partners ‘abusers’ and dumping the relationship, instead of responsibly working out issues and honoring the vows they made. And because of this children are growing up in broken homes.” (Etc., etc.)
> This tirade is super revealing, primarily for one reason: the dozens of examples of male behavior that I give in Why Does He Do That? are all severe. They illustrate men being over-the-top complete assholes. There is nothing subtle about the stories I use. I’m not discussing little nuances that, say, someone might take the wrong way; that would be a different book altogether. Mine was about severe control, degradation, destroying the woman’s relationships, making her feel like everything is her fault, and on and on and on.
> So what does it mean when a man reads those stories and considers them to be normal behaviors, ones that I’m unfairly labeling abusive? It means he considers those behaviors normal. It means he believes a woman has the responsibility to stick around for more of that kind of treatment, that she owes it to him. And it means he thinks he has the right to behave that way.
> In other words, abusiveness is driven almost entirely by a man’s belief that controlling and punishing a woman is justifiable, and that his behavior is normal and can be excused.
> And he proves it by his reactions to the stories in my books. I’m not calling him abusive because he disagrees with me; I’m doing so because of the values he reveals when he complains that my (very serious) examples are too mild to be considered abuse. [0]
Thirding it. I have been near several abusive relationships in my life and it really opened my eyes to the power dynamics that were invisible from the outside.
For sure. And it's not just useful to me in a domestic context. I once got a new boss. After my second meeting with him, during which he spent most of it berating me, I thought, "That sounds familiar." So I got out my copy, turned to the chapter on abuser subtypes, and saw that he had already hit most of the checklist for the "Mr Right" abuser type.
It was very helpful to know what I was caught up in; otherwise I could have easily blamed myself or just felt at sea.
I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that the normal levels of inhibitions and reading social cues aren't present in many stalking cases. There is a belief that if they are just persistent enough, their target will see their attempts as affection and fall head over heals for them.
Fundamentally, I believe we need to do more for people like this. Safety nets and mental health and, if needed, in patient care. Would this have happened if the person had access to excellent therapy, medication, and support? Maybe, maybe not, but I would like to think that it would happen a whole lot less.
> There is a belief that if they are just persistent enough, their target will see their attempts as affection and fall head over heals for them.
Basically, the plot of every '80s and '90s Romantic Comedy. Entertainment of that decade left entire generations with warped views of courting and consent!
Social skills are complicated and many people have autism. It’s not an excuse, it’s an explanation for why some people are like this.
I feel like a lot of these situations can be avoided with some simple, hard rules: primarily a) no means no when it comes to anything flirting, and b) don’t become obsessed with any one person at least until you’re dating*.
There’s a lot of nuance in social communication, but I really don’t see a case when you should break any of these hard rules. So many instances of serious harassment come down to breaking one or all of them. Idk how but the world would be much better if we could somehow just convince people to never, ever break them, and even if they are already broken, to just stop.
* There’s also c) stop doing something “romantic” or “social” if you notice it makes others uncomfortable. But I suspect some people just can’t notice discomfort. The key words are “romantic” or “social” (and for a it is “flirting”) because sometimes you have to boss people around and say things which make them uncomfortable, like that they need to get out of the way or their job performance needs to improve, but you should never be making people awkward or uncomfortable if you are “just chatting”; and you will never get a girlfriend or boyfriend by scaring or pressuring them. Well, maybe you will if they’re not very smart, but that’s morally wrong, or if you’re high-profile or in Iraq, but you’re not and that’s also morally wrong. Like I said, nuance
> Would this have happened if the person had access to excellent therapy, medication, and support?
Many of them would learn how to better conceal their behaviors and get away with what they're doing.
It's the same reason that traditional therapy is detrimental when it comes to people with NPD, abusers, anti-social disorders, etc: they just learn how to weaponize earnest therapists along with what they learn in therapy against their victims.
> There is a belief that if they are just persistent enough, their target will see their attempts as affection and fall head over heals for them.
Depends on the kind of stalker. I think you get these delusional obsessive people, but you also get abusive exes who stalk their ex to keep them from moving on or try to scare and intimidate and sometimes assault or kill their new partners.
On Netflix there are two series called "I Am a Stalker" and "I Am a Killer". Guess which one was more disturbing?
The killers were more sympathetic. I can understand killing your kidnapper and rapist to escape, even if it is technically unlawful killing, I cannot understand stalking people who want nothing to do with you for years.
At the end of the day, stalkers truly believe they are entitled to stalk and hurt their victims. They 100% believe they have the right to terrorize their "love" interests, for example. They think their victims deserve it. The incredulous sentiment from stalkers always seems to be "what would you do in this situation", as if the only logical solution they faced was stalking their victims.
When it comes to stalkers, it's a matter of entitlement and seriously fucked up beliefs.
I think it's important to remember what mental illness is, at it's core- an important organ that isn't working correctly.
The brain is the thing that tells you what is and isn't right. It provides motivation, impulses, everything. And it can break in any number of ways- depression is merely one of them.
This person is ill. That doesn't excuse them, but it does help explain them.
I do think some stalking cases can be explained by conduct disorders, where people are significantly impaired to the extent that they aren't capable of understanding or controlling antisocial behavior.
However, I do not think the vast majority of stalkers are impaired in that way. If you're so impaired that you're stalking others, the rest of your life will also be a shitshow because of your impairment. Holding down a job, maintaining friendly and familial relationships, securing housing, staying out of prison, etc are going to be out of reach for people who are genuinely that impaired.
The vast majority of people who abuse and stalk their love interests are not that impaired. They're able to have real careers and relationships that would otherwise be prevented from real impairment. These people don't stalk or abuse other people in their lives, just the people they believe they're entitled to stalk and abuse. They are not impaired, they are selective about their actions and successfully compartmentalize those behaviors in ways that prevent them from negatively affecting the rest of their lives. That shows planning, intent and control, not impairment from illness.
People have different values and desires. That you cannot imagine doing something without being mentally ill doesn’t mean others can’t. The world is much more diverse than the upper middle class of early 21st century Anglophone progressive culture.
I guess they see it as a way to express their frustration with the world. Or perhaps they hope to intimidate someone into loving them. Or maybe it’s something different, but similarly broken.
Would be great to see more focus on mental helth care, I guess this is the way to prevent situations like this one.
There's no reason to believe the guy's story at all. It could be real (from their POV), or it could be someone making up something they know is unlikely to be called out by the "good guys".
These kinds of loons are far too common. I've wiped out most of my online presence that links to my real identity because of this. I'm not worried about big tech and advertisers getting my data, they just want to make money. I'm worried about insane individuals like this. You have to be proactive and avoid posting this stuff in public to begin with as it's much harder or impossible to retract what you have already posted.
Never post your real life info / name / photos in public or semi public spaces. Use unique usernames for each site, avoid ever posting things which can link between them. In general it's best to just not post much on public sites at all and keep it to private group chats which are far safer.
This is why I'm so confused by people wishing to document their lives, their children, their home—to strangers on the internet. On the best day, maybe that translates to positive comments and upvotes. Is the juice worth the squeeze? No. A thousand times, NO.
Sadly, if someone wants to find information there is enough online without needing to help them with social media. My parents have never had a social media account and I deleted mine years before I had an issue with someone who found out not only where I lived but my parents as well. (and having 20+ years in the software industry, I'm aware of how things work). Doing a simple search isn't that difficult to get the addresses. Though, it was probably a tracking device and considering the later disabling of important drive functions that my long time mechanic had no answer for except to not charge me hours of work looking at it and telling me to just get what I could for it, I lean towards tracking device. Staying off social media helps, but when someone wants to harass another, I think not being easily online just made it more fun for him. At least I would find the challenge more gratifying.
> Sadly, if someone wants to find information there is enough online without needing to help them with social media.
I agree, but there is a fundamental difference between dealing with/managing publicly available information and contributing to it by vlogging/blogging/posting otherwise non-public details about your life and family. Sure, anyone could use the internet to find me/info about me with the right details and resolve—but I refuse to help or add to the pile by documenting my life for their perusal. Maybe I'm just turning into a curmudgeon, but I have ZERO desire to participate in this trend.
It's a shame, kind of. I'd love to blog and write under my real name online (just industry or school related things), but I'm terrified of someone using that information to hurt me or the people in my life.
People don’t talk about this enough. Public profiles are a huge surface area for whack jobs (or extortionists) to attack your career, relationships and reputation.
> If you are a guy, ask your sister or mother how they would feel if this was happening to them.
I would change this to asking if it has happened, I'd bet it has happened to far more females in one's life than people realize. But since it hasn't (or maybe it has) escalated to violence people don't think much of it.
I unsuccessfully told a couple people before about a guy that was harassing me in a similar fashion, who 'coincidentally' knew where my parents lived and they were having a rash of break-ins and thefts at that same time. I had the misfortune of leaving my parents house while he was walking by far from anywhere he was known to stay. My place was in a large apt building and would not have been an easy target except for waiting for and watching me get home, usually weekends around 2-3am.
The guy (who was living on other peoples couches) would start showing up in mutual social spaces with new things at that time, clothes & gear etc. He ended up doing far worse to my car and I was getting the feeling he was tracking it since he seemed to know where I was. I slowly avoided going to the social spaces, in return he spread malicious lies about me (which I learned of later after much confusion) causing acquaintances to start ignoring me, to being outright rude without explanation. I no longer saw the space as a social outlet. I told a close friend of mine who dismissed it as me being paranoid. So I told a therapist who question if maybe I had other stressors that would make me not see things clearly. A little while later, I ran into one of the people I would talk to on occasion in that space and he asked me about the rumors, I had no idea what he was talking about. I respect the hell out of him for being brave enough to ask me about it, unlike others who stopped talking to me or became actively rude. My last update about the people there was that he had a falling out with my harasser and his group. They were friends.
How did it end? Haven't seen or heard from the harasser in awhile, I don't know why he stopped, but I know it stopped shortly after I received my concealed carry license and started carrying. This wasn't a big step for me since I've shot guns all my life. I never wanted to keep guns in my city apt. This is really not an option for most women (or people outside the US), I'm quite confident with all manner of firearms and have no issues with the thought of lethally defending myself. That is not true for many females.
I believe many people do these things because they think they can get away with it. Subconsciously or consciously, malicious stalking is about the power that comes from harassing a victim who has no way to respond.
I have a male friend in his late 50s who's been dealing with a stalker for the last 30 years. Every few years or so the stalker goes off his meds and starts harassing my friend. It's never gotten violent but you never know what kind of psychotic break is around the corner.
> Side note for Bumble — this is what we would call an “entity resolution” problem, leading to safety problems for your platform. When someone installs your app, you need to detect whether they have already installed it previously. If they have, then their activity (including blocks and people who have already declined them) should be linked to this new account.
What is Bumble supposed to do if the user asks them to delete all the data that is connected to them? Can Bumble keep a hash of the name/phone and store it with a list of users who have blocked the user which is being erased?
One approach on iOS is to store unique identifier in the “Keychain” (or iCloud itself) which is data kept in the cloud tied to a user’s Apple ID account. Of course this is only an impediment to a determined stalker (who could create a new Apple ID). But a determined stalker could also use a fake name and get a new phone number.
>One approach on iOS is to store unique identifier in the “Keychain” (or iCloud itself) which is data kept in the cloud tied to a user’s Apple ID account
Wouldn't it be obviously visible because you can see the app/file on icloud?
Also, I'm pretty sure the keychain idea is banned by app store guidelines.
I think you are incorrect. I've looked into my Keychain Access > iCloud on Mac and found some entries that seemlike they were created with the APIs you suggest.
E.g. WizzAir has three entries: `WizzAirLogin.username`, `WizzAirLogin.password` an `WizzAirLogin.firstName`.
Or Spotify stored `com.spotify.login.credentials`, `com.spotify.connect.lastStoredDataKey` and `com.spotify.connect.iplSessionHistoryDataKey`.
Replying just because we had a basic GDPR training just yesterday. You can't do that and you are right about the deletion of data to a point, but once there are legal reasons (like in this case) you don't have to comply to the request to delete the data. But I would guess it would be too complicated to manage all this, considering the size of Bumble and where the incident happened and where Bumble is located.
> When someone installs your app, you need to detect whether they have already installed it previously. If they have, then their activity (including blocks and people who have already declined them) should be linked to this new account
Quite the contrary, every user has a right to be totally forgotten and their data deleted permanently. [Un?]fortunately.
Exactly. I get where the author is coming from but if you allow tech companies to perpentually save your data and try to cross link it to new accounts, it sets a bad precedent.
Not necessarily. If it is for fraud prevention, then you would be within your rights (at least under GDPR), to retain certain data for a reasonable amount of time.
In my opinion, fraud prevention is, of all reasons to retain data, the least important. This example of dating app behaviour is easily detected with simple heuristics, and leads to far more important information than fraud could ever be.
in this case I really meant that the act of deleting and reinstalling the app is the fraudulent act, although it is not what most people would consider fraud (i.e. financial fraud) it would normally fall under "trust and safety" I guess.
I heard that EU food delivery apps was frauded this way: customer installs app, get hefty first delivery discount, asks to delete their data due to GDPR, rinse. repeat. They figured that out by keeping a hash of their phone number for some time like 3 months and not giving a discount to those numbers.
> In his first court appearance he pled not guilty, which apparently is normal for the first appearance regardless of actual guilt (something to do with legal aid fees??)
When you're initially charged with a crime, you have to plead guilty or not guilty. Typically, the prosecuting attorney will offer you some sort of deal if you plead guilty right off the bat. Otherwise, you plead not guilty and the legal machinery begins to turn (subpeonas, fact finding, depositions, etc.), with the end result being a trial. This takes a while, and the prosecuting attorney will sometimes attempt to sweeten the deal somehow to avoid a trial if they don't think they have an air-tight case against you.
At least, that's how it works in the United States. Since Scotland is also a common law jurisdiction with something of a shared legal history (the union of Scotland and England predates the revolt by the American colonies by nearly a century) I imagine it probably works similarly there as well.
There are in theory no plea deals in the UK. The police are not allowed to make promises in return for a guilty plea.
The accused may have a reasonable expectation that they'll receive a reduced sentence from the judge in exchange for cooperating with the police; but there are no deals. The prosecutors cannot bind the judge.
Seems like all this trouble and risk could have been avoided by simply leaving a note on the car with a warning about cameras/police. That's going to discourage most people who think they are 'getting away with it' to stop.
Or maybe just politely answering one of his posts. I read it somewhere that during 80s police advised women in SF to act like they enjoy being raped. That it was best way to get the offender turned off and stop.
Most likely saying "thank you for your comment" to this guy and eventually telling him "I am not interested sorry", would lost his interest. The story also stinks frankly. It starts off with my sister got some writing on her dirty car so she wasn't thinking anything and just wash them off. Next thing we see are the photos of that writing.. OR she wrote it herself for the story-telling?? highly doubtful. Then the guy is a dude and has crash on girl even tho the writing supposed to offend her because she's lesbian..? that's even harder to believe.
There has been so many fake stories coming out online these days just to catch few clicks that you cannot trust anything anymore.
It makes me kinda sad that if this were to happen in my country (Peru), the police wouldn't do anything under the pretext that the suspect hasn't actually done anything.
I am not defending him because it starts like this and sometimes ends horribly bad... but what did he really do? other than wrote something on dirt (didn't even destroy her paint) and broke an egg on her car? In 80s I remember it was a normal thing to take few dozen of eggs to any street manifest and throw them at cops, other groups, etc. Insane how soy late snowflake weak people became these days.
I have no idea why you’re trying so hard to defend a stalker throughout this thread.
He was driving a considerable distance, on repeated occasions, while concealing his appearance, to harass someone. That’s not “snowflake” ethics - it’s wrong, full stop
It doesn’t matter how he chose to harass them, or whether the level of property damage was beyond a line you consider unacceptable.
You're not allowed to harass people. With it being targeted, that's what this is. Also, you JUST acknowledged that these sorts of incidents have a history of escalating.
And acknowledging something does not make it a rule. People who drink and drive do cause more accidents. But not every drunk person will cause an accident.
> He has just driven through the red light to escape us!
And if in the process he happens to crash his car into a family or pedestrian and kill everybody he hits, the defense will be "we were just trying to make a citizen's arrest?"
just to be clear - we did not expect to catch him, get him out of the car, and make a citizen's arrest. We just wanted to know what direction he went in to tell the police, but he was too fast.
One reason would be because they screeched their tires out of a parking lot in a rush to capture him, possibly to beat and murder him... from his perspective.
If they caused a guy to flee for his life (whatever the guy's crime) and in the process he hit and killed somebody, then you can bet a judge would be interested in the details.
Could have also ended horribly for the stalker too if the brothers weren't so meek either. Three adults, a couple of them working in construction? Anywhere else, we wouldn't be reading this story. It'd just be a note in the local paper about a random assault one night. If that.
Considering modern laws governing construction sites do not allow workers to carry anything over 20lb and that also in strict limited time, I would rather say an average gym member exercising 3 times a week would be a tougher mate.
Not to mention criminals and crazy people do carry guns. The whole thing might as well ended with "three 6 feet-tall construction workers with black belts in jujitsu ended up dead shot by a 140 pounds stalker with semi-automatic gun"
(Knives, OK that's more likely; we're no longer the stabbing capital of the world but it's still a problem. But not guns. Even airguns are now restricted.)
If you're under 18, you have to be supervised by someone over 21. You can't carry an airgun in public without "a reasonable excuse". There are several kinds of thing you're not allowed to shoot at (which you're not allowed to kill anyway). Convicts aren't allowed to own guns (roughly).
Most of the restrictions are simply the extension to airguns of things that are already forbidden.
[Edit] Looks like the rules are slightly different in Scotland, but not more stringent, as far as I can see.
Yes I am sure criminals care about guns and airguns being restricted. Definitely will look into possibility of moving to Scotland, considering your criminals are law-abiding citizens.
shrughttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-48023220 can't argue with the outcomes; it appears that the average annual number of firearm deaths is two (2) across a population of five million. In 2022 the one victim I can find is John MacKinnon on Skye.
Yes. Regardless of how meek or not, a lot of these kinds of creeps are only big scary tough guys until confronted by other males for their actions.
"Just call the police and sit back and wait for them to deal with it" is a response of someone who hasn't dealt with the criminal justice system, or never talked to women about the BS they put up with.
I've been stalked by women it's not a good feeling. They even enlist the help of friends to do it to the point where I kept a baseball bat by the door.
Would have been better if we didn't have to hear about how great it was that she had three brothers. If she had three sisters into security I guess she would have been screwed?
I also found the formulations off-putting, e.g. repeating how lucky it is for a girl to have brothers (emphasis on their gender). Or how they felt the need to explain specifically to the male readers why the sister was concerned by what's going on. I am a man and I would be scared shitless if some weirdo was breaking eggs on my car.
The author probably just didn't realize this angle, I doubt he meant it in a bad way.
I am sure he didn't mean it in a bad way, but that doesn't mean that emphasis on gender like that isn't problematic. I specifically am referencing the multiple spots where it is highly implied that the brothers were there to rescue her and that she was completely naive otherwise and would have been helpless without them. The fact that they were in the business of online security was what specifically helped her, and the macho 'let's catch him!' antics hurt more than helped, and were generally dumb (which they acknowledge).
The takeaway should have been 'she was luck to have people close to her that knew how to dox people online' and not 'she had three brothers who recklessly camp out at night in order to get into high speed pursuits.'
Why do you have to neutralize them into ‘people close to her’? They are her brothers. Call it like it is. Every brother-sister relationship I’ve known is distinctly different than brother-brother or sister-sister relationships.
The continued emphasis on 'luck' that she had 'brothers' was annoying to me, when that wasn't what was important about the relationship. My sisters have given me some great help over the years, but I don't emphasize how important it is that they are women unless that aspect was important to the help I received.
Maybe I just don't like his writing style as a whole and this particular aspect jumps out at me, but the article would have been at least twice as good if it weren't so annoyingly emphatic about the gender thing in more than one way.
Three sisters would not have gone this route and the police would likely have done nothing until after the stalking had escalated further. Also, 1 brother might not have attempted this either, especially considering the guy was a large creep and smart enough to wear a mask.
Nor would a woman allow her sisters to go vigilante for her.
These guys were quite restrained. I know families with 3 or more brothers and at least 1 sister. And for them, at best, the stalker would not be walking for awhile.
Brothers can be protective, and enraged and activated in a different way. Not saying that's the best route for this situation or others. But in many cases, it IS the best solution. Stalking can escalate very quickly.
Everyone that is like "oh they were so dumb" likely 1) doesn't understand that brother/sister dynamic, 2) hasn't had much experience with the police and/or 3) has never been violated by a stalker/home intruder/etc or very close with someone who has.
I've helped get someone arrested and charged before. I had video of the man breaking into my neighbor's car. I confronted him with my neighbor in real-time. We got him out of the car and questioned him and checked to see if anything was stolen or damaged. We called the cops, they eventually showed up after the guy left. Asked me some questions and they tried to downplay it as a likely homeless person looking for place to nap which it clearly wasn't as I saw him going through the car.
I'm talking with the cops and I see the man down the street. He never left the neighborhood. I tell the cops "there he is"! They keep asking me questions and I'm confused at their inaction. Yes he didn't take anything. But he entered the vehicle, was trespassing and going through the glovebox. Go question him!
They respond slowly and head the man's way. They do nothing. Later that night, guy comes back and is seen by the neighbor from the car incident. He sees him attempt to break into the neighbors garage. Then succeeds in breaking into the house. Cops come and take it more serious. They clear the house and arrest the guy later down the street. I submitted evidence from the earlier incident and he was charged.
Without any resolution, these criminals escalate.
It's easy to say - don't confront criminals, call the police, it's their job and they're trained. But that's what people who haven't experienced these things or had to rely on the police say.
Please don't take the following as a flamebait, or gaslighting, or whatever, I mean it in the best and most polite way possible.
Your comment is still mildly sexist in my view. You say that brothers would do this, you say that sisters would not do this (the woman would not allow them to do this).
I think that position is unfair. Surely there are many men who wouldn't do it or who wouldn't be capable of doing it. Also surely there are many women who would do it and who would be perfectly capable of doing it.
The differentiator between the siblings who would do this kind of action and those who would not is not their gender. The differentiator is their guts, the way they think, their physical abilities and their confidence in their physical abilities. It correlates with their gender, but it is not determined by their gender.
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To be clear I don't consider this a major issue, just want to express it better.
I don't think it's unfair. It's not a competition between brothers or sisters nor do I think sisters taking a different route makes them lesser to men.
In most cases, sisters going a different route would be the smarter play. And even in this case, it could have gone really wrong if the creep had a weapon and was aggressive or killed someone after speeding off. But that didn't happen and the stalking didn't escalate. So sometimes... courage and strength mixed with some recklessness is the best resolution. And I don't think this guy should be dragged across the coals for saying his sister was lucky to have three brothers. This IS a 3 brother type of solution to a problem.
On the aggregate, you know I'm right. Not saying there can't be a pack of three sisters that would respond similarly, but it would be a rare exception. Do I need to update my statement to say "499 of 500 sister pairs would not have gone this route" and "Nor would 499 in 500 women allow their sisters to go vigilante for her".
Do we really need to preface every statement that has a rare exception? If so, I'm not sure we can talk about much. We couldn't even say that humans have 5 fingers on each hand because not everyone does.
There are real differences between the sexes. I don't get all sensitive about that fact.
Or get all sensitive when someone who gets a positive resolution and risked their safety for their sister doesn't write in a professionally sensitive, west coast manner. The guy expressed his story in a rather tame macho manner and people are getting upset after his victory protecting his sister lol.
I get it, I'm an older brother, I would wanna go ballistic too. But the fact that these guys skipped over "notify the police" and went straight to "seek out in-person confrontation" is insane!
Stalkers are not people in their right mind. Staking out and planning to “citizen’s arrest”(???) someone who has repeatedly visited late at night to threaten and harass is NOT SAFE FOR ANYONE INVOLVED.
Do not ever physically escalate with a stalker! Collect evidence and get the authorities involved!