‘Targeted individuals’ (TIs) are self-identified individuals who believe they are victims of constant group stalking, monitoring, and harassment (i.e. “gangstalking”) by shadowy adversaries, most commonly government agents. TIs generally believe that these adversaries use physical surveillance as well as fantastic forms of electronic surveillance such as microwave technology.
TIs have committed at least four mass shootings or acts of violence in the United States since 2013. While a number of TIs have harassed family members or other acquaintances, the delusions held by TIs have led them to target strangers on several occasions, most notably the 2013 Navy Yard shooting which killed 12 people.
The link between mental illness and violence is not unique to TIs, but they are distinguished by the degree to which they congregate and organize on online platforms. These communities are insular and serve to reinforce their delusions. This also creates the risk that social media groups affiliated with TIs could be exploited by extremist groups for their own agendas.
What do Targeted Individuals believe?
The basic belief of TIs is that they are being harassed by some entity for an unknown reason. This alleged harassment most often takes the form of ‘gangstalking’ or mass surveillance. TIs will often describe bizarre, highly improbable, and science fiction-like situations. According to social media posts from self-identified TIs, these situations include:
24/7 surveillance by nearly everyone around them;
Physical attacks, including poisonings;
Electronic surveillance and hacking;
Targeted noise harassment;
Surgical implantation of microchips for tracking;
Directed energy weapons (DEWs), extremely low-frequency (ELF) radiation, psychotronic weapons, or “voice to skull” (V2K) technologies to broadcast sounds into TIs’ minds, mind control them, and/or remotely control their body;
The alleged perpetrators of gangstalking – often referred to by TIs as “perps” – are typically believed to be government, military, or law enforcement agencies; medical practitioners (e.g. doctors, psychiatrists); financial institutions; private businesses (e.g. insurance and pharmaceutical companies); media and the press; family, friends, and neighbors; and strangers. As one study noted, TIs “are unable to identify a single person responsible for their persecution and experience it as a widely distributed and coordinated effort.”
There is significant evidence that TIs are suffering from mental illness, but there has been insufficient study to provide further definition. Of the small sample of peer-reviewed literature on the subject, for example, a study published in the Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology (2015) examined a sample of 128 individuals who claimed to be the subject of gangstalking. The authors determined that all 128 cases of self-reported gangstalking in the study were “highly likely to have been delusional,” as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), an industry standard in mental health. However, when they are labeled as mentally ill on the internet or receive clinical diagnoses of psychiatric illness, TIs tend to reject this by arguing that their appearance of mental illness is merely a goal of their gangstalkers.
Despite being driven to desperation by their alleged tormentors, the vast majority of TIs do not take violent action or express violent rhetoric. In addition to their inability to name a single person responsible for their torment, TIs are also rarely able to articulate a reason why they are being targeted. Despite their belief that the government or military is targeting them and destroying their lives, there is surprisingly little anti-government rhetoric in TI communities and little to no overlap with anti-government extremist groups.
