“He was very handsome and coveted, but he wasn’t really interested in girls, didn’t go out a lot. We started to flirt secretly. And Facebook appeared and that was the beginning of the end ”. Thirteen years ago, Juliette * was 23 years old and lived through hell. The young woman, in love with “a 19-year-old guy,” she says, has become a real “serial stalker”. Like Juliette, the Internet users who responded to our call for testimonies confided “having fallen into the infernal spiral of stalking”, of online stalking.
“Helped by all the little traces left on social networks”, friend Charline *, 34, continued her ex in every corner of Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat. When Juliet, she became a “Sherlock Holmes of the Web”. “Using my friends’ accounts, creating fake profiles, fake accounts, fake friends, I was obsessed with seeing her profile,” recalls the young woman who admits to having “investigated the friend (s) (e ) s added, on the people who “liked” the photos “of her boyfriend.
Go through the smallest bit of pixels with a fine-tooth comb
In You, the Netflix series which lingers on the serial murders of Joe Goldberg then those of his wife Love Quinn, the antihero has, of course, a great need for therapy but is above all a relentless “stalker”. Neither neighbors nor colleagues hold any secrets from Joe who combs through the smallest bit of pixels. Being a “serial stalker” means developing an attention that turns into an obsession for an individual or a group of people, be your ex, your crush, your neighbor, your colleague at work.
I ended up losing all confidence in myself. I feel distressed from morning to night. I can no longer work. I lost 17 kg. “
Journalist Judith Duportail recently spoke about this devouring obsession in the podcast The Heart on the Table and, above all, in his latest book (and podcast) Who is Miss Paddle? “My name is Judith, I am 33 years old and I am a journalist. This is my official identity. The less glowing truth is that I’m obsessed with an Instagram girl. “, Loose Judith Duportail, who baptizes her obsession” Miss Paddle “.
Six episodes follow like a reflection on the “stalking” which can turn into ferocious jealousy and bring out the worst of our narcissistic “cracks”.
Julien, who has been dating a man who has been married for more than eight months, has “developed an almost paranoid jealousy”. He uses “all possible social networks to track down any information” on his lover’s life, even if it means “dropping likes” to “stand out”. “I have come to follow the man I love, to lose all confidence in him and in me. I feel distressed from morning to night. I can no longer work. I lost 17 kg, ”explains the thirty-something who is waiting for her lover to leave her husband.
“I even spy on distant cousins, I don’t really have any limits”
For Julien, as for Juliette or Judith, a “like” on Instagram, a thumb under a Facebook post were enough to distill “doubt”, install “obsession”. “I knew that my stalking only reflected my insecurity but I was unable to reason with myself, Charline analyzes. I knew I was making mind-blowing movies from a single heart under a photo, but I couldn’t help but go to his profile [de son ex] as soon as you wake up. “” I had in mind a real detective’s notebook on his Facebook life which was not very active, adds Juliette. I absolutely wanted to have the status “as a couple”, I insisted so much that he ended up deleting me from his list of friends and, there, I refreshed the Internet page of his account maybe 100 times per day when nothing changed. I spent my days there, even my nights. “
Victoria, she has been a “spy” since 2008, when she arrived on Facebook. Initially, the idea was to find “old friends” but as soon as the 31-year-old young woman “understood the power of social networks”, she began to “investigate” her new colleagues, her “ new targets ”. “I even spy on distant cousins, I don’t really have any limits,” says Victoria.
And then her friends, her “closest colleagues” pointed out to her her bad habit, “my obsession”. “I was ashamed”, admits the one who “today is a little more reasonable”, even if the “temptation” remains great. Charline, she will have started therapy: “I was quite incapable of stopping alone. My friends might help me but I had to understand how I got there. “The young woman continues -” but not every day “- her ex on social networks, especially on Instagram where, like Juliette, she peels the accounts of” subscribers “of this man who left her two years ago years.
Treated with the passage of “perverse paranoid depressive”
In the case of Audrey, 38, the hunt will have been saving. “A small voice told me to remain suspicious”, tells us this Internet user about her “crush”. “Supposedly he was in love with me but he had a lot of contradictory signs so I did my little basic investigation to be reassured”, continues Audrey. A meticulous e-spinning that does not speak its name. The thirty-something will have finally discovered that this man “didn’t care” about her and put an end to “unrequited love”.
Our Juliet will remain, whose crazy story of “Modern stalking” (have you got it?) ruined her romantic relationship. Faced with her insistence, her boyfriend “blocked” her. “I developed the certainty that he was cheating on me. All this without any proof, ”says Juliette. Then will come this famous photo of him and “a bomb”, “sitting around a table with other people in a Barcelona nightclub”. ” I’m shaking. I see red. I send the girl a private 30-line message, insulting her with all names, ”Juliette admits.
The young woman will never answer, but the 19-year-old boyfriend will, treating her in passing as a “depressive paranoid pervert” and begging her to go “for HP treatment”. Thirteen years later, Juliette admits to feeling “ridiculous” but that those violent words allowed her to stop her online stalking – well, her boyfriend changed his number too. Today Juliette no longer has “Facebook” and “thinks it’s better that way”.
* The first names have been changed at the request of Internet users.