Why do so many autists turn into stalkers?

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And people with disabilities were also targets during the Holocaust.

This behaviour is linked with AS.

I'm not talking about innocent people who "don't understand" that you don't ask too many questions and don't call people in the middle of the night. I'm talking about people who obsess so deeply with someone that they don't give up even if asked face to face to f**k off.

I've been stalked a few times in my life for longer periods. All my stalkers have been people with some sort of AS who just don't listen when I've asked them to leave me alone.

They are like the clown in the box who just bounces up again with the same oblivious smile on their face when knocked back.

This is tied to AS. It's one of the less charming AS-behaviours. I want to know what drives these people.

How could it be a dangerous obsession?

People with Autism have obsessions to the point of no return. After all, one of the definite traits of Autism as well as Aspergers is having a special interest, an interest to the point where they maybe living in another world. Perhaps certain people they know are their obsessions. Plus their social impairment makes it difficulty for them to understand what is socially appropriate. I will admit, I've heard several stories about people with Aspergers who get obsessed with a person(usually a romantic interest) and despite the fact that the person has no interest, they keep persisting. I knew a freshman kid years ago with Aspergers who was obsessed with a female senior in high school and despite the fact that he had no chance with her and she clearly had no interest in him, he somehow in some strange way thought he would have a shot with her and kept persisting over and over again. In my personal experience, I never approached girls because I'm petrified. Nevertheless, I have constant thoughts about certain girls at a time that I know that I really want but have no chance with. I obsess over certain girls; after all ,there's one I know right now that I think about all the time, one that I want badly. Overall, I think obsessions is just one of our traits. Obsessions can lead to stalking for some people.

Can you post evidence to link the two? It would be helpful, since as far as I am aware there is nothing beyond the acknowledgment of OCD as a possible co-morbid and the existence of "special interests" to indicate what you are suggesting, which is a pretty weak link if that is the only connection in my opinion.


M.

I'm sorry but the only things I have are personal experience. Both IRL directly and through the internet.

So called internet archivists, people who stalk and archive EVERYTHING others do, seem to be more or less exclusively AS. This archiving also seems to be a separate thing from the special interests. I personally think it's related to curiosity in others based on lack of understanding and experience of certain things. What I feel from these stalkers is both obsession, but also an almost perverted curiosity which goes beyond all socially acceptable boundaries.

I have made these observations and I feel it's justified to discuss things based on observations. If people didn't act based on observations there would be no science, no politics and no world really. Everyone would sit around apathetically waiting for "evidence" to drop from the sky.

So far there have been others backing up my observations with observations of their own, this is exactly the purpose of the thread and the direction I wanted for it to take. Absolutely no reason to obstruct the process of free thought because it touches a sensitive issue to those interested in profiling autism as a teddy bear disorder.

Last edited by Adolf on 10 Feb 2010, 10:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I was thinking the same thing.

When you join WP and choose a user name and avatar, you are deciding on the face that you're going to present to the world. I personally find it offensive, because it's like a big "f-you" to all the people whose lives were destroyed by the Nazis. It's one thing to have a special interest, but it's another to represent yourself as a Hitler fan. Anything that this person posts, I'm going to read with that in mind.

I stalk people..I'm not ashamed to admit it..I mean that in a not so creepy way, but hey, let's face it..i can be pretty creepy. If I meet or see someone I like, I like to find out as much as I can about them and I'll facebook or myspace them to see what and all I can learn about them. I don't consider myself to be psychotic though..just interested, lol

What about all the people worldwide who got their lives destroyed by for example the US?

"All?" Wow. You must be some kind of magnet for stalkers, and particularly for those with a trait that isn't that dense in populations. Strange, as you aren't coming across as charming, yourself. Maybe you adapted in order to prevent stalking? Cool---anyone can learn behaviors! Maybe you wear the wrong cologne, and it attracts Aspies with olfactory as a particularly sharp sense? (I'm not making fun of you, I just find a great deal of ironic, even absurdist humor in the situation you're describing)

Yes, as makuranososhi said, evidence of linking would be nice. Aside from the issue of obsessions (to different extents and different expressions in different individuals), some co-morbid is all I could think of for what you've described in very general terms without specifics.

[EDIT: and I took too long in posting because my browser screwed up, so I'm several posts behind....]

I am a stalker magnet actually. I wish I wasn't.

I'm not taking that bait.

I came back to this thread with the intention of deleting the post I wrote, because I decided that I don't actually care what another WP calls himself, and it's not worth complaining about. But now it's been quoted, so if I delete it it won't make any difference.

Eek. I wish there were a "grimace-for-another's-sake" smilie. Beyond what's already been proposed here for theoretical answers to what you asked, about all I can say is that I wish I could help more in some practical way (like telling you how to avoid/deter them, but I'd have to know you to attempt that). I've felt nudges toward person-obsessions, myself, but never anything I couldn't easily see as something I needed to keep a rein on and maintain perspective (though I think a close bond with a female NT friend helped a lot with that perspective, because she was the sort who'd be quite willing to say "Dude...You're going to look like a stalker," lol). I take "no" as "no," and the only guy who's ever obsessed inapporpriately over me stopped it when a good male friend of mine had some words with him in private about it (and if that one had gotten physical with me, he'd have ended up bleeding profusely) :-/

Last edited by Laerrigan on 11 Feb 2010, 12:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm sure there's a connection with the autistic mental proclavity towards obsessions/perseverations. Also, people on the spectrum tend to be more curious than the average NT. Learning and collecting information can provide a sense of purpose and connection to the world that is othewise absent. I think autistic stalking cases are simply examples of obsessions run amok.

Says you. This is no way constitutes evidence of anything, just calculated accusation on your part.



Once again, generalization without substantiation. No wonder Adolph is your alter ego, he engaged in the same kind of baseless, illogical debate, baiting people and drawing them into emotional overreaction. There is no empirical evidence to lend to the veracity of such a statement. It is no more than a generalized sterotype spouted by a bigot.



Wrong. Observation alone is not evidence. Documentation (even of observed phenomena and events) is evidence and your claims to have been stalked at all are not yet in evidence, much less that any such instance involved someone with an ASD. Saying something happened doesn't make it so, and accusing a wide group of people of being potential sociopaths requires a great deal of evidence to be anything short of a crude and brutal insult. I am not convinced that you have ever even met anyone with Asperger's Disorder. But your prejudice against them is in open (documented) evidence on these pages.



"The purpose of the thread and the direction I wanted for it to take"

Ah, there's the rub and what everyone else seems to be missing. There has been absolutely no free thought going on here. You began this thread with baseless accusations built on events which may or may not have actually occurred, and you have manipulated these people by drawing them into discussion of a 'fact' which is not an established 'fact' to begin with, in order to obtain statements you can then quote in use against them and everyone with their disorder. I stand by my original assessment of you - you may be smooth and articulate, but you are ultimately just a hater.

Love you too, dear. Even if I'm an enslaved mind for turning ideas over hypothetically on the basis of "If you're telling the truth, then XYZ" because that's all we have to go on for anything experiential (and I was responding to his stated experience with certain individuals, not any wide group) that's mentioned here in this lovely anonymous and distanced place. Maybe all us slobbering imbeciles have been lying all along to draw him out and give him false information so he'll quote it and look like an idiot?

Last edited by Laerrigan on 11 Feb 2010, 1:36 am, edited 1 time in total.