There’s a common adage among women of the world: men are the worst. One particular woman on TikTok learned this firsthand when a friendly encounter turned sinister after she was simply being polite and making conversation with a man in public. Then he showed up unannounced.
User madimmarisoul shared the troubling tale from her car after a shift delivering for Doordash. She said she met a guy while she was walking out of Costco, and simply smiled at him and thought nothing of it.
“I’m kinda freaking out right now,” she said in the video.
After the smile, she got in her car, and the guy pulled up next to her and asked her to roll her window down. Then he asked her where he knew her from, because “she looked really familiar.”
“Keep in mind I was leaving and he was going in,” she said. “He starts asking me about where I live, and I was like ‘oh just around this area.’ I didn’t want to tell him exactly where I live. Because you never know.”
He persistently asked whether she’s on Instagram, and then said he can’t follow her, but she should follow him on the app, which she did. After she followed him, she politely tried to get out of the conversation.
“Okay well I followed you… like good to meet you. So then he left.”
She said she then Doordash’ed for “like 40 minutes,” and when she got home, things got even scarier.
“As I’m pulling up to my house he drives past me, makes eye contact and smiles. The same guy that I showed at the beginning of this video. I zoomed in on his car that was him. And he told me he lives in a neighborhood that’s 20 minutes away.”
How did he find her? “My question is, for the past 40 minutes, has he just been, like, zooming around? Or did he follow me this whole time? ‘Cause what are the odds of that happening?”
Hey men. Don’t do this! It’s not cute, it scares people. This idea that men should be “persistent” when trying to date is outdated — and illegal.
Respect someone’s space and privacy. If someone likes you, they’ll let you know. How hard is it not to be creepy? How hard is it to not stalk someone?
Unfortunately, this aggressive behavior is all too common. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, “an estimated 3.4 million persons age 18 or older were victims of stalking in the last 12 months.”
Stalking, by the way, is officially defined as “conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear.”
Stalking includes:
- making unwanted phone calls
- sending unsolicited or unwanted letters or e-mails
- following or spying on the victim
- showing up at places without a legitimate reason
- waiting at places for the victim
- leaving unwanted items, presents, or flowers
- posting information or spreading rumors about the victim on the internet, in a public place, or by word of mouth.
The worst part is, even when the crime itself happens from a distance, it can be hard to ever feel safe when someone does it.
“Stalking is unlike most crimes because a course of conduct designed to create fear in another person does not necessarily require that the victim come into contact with the offender. For example, a victim may receive repeated threatening correspondence without knowing the source of
the communication. Sixteen percent of male stalking victims and approximately 10% of female stalking victims were not able to identify the gender of the offender.”
Fortunately, madimmarisoul seems to be ok.