> A large percentage of stalkers believe they are being stalked by their target.
A large percentage of stalkers believe they themselves are being stalked because they are, but by someone other than their target. They don't know who's stalking them, and are reciprocating, but towards a different target they themselves have chosen.
There's a difference in personality between stalkers who keep themselves well hidden, and those who are unafraid to reveal themselves.
> stalking tends to come from the extremes of the popularity spectrum, not the middle of the curve, and those two extremes tend to produce different patterns of stalking.
In your other comment on this submission, you described both types of stalker in the context of female-on-male stalking, but it applies more generally in society. You called the form that comes from those high on the social spectrum as "less common", but it's simply _more hidden_. Stalking is a many-layered social structure, with the sociopathic types at the top pulling the strings of the schizophrenic types at the bottom, often with one or two layers of other people in between. The sociopathic types who keep themselves hidden watch others in order to change win-win relationships into win-lose relationships. The more recognizable schizophrenic types react to these win-lose relationships by changing them into lose-lose relationships.
If we talk about how to handle the schizophrenic type of stalker without talking about the sociopathic type, we're simply targeting a symptom without looking at the cause. Behind every wacko hellbent on ruining their prey is a scheming business manager
protecting their business interests at all costs, or a listening functionary doing what it takes to get their kids an education in a Western country.