In addition to describing the real obsessive watcher (maybe sexual or maybe hater) who cannot be discouraged by acceptable social means -- the
slang usage more commonly refers to...
The Politically Correct way to publicly cast "criminal" suspicion on an undesirable person before your "real" friends think you find the undesirable person's friendship or sexual interest acceptable.
Also a term used in a
popular juvenile game of the social elite similar to the 1600's "witch hunt" "game". The idea is if enough members of the social elite call someone a stalker then members of the opposite sex will prove their acknowledgment of your elitism by taking punitive action against the one called stalker. The rules of
the game include the concepts that
(1) the fewer and faster the punitive action, the more elite the members who originally designated the
target called stalker -- or at least the closer they are to being able to join that group, e.
g. tentative acknowledgment by the elite.
(2) the sooner someone joins in calling stalker against a selected
target the more accepted they are among the elite group and their followers -- or at least they are conscious and accepting of the righteous rule of the elite and are less likely to be a target of some social game themselves.
(3) all the classic benefits of the "pecking order" modified by the idea that the farther you drive someone down, the higher you raise yourself up.
(
4) all the joys of future lawyers and politicians in doing something deliciously evil while staying within the boundaries normally described as legal and saintly.
(5) you can't trust enough
people after leaving
high school or college to make
the game work any more.
All the Cheerleaders said the new kid who skipped a grade and had a hairlip was a stalker who peek in their bathroom. So the football team caught him after school and cut off his nuts. But nobody got arrested after the
police heard what the cheerleaders said even though the new kid was only at school one day. A bunch of
us gave the Prom
Queen and
King his nuts to use as fuzzy dice when they drove to the dance. What a laugh. Such losers should just kill themselves before their show their faces at OUR school.