The Comforting Fantasy of Being Targeted

There’s a particular calm that settles over people when they decide they’re being targeted. Not concerned. Not worried. Calm. Almost relieved. Like finally realizing the reason your house smells weird isn’t because you forgot to take out the trash for three days, but because someone outside is piping chemicals into your vents on purpose.

That calm belongs to adults who believe they are under attack by something vast, advanced, and strangely intimate. Satellites. Energy pulses. Voices that somehow bypass the ears but never seem to interrupt a podcast.

They’re not whispering about it, either. They’re confident. Weirdly proud. As if persecution were a résumé line.

And to be clear, this isn’t about whether governments experiment with weapons, or whether militaries lie, or whether technology does unsettling things behind closed doors. Of course they do. That’s not the joke.

The joke is what people do once they decide they’re important enough to be singled out.

Because when people think no one is judging them, when they believe the only eyes on them belong to shadowy agencies with unlimited budgets, they reveal something embarrassing: they like the idea.

They settle into it. They decorate the belief. They arrange their lives around it like a new personality.

The modern “targeted individual” doesn’t act scared. They act explained.

Being targeted is no longer a condition. It’s a solution. It answers questions modern life is terrible at answering: Why do I feel like shit? Why does nothing work out? Why does my brain feel like a browser with forty tabs open and one of them is screaming?

Randomness is unsatisfying. Bad luck is insulting. Ordinary suffering is humiliating. But being chosen? That has structure. That has villains. That has intention.

So anxiety becomes interference. Depression becomes suppression. Intrusive thoughts become transmissions. Fatigue becomes proof. Everything fits neatly once you decide nothing is accidental and you’re not failing, you’re resisting.

This belief ages well, too. It adapts. It incorporates new terminology. New patents. New screenshots. Every rumor slots in effortlessly because the conclusion never changes. Only the props do.

And once someone crosses that line, they start behaving less like a person under threat and more like someone auditioning for recognition.

They document everything. Headaches, static, dreams, emotions, the way the air feels when they wake up annoyed. They narrate their inner lives with the confidence of people who have never once wondered if their experience might be unremarkable.

Any explanation that suggests stress, trauma, or the basic fact that modern life grinds people into powder is rejected instantly. That would mean they’re just another tired adult with unresolved issues and a phone addiction. That would mean nothing special is happening.

Being depressed is shameful. Being targeted is heroic.

They don’t ask whether something is happening. They ask why no one is paying enough attention to it happening to them. The complaint is never “this is terrifying.” It’s “this isn’t being taken seriously.”

And here’s the uncomfortable part: a lot of these people would be genuinely upset if the whole thing were disproven tomorrow.

Not relieved. Upset.

Because then the explanation disappears. Then it’s back to uncertainty. Back to the quiet horror of realizing no one is running a complex operation against you, you’re just a human being having a hard time in a world that doesn’t care enough to personalize your misery.

When no one is judging them, people don’t cling to this belief because it’s frightening. They cling to it because it organizes their lives. It gives them a narrative spine. A reason things haven’t gone the way they hoped.

That’s why the technical details matter less than the emotional payoff. The science doesn’t need to be airtight. It just needs to sound plausible enough to keep doubt at bay. A patent here. A declassified memo there. A headline stripped of context and shared until it hardens into truth.

Nuance dies quickly in these spaces. Anyone who asks “how often” instead of “does it exist” is treated like a collaborator. Anyone who suggests psychological explanations is accused of cruelty, ignorance, or being part of the cover-up.

Because the belief isn’t just intellectual. It’s protective. Take it away and you’re not helping, you’re pulling the floor out from under someone who’s built an identity on being watched.

The hypocrisy is almost impressive.

The same people terrified of surveillance livestream their thoughts daily. The same people warning about mind control repeat claims they haven’t checked because checking would slow the story down. The same people furious about manipulation use fear to recruit others into certainty.

They’ll say they want truth. What they mean is confirmation.

They’ll say they want accountability. What they mean is a villain big enough to excuse their stagnation.

And if this all feels familiar, that’s because it is.

Swap out “directed energy weapon” for “the algorithm,” “late-stage capitalism,” “cancel culture,” or “my parents,” and suddenly this isn’t a fringe behavior, it’s a human one. We all love explanations that absolve us while flattering us. We all prefer stories where our suffering means something specific instead of nothing at all.

Different groups pick different enemies. Same emotional math.

What makes the targeted identity especially ripe for mockery is how naked the bargain is.

Give me certainty, and I’ll give you responsibility.

People take that deal constantly. Quietly. Gladly. With both hands.

They don’t want safety. They want coherence. They don’t want relief. They want justification. They don’t want to be okay. They want to be right.

So they sit with their phones late at night, scrolling, refreshing, waiting for another post that confirms the buzzing in their head isn’t ordinary human fragility. Waiting for someone to say, “Yes, this is real, and yes, it’s happening to you specifically.”

And maybe that’s the part worth sitting with.

Not the technology. Not the weapons. Not the secrecy.

But the possibility that the scariest thing for a lot of people isn’t being watched, it’s being unimportant enough that no one bothers.

Because if no one is targeting you, judging you, or monitoring you with intent, then the meaning has to come from somewhere else.

And that’s a responsibility many people would rather outsource to a conspiracy than carry themselves.