I was targeted by the FBI as a child/teen in public school. Apparently I was marked as a “potential school shooter” because I didn’t have friends and “looked like the Virginia Tech shooter (Seung-Hui Cho)”. Whenever I went home and played on my PC, they would monitor everything I did, and the next day they would share all the activities I did with my teachers. They would use this information to mock and bully me. My parents didn’t even own any guns, I had no way of shooting up the school. It was pure racism that drove them, not fear of me endangering my surroundings. America is the home of censorship and violating surveillance. I really believe they monitored me out of pure hatred just because I happened to be Asian. Occasionally, they would mess with me by moving my files around, turning up the volume while I was wearing headphones and hurting my ears, deleting my files, changing the settings on my PC to freak me out. They wanted me to fear even being in my own home.
Who watches the watchers? Who ensures that they FBI are doing their jobs correctly and abiding by ethical standards? Especially the FBI who has been known to do shady things in the past.
They didn’t. The FBI doesn’t share information with high school teachers, and neither does Google.
I used to think people could guess and predict thoughts, because they were sly and good like that. I’d think they used this ability to embarass me and set me up into uncomfortable situations so they could then laugh at me behind my back. Similar to how you think they mocked you.
Just because people happen to mention something you also think about (or google) doesn’t mean they have knowledge of it. It is just a coincidence. Again, this took me a while to internalise and I still struggle with it.
I’m against psychiatry, but it has helped some people. The alternative is to stay vigilant and rationally think about these things yourself. Don’t start with the assumption that others are out to get you or do you harm. People don’t spend that much time thinking about other people, certainly not a single person. I know how easy it is to interpret small things, jokes and remarks as signs of a bigger, sinister plot.
Think about it this way: do you really think your underpaid and overworked teacher spent their free time having meetings with the FBI about your Google searches? Of course they didn’t, they were happy to have free time. They probably watched movies/TV shows, got drunk, had sex, went out with friends, and so on.
Another thing to overcome or realise is that not everything is about you. I am talking from personal experience here too. Just because we spend so much time thinking about ourselves, doesn’t mean others do as well. Your teachers had hundreds of students, they wouldn’t single you out.