And so I looked up and lo and behold guess who was standing right next to me.
My stalker / copycat person, I don't even know what to call him!
Hi everyone! Welcome back to my channel. If you're new here I'm Alyssa and I'm a
full-time food and travel blogger and right now since I'm in quarantine as all
of you guys should be. I decided that I wanted to try something new and film
this storytime mukbang thing. Anyway I ordered from my favorite restaurant -- I
mean I guess it's hard to say that's my favorite restaurant because it's so hard
to choose a favorite, but it is definitely a restaurant I order from a
lot. So it's called OK Noodle in Newark and we got these chili oil
noodles and then I also ordered from this boba shop it's called funky and I
got their dirty bubble that's my favorite thing to get there and then we
got a submarine tea which I actually got for me to save for tomorrow so I'm gonna
put this on the side so basically the dirty boba it has brown sugar boba this
one actually has Jasmine milk tea in it and then it's chopped with cheese foam
and it's like brûléed on top and yeah this is one of my favorite boba drinks
in the Bay Area my favorite boba place is urban ritual
but I don't have one near me so this is kind of like my go-to spot hmm oh well
it's so good I haven't had boba in quite a while so this really hits the spot oh
my gosh is so good okay so I'm gonna mix up these chili oil noodles I'm gonna go
ahead and try some oh my gosh look at that oh my gosh you can see all that
chili oil on the bottom okay
mmm
oh yeah that's good their noodles are so chewy oh my god I love it
let's just start the story shall we I'm pretty nervous I've never done a story
time before but we'll see how it goes we need to give this person a name okay uh
let's call him Joe like Joe Goldberg I think you guys know what I'm implying so
basically if you guys don't already know not only am i youtuber but I'm also an
instagramer I've been doing Instagram pretty seriously for about three years
and it's been like such a great journey but also over that amount of time I have
like a lot of insight on what it's like to be a food blogger and what it's like
to be a food Instagrammer when you're in the community for a while
you know of these different tactics that people use to grow their account and one
of them that I personally do not like is called follow and follow and if you've
never heard of that before it's when someone uses a bot or I guess they don't
have to use a bot but most times they are using a bot and they basically mass
follow a bunch of accounts and then they wait for those accounts to follow them
back and then they unfollow them after so they're kind of like tricking people
into following them which is why I personally don't really like it like
first of all you're tricking someone into following you and I think it's kind
of mean and second of all it's just like a really cheap shortcut way to grow your
following and I don't think that that is the method that most people should grow
like you should focus on creating good content and you know it takes a lot of
patience and hard work to get a following so these people are just kind
of looking for shortcuts and like trying to hack their way to the top or cheat
their way to the top you know what I mean so I personally am NOT a huge fan
of that anyway I know I've been kind of rambling on but it's kind of important
to the story so let's start about two years ago when I first noticed this
person Joe I first noticed Joe on Instagram he was a new food blogger and
the reason that I way I'm gonna I'm gonna eat a little something because I'm
just talking
so chewy mmm handful noodles are the freakin best okay so anyway back to Joe
he was like a new food blogger and the reason I started to notice him is
because he kept following me and then would unfollow me and then would like
spam like my post and stuff I mean like if you do it once or twice whatever but
this guy started doing it a lot like over the span of a few months and that
definitely caught my attention because when I looked at his account like it was
very obvious to me that he was using follow and follow and the thing is that
like it was working for his account like he was growing pretty freakin fast and
honestly like when you see that as someone who's been in the game for a
while and you've like been true to your content and your page and have grown
like organically instead of using these like cheating methods it's kind of
frustrating because like imagine if you were working at a job for a few years
and then suddenly this new hire came on and was like accelerating and advancing
in the company almost to your level just because they were like sharing noodles
if you know what I mean with the boss you know like they were nude old buddies
that's probably like the most PG way I can say it on my channel but you know
what I mean
so you know obviously seeing that it's pretty frustrating because I've worked
really hard on my page and this person basically came out of nowhere and was
using these methods and was like growing really fast so obviously I didn't have
that great of an impression of Joe and after a few months of this happening
things got weird like really weird I gotta add 70% sweet to so it's not too
sweet it's literally like the perfect amount
of sweetness anyway back to the story so he started to spam like and comment on
my post which he wasn't commenting before but he started doing that quite
frequently like this guy was clearly trying to get my attention but at the
same time he would not be following me like he would just spam like my pose and
comment and just leave it at that and do that multiple times so I was just like
getting annoyed I was like dude words start doing like I don't understand
what's going through your head right now and not only was he doing that he
commented like some kind of strange things on my photos one of them for
example was like happy girl means the food was like I know that might not
sound that weird to some of you guys but I personally thought it was really weird
to say that to a stranger like we have never interacted mutually before and he
didn't follow me and I didn't follow him so it's just like a weird thing to say
to someone you literally don't know like at all and that has never talked to you
before and if these things happen as like single instances like only one offs
you know like it wouldn't be weird like it's pretty normal for me to get like
weird comments but usually it's just like once or twice from the same person
and then they'll like back off but this guy was like really persistent so it was
like the pattern of behavior that was a red flag for me so I definitely started
to like pay more attention and notice these things more and more as time went
on I also want to say that I'm a very observant person probably more than the
average person and if it wasn't for me being so observant throughout this whole
story you'll see like any normal person that's not as observant as me probably
wouldn't even think anything of what happened but it was since I noticed such
like this pattern of behavior from this person I definitely was very
uncomfortable during this whole situation so around that time I started
to notice that he was checking my story like all the time like usually I don't
even check who looks at my story like I do once in a while so then every single
time I would look he was there looking and so I thought that was really weird
because again he doesn't follow me so why are you looking at all my stories
all the time and so I started checking and checking and checking more and more
often because I was just like what is this guy doing like honestly all these
behaviors would be perfectly normal if he had just followed me it's normal to
look at someone's stories when you follow them it's normal to comment on
people's posts when you follow them it's normal to like people's post when you
follow them what's not normal is doing all those things consist
Gimli when you don't follow them hey guys so I'm editing this right now and I
realized that I wanted to clear this up is that I don't care if he doesn't
follow me like I just care that if you are doing all these things and you don't
follow me it comes off as creepy so if you're not gonna follow me just don't do
those things and I won't think you're creepy you know what I mean
so I just wanted to clear it up that I'm not like desperate for his follow or
anything like I literally don't care if he follows me but I care that he's doing
all these really weird things and not following me because that's what makes
it weird just want to clear that up and not only would he be constantly looking
at my story he would be one of the first like he would be very early on on the
list of people who are looking at my story like I update my story quite often
and I'm pretty active on there and I'm just thinking like this guy's
deliberately searching out my page and looking if I have a new story and
checking it but all the time it's very strange to be doing that
constantly every single day and being one of the first people to look at my
story every time I upload a story and unfortunately it gets weirder so around
that time it was like the holidays and I was on a trip with my friends in Asia
I was so active on stories like probably the most active I've ever been at that
point on stories because I was documenting everything I loved Asia it
was my first time in Japan so I was literally like posting stories like left
and right so during this trip I noticed that he was not only checking all my
stories from his food blogger account but he was literally watching all of
them from his personal account like why do you need to watch my story from two
separate accounts like if you just wanted to watch my story twice you can
watch it from the same account like you don't need to be watching it on two
accounts like for all I know he was watching my story on his food blogger
account ten times and then he was watching it on his personal account ten
times I don't know I honestly have no idea what's going on in this guy's head
like Joe are you okay what's happening and how did I know it was his personal
account you asked because when you stalked me I stalk your back and also
obviously I knew his and his name was in the handle of his
personal account and then literally in the bio of that account has his food
instagram and it says my foodie account so that's how I knew and just when I
thought that things couldn't get weirder about a week later after my trip I
noticed that he started to watch all my YouTube videos and at this time my
YouTube was really really small probably only like my boyfriend my family and my
really close friends maybe we're watching my videos like no one was
watching them so at this point this guy is literally stalking my stories on his
food account and his personal account he's doing like the spam liking and
commenting stuff and he's stalking my YouTube channel and I'm just like what
is your motive like what are you trying to accomplish from doing these things I
really don't understand I literally keep getting carried away
with my story and I forgot to eat so and so if you guys don't know I usually
upload my videos on Wednesdays so there was one Wednesday where I was running
really late on my video it was starting to get to like later in the evening and
I still hadn't uploaded but I was working on it I was trying to get it up
that day and this guy Joe literally goes to my latest video and comments no video
today like dude this guy is waiting for my upload and I would just like to
reiterate this is all very normal behavior if you are following me but
clearly you are not following me so what is the deal
why are you like obsessing and keeping tabs and like you're doing the most like
if you just followed me all this behavior would be very normal but since
you don't it's really creepy my dude and so obviously I was like just really
confused honestly I was confused during this whole thing so I guess that's
nothing new but the next day that he did that I noticed that hallelujah this boy
finally followed me so I was like yes I can finally stop feeling mere
and like thinking that this guy's creepy because he finally follows me and it
would be normal for you to do these things however that was very short-lived
because three days later he unfollowed me like who are you like are you okay
just trimming in because I realize I forgot to explain this part but
basically I don't usually notice when people unfollow me like I do not keep
track of that stuff but it was because this guy obviously was you know doing
all this weird stuff so I was paying very close attention like if I saw him
liking my post or like commenting my post or if he was checking my stories
again I would like click on his profile and if I didn't see like follow back
then obviously I knew he had followed me so just letting you guys know I don't
usually notice these things but it was just because like this guy was just
being really weird so I paid close attention to it but yeah back to the
video and it's not even like just because he unfollowed me three days
later he was gonna stop no he still continued to do all those things so we
were basically back at square one he kept doing that for a few months I mean
at this point it's normal behavior I guess because I'm so used to it even
though it's really freaking creepy but yeah after a few months he actually
followed me for real this time he didn't unfollow me three days later but I mean
it wasn't for real cuz he ended up on following me but I'll get to that later
so during this time that he was actually following me
I started to notice that he was taking heavy inspiration from my Instagram page
like his photo started to look very similar to my photos the way he took the
photos look similar the way he edited his photos look similar
it was literally to the point where he even went to a restaurant that I had
recently gone to and posted about and he took the exact same picture and edited
the exact same way so that basically went on for about a month but hey at
least he was just copying me and not stalking me I mean yeah he was copying
me which isn't great first of all but at least he's not being stalkerish I guess
oh my gosh these are hitting the spot so at this point he's been doing that for
about a month and I was at a boba shop with some of my other food bloggers
friends and we were there to like shoot their desserts and drinks and everything
was fine we were shooting for a while and so we were ready to try our drinks
so at the time it was really busy at the shop and I squeezed my way to the
counter to get us some straws and I noticed that the person next to me was
talking with the owner so I was like oh I wonder how this guy knows the owner
and maybe he's a food blogger - and so I looked up and lo and behold guess who
was standing right next to me my stalker slash copycat person I don't
even know what to call him Joe Joe Joe was standing right next to me
I was literally freaking out my heart was beating so fast and I ran back to my
friends and I was like just and they were like whoo and I was like Joe Joe
was here and they were like I was like dude I wish if only life were that
simple so since he was talking to the owner when I saw him I'm pretty sure he
actually didn't see me you know I'm a lot shorter than him and he was like
making direct eye contact straight ahead with the owner so I'm pretty sure he
didn't see me and I like skirts routed out of there real quick and so when I
went back to my table with my friends I made sure that I was sitting in a way
where he wouldn't be able to see my face like I was sitting with my back towards
his like general vicinity and so I thought I was safe you know he wouldn't
know that I was there but the owner came to talk to us and while that was
happening he went to the bathroom which was right next to where we were sitting
and so when we were talking to the owner I was looking directly at the owner but
I saw him out of my peripherals come out of the bathroom and look directly at me
and I was like my cover has been blown so I know for sure he saw me but anyway
luckily nothing came of it he didn't try to approach me or anything
so I got to leave in peace or so I thought
so the next day comes and I noticed that he unfollowed me what is going on in
this guy's head honestly because literally you saw me in person for like
five seconds and suddenly like I didn't meet your expectations or something like
that literally makes no sense and yet after he unfollowed me he's still
proceeded to check my stories every day like make up your mind dude anyway after
that it basically just fizzled out like I think he just like stopped stalking me
I don't know what happened there I just fizzled which I'm very glad that he is
no longer stalking me that I know of and I don't know if he still watches my
YouTube videos I hope he doesn't I guess because I'm putting this story out on
the internet but yeah if you're watching this joke stop stalking people it's
weird so moral of the story don't stalk me
because I will notice and I will make a storytime about it
anyway if you guys know what this guy might have been thinking or what he was
trying to do please comment below and let me know your thoughts because
honestly it's been over a year or something and I still haven't figured it
out I don't think about it often but I definitely enjoyed sharing this story
with you guys and I know this is quite different from my usual content but
please let me know if you enjoyed it and maybe I can make some more during
quarantine since I'm stuck at home anyway and of course don't forget to hit
that thumbs up button if you liked it don't forget to subscribe and turn on
the Bell so you get notified when I upload cuz you wouldn't want to miss a
bonus upload like today's upload so yeah I'll see you guys in the next video
which should be coming out on Wednesday bye