From Science Fiction to Social Media: Stalker

Let’s follow our digital fingerprints and trace the word’s strange journey from the Strugatsky brothers all the way to our smartphones.

The word “stalk” has become a toy of pop culture today, but the way it enters modern cultural vocabulary leans on a surprisingly intellectual reference. When the Strugatsky brothers were writing “Roadside Picnic” (“Piknik na obochine”), one of the most unsettling works in sci-fi history, they needed a name for their characters.

Their reference came from an unexpected place: Rudyard Kipling’s “Stalky & Co.” about his school years. Kipling’s “Stalky” was a cunning type, a tracker who bends rules. The Strugatskys took that name and gave it to professional trackers who illegally enter the dangerous “Zone” left behind by aliens and extract mysterious objects from it.

Later, Andrei Tarkovsky immortalized this world with “Stalker,” one of the masterpieces of cinema history. But two core features separated a Stalker from an ordinary thief or hunter, and these also explain our behavior on social media today:

The Object Itself Or Its Use

According to the Strugatsky brothers, a real hunter knows what he is looking for and what it is for. A man who searches for gold aims to sell it and get rich. But for a Stalker, the utility of the tracked object is secondary.

A Stalker is in love with the object itself, with its existence there. The same logic applies in the digital world: you are not truly interested in the brand of the coffee cup in the person’s story, or where they are. For you, that “image” becomes a kind of sacred relic. Instead of the function of information, the satisfaction comes from having reached it.

A Soul-Rescue Operation: “Hopeless Cases”

In the Strugatsky universe, Stalkers are “hopeless case” people who have become aimless toward life, cannot adapt to society, and live in an inner emptiness. For them, entering the Zone and chasing a trace is essentially an act of saving their own soul. This is not the hobby of a wealthy collector. It is a survival attempt by a man whose soul is hungry.

In today’s world, stalking is a hallucinogenic imitation of a real relationship. Whatever the relationship between sex and masturbation is, the relationship between building a real bond and stalking is the same. Instead of getting to know the person directly, building a “dream world” from their digital crumbs is much safer and more tempting. The Stalker feels renewed by loading models copied from someone else’s life into that empty space in his soul.

Extra Info: Tarkovsky’s “Room” And Profile Links

In Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker (1979), the Stalker takes people to the “Room” at the center of the Zone. The belief is that if you enter that room, your deepest true desire will be fulfilled.

For the social media stalker, every profile is a “Room.” While looking at it, you are not really seeing the other person. You are seeing your own deep desires, your lacks, and the lives you envy. Stalking is desire that has not turned into action, but has been trapped on a screen.

So the next time you scroll back 84 weeks on someone’s profile, imagine yourself not as a “voyeur,” but as one of the Strugatsky brothers’ melancholic heroes, tracking a trace and searching for his own soul. Maybe then what you are doing will gain a bit more philosophical depth.