After returning home from college and visiting her local Gold’s Gym, a woman was shocked to encounter her attempted stalker from seven years earlier.
TikTok user Alexa (@alexaabney69) posted a video about the situation on June 11. She starts the video by saying, “Tell me if you would cancel your gym membership or not.”
She explains that when she was 16 years old, she attended a Gold’s Gym in her hometown. One day an older man in his 40s or 50s approached her. “He just said, ‘Hey, I’ve seen you here a lot. These are really good habits to get into. Good job; keep up the good work. Keep showing up for yourself,’” she recalls.
Alexa wasn’t disturbed by this first interaction. “I was just like, ‘Oh, I appreciate that. It’s nice to be noticed,’” she says.
However, her perspective changed a few months later when she changed her routine to be at the gym in the early morning hours. “So I went at 4 in the morning one time, saw him there again. He came up to me again,” Alexa remembers. “He said, ‘Wow, you’re really putting in the work. Are you doing two-a-days or what? Because you’re here all the time.’ I was like, ‘No, I’m not doing two-a-days. Just like switching up my routine. Thanks for noticing.’”
At this point, Alexa started to become concerned about the man’s intentions. That concern increased when she and her mother saw the man at the tanning salon one day. Not only did Alexa’s mom notice a “weird” look the man gave Alexa, but the owner of the tanning salon also called her a couple of hours later.
“He said, ‘Do you know the guy that was in here?’” Alexa says. “And I was like, ‘I’ve exchanged words, but I don’t really know him.’ And he said, ‘Never talk to him again. He just said to me, “That girl is so hot; I would love to get with her. Can you give me her address?”’
The owner of the tanning salon didn’t agree, and he kicked the man out and banned him from returning to the establishment. Alexa was disturbed by this behavior, but she didn’t pursue the matter with college on the horizon.
She hadn’t thought about the strange man since. “Now, we’re fully seven years later. And I hadn’t thought about it until this morning when I saw him at the gym,” Alexa says. “And he has the audacity to come up to me and say, ‘Hey, how are you? How have you been? It’s been a while.’ I don’t know. Maybe I’m being dramatic, but that’s such weird behavior, and I don’t like that.”
The video has amassed 25,000 views as of Monday afternoon. In the comments, viewers offered their advice on how Alexa should proceed.
One person wrote, “As someone who works in law enforcement, even if you tell the gym and they remove him… he still knows where you work out. I would go somewhere else altogether. Also, file something with the police so there’s documentation in case things escalate. Start it now.”
A second person recommended, “Tell the gym staff/general manager. I work at a gym and we take that really seriously.”
A third person said, “I wouldn’t cancel. You have every right to be there. I’d start flat out ignoring him. Do not take headphones off. Do not look his way.”
Another woman said, “I’m tired of hearing us say, ‘I don’t know if I’m being dramatic.’ We aren’t dramatic. You have every right to feel sus about him.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Alexa via TikTok and email for comment. We also reached out to Gold’s Gym via email for comment.
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
