quick question bc i don't know anything about how this works, but how do you find where people live through IP's and stuff? like can someone do that to me wtf?
Yes and no.
Unless you work for some kind of company that traces those things (your internet provider for instance, or law enforcement, etc) or you're some kind of super-hacker that can get into that information from your service (unlikely), or they hack your account or computer directly or with a virus to access that information (more likely), they can't just go onto your profile page and find your IP and location.
If you mean how I personally obtained Nia's IP (which I blacked most of it out on the callout for obvious reasons), its because I put an IP tracker/recorder on my personal pages.
Which means that Nia herself had to visit (see: stalk) MY pages by snooping around them herself for my tracker code to ping me her IP information. Lots of people have IP trackers on their pages for things like marketing statistics, visitor traffic, and the like.
What those trackers DON'T do is attach your IP to your account automatically.
So if you click on someone's page you've never talked to, don't like/reblog/follow and don't interact with that page and then leave, yes they'll have your IP but they won't know who it belongs to or what account its attached to. Even if you do interact, its hard to connect that information together with nothing to go off of.
It just so happens that Nia--in all her infinite wisdom--told everyone in our group CONSTANTLY where she lived (a specific town in a specific state).
So when she got banned from our group and her IP kept showing up Every. Single. Day. AND she made posts on her public blog directly bashing us for any and everything we said and did, it wasn't hard to connect the IP to her. She's not exactly smart.
There are ways to get around IP trackers and stop them from pinging your IP (IP blockers or VPNs), but honestly unless you're doing something that could get you in trouble (pirating games or something), or you're having problems with someone already, I wouldn't stress about it.
Its not impossible to connect IPs to accounts but it is pretty hard. You usually have to have prior information about a person to ever figure out who it is.
Even then you can get it wrong because it takes quite a bit of prior information and deductive reasoning to connect the two together.

















