Friday, January 16, 2009

Misreading the signs

In this post I talk about successfully sparring with sociopaths using emotional misdirection. I got the following response dismissing the effectiveness of that tactic:
Just because one person feeds you indirect or false information does not mean they will win. What about the other hundreds of people observed before? A sociopath doesn't learn when they've done something wrong because they either gain pleasure from it or honestly see no wrong in it, but this does not mean that they simply do not learn.

Lying to a sociopath and thinking you will win is stupid. What has the sociopath been doing his or her entire life? Lying. Unless they end up falling into a highly-narcissistic lifestyle, they are going to recognize a liar and will immediately trump them due to their amount of comfort and experience with lying that an empath would not have.

Your "battle tactics" seem more like a way of defeating you rather than sociopaths as a whole.
Right, that last sentence is probably the most true. But am I really so alone in that? I mean, other empathy challenged individuals like aspergers and autistics also frequently misinterpret emotional cues and are easy to trick. I make emotional/social errors like that in the weirdest circumstances. For instance, this conversation with a friend:
Friend: Why do black men always scream at me? Like, whenever in the street? It's a weird social thing, no?

M.E.: They scream at you?

Friend: Well, like, at the grocery store today, I walk past this black man who was just buying groceries and he starts yelling: hey girl? shopping? shop til you drop, I know you can! And on and on until I got into the store. And this happens a lot. It's a weird racial thing, no? The whole yelling thing. Black men do this.

M.E.: I guess they do. I just always felt like they were my friends, but thinking back on it now, they were strangers.

Friend: The screaming black men?

M.E.
: Yeah

Friend
: No, strangers.

M.E.
: Yeah, I don't have any male black friends then. That's too bad.
EDIT: not like I ever thought these people were friends or acquaintances. I mean that there was an emotional/social illusion such that I forgot they were strangers yelling at me.

3 comments:

  1. Nice deflection.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's complicated. I am kind of "bi"; that is, half empath & half sociopath. I've been in intense contact with at least three sociopaths (all of whom fooled me). Two were bosses, one was an owner of a small business in the silicon forest and one was a very high up administrator in one of the top public libraries in the United States.

    In the third case, I was preyed upon by one of the top swindlers in Oregon history, a new age cult leader who had stolen close to a million dollars from idealistic victims (in relatively small amount that added up) over a 20 year period. He fooled my wife (a very empathic person) and myself for about three years. He completely failed to spot me as another sociopath (if only "bi"). In a complicated tale too long to relate, I ended up swindling him out of almost $100,000 and pretty much destroying his life (if an empty person has any life to destroy). Of course, as I am part sociopath, I might be lying to you in this tale, though I assure you it's completely true.

    ReplyDelete
  3. huh I don’t have black friends I usually tell them that I’m sorry your deaf and honesty I don’t really care for what reason but you could shut the hell up for all us hearing people thank you its funny to look at their faces and see their mouth hit the floor hard then i just walk away n they get so mad ha ha ha ha its hilarious

    ReplyDelete

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