Thursday, April 14, 2011

How would you feel?

From a reader:
I find your blog fascinating. While I have sociopathic tendencies, there are certain traits I have that rule me out as a true sociopath. However, I follow your blog and I came across an article that I thought you might find interesting. I'd also love to know how you would react to a situation like this.

The gist of the article is that a female gorilla in a Korean zoo lost her life-long 25 year companion/cell mate. She is inconsolable. The only other gorilla she knew is gone.

In a closed environment such as this, without interaction beyond that of one other person, how would a sociopath act? I know for myself, I am a completely malleable personality that revels in my many different personae I can call upon at will. But I started thinking how I would feel in this situation. If I was forced to spend the next 25 years with only one man, how would my personality settle? Would it change? Would a 'real me' come out? Or would it just be the same personality for all 25 years, while I would know deep down that it isn't the real me, since the real me doesnt exist? And when I lost this one man forever, where would my sense of loss come from? Would it be simply the anger generated by loss of someone you needed or would it be supreme sadness rooted in deep emotion?

I am aware that sociopaths feel emotion, but I am asking what that emotion would feel like if there was no one left to play with; no one left to charm; no one left to dispose of - just this one other soul to keep you company until they died, leaving you all alone. I know the idea of isolation is hell to most sociopaths. But what I would like to know is what people hypothesize the relationship and their role in it would be like if they were trapped in a closed environment with only one other person for 25 years. Would the sociopathic behaviors/desires increase, remain the same, or would they diminish? Minus a group of victims (sorry to be general with that term), how would a sociopathic personality react to having just one and only one person at their fingertips? Would the behaviors even be able to be classified as sociopathic.
M.E.: It's hard to imagine, honestly. I think it would seem nice at first to only have to interact with one person. I've gone through periods when I am tired of having to wear so many different masks. Not having to change masks all the time would in some ways free me to be able to have more of my "own" thoughts. But I think I would also feel like a retiree -- when you're in the midst of a grind, you can't help but fantasize about having more freedom to pursue being you, but the daily grind of work life also defines you so much that when it goes away there could be the sensation of a "lack" of "you". I think that this proneness to lack of self-definition contributes largely to the persistent feeling of "emptiness" that plagues sociopaths. One time i referred to it as always being aware of the abyss and people accused me of being dramatic, but i meant it in the literal sense -- a void, a vacuum of not just self or sense of self but of non-relativistic reality.

My brain is like a stomach whose lining has a hole, it constantly needs stuff to process otherwise it starts eating itself, so to speak. So I guess in answer to your other question about what would I do/feel if I were in complete isolation, I would probably lose all track of reality and sense of self and go crazy. But isn't everyone like that? What an odd flaw to have in the human psyche.

78 comments:

  1. when im stuck with one person for too long all my inner rage becomes directed at them. every thing they do makes me want to rip them apart (more so than usual) thats why i have so many people to switch out just so i do get bored and destroy them

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    1. I have an ex that has just been put on house arrest that is a sociopath. Should I be afraid? Will he risk arrest to come kill me?

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    2. My SP ex is on house arrest. Will he risk jail to come kill me?

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  2. Besides a little bid more boredom i think I would be fine. It would also depends on the situation. for example if its a post Apocalypse world than i would rather enjoy it.

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  3. that article is some sad shit(no joke). I don't think you'd be fine wet, have you seen omega man?

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  4. Normal people still think people don't lie.

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  5. Serial killer on the loose in Long Island.

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  6. What an interesting question!

    Even if the other person were tolerable relationship existence is not satisfaction - particularly in a stressful environment.

    If they created negative interactions I'd rather bite a major artery and bleed to death.

    The most I could hope for, in the dominant-submissive relationship that would always form, is that the stranger and I would be afflicted by a most satisfying folie a deux.

    To my mind the conditions - an impoverished, detached 'world' devoid of external contact and an over-dependence on each other - would make this likely.

    What might the folie a deux present as? I have no idea. But I dare say it would be particularly strong if each person was suggestible and intolerant of the gap between their actual and ideal selves.

    A threat to separate them could get interesting...

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  7. socio monkey, no gorillaApril 14, 2011 at 4:20 AM

    feel like i already lost this person even though i did not even have him in the first place. this feeling prevents me from ever giving anyone a reign of a couple of years around me let alone 25 years.

    society would have to literally lock me up with someone for me to stick around for 25 years, like these gorillas.

    i still want me a socio monkey, though. probably the best part of a socio monkey is you don't feel sadness when he leaves.

    so... get a socio monkey for a few years, don't get a gorilla for 25 years.

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  8. sea witch, you are boring, stfu now or I will slay you like a new york hooker

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  9. I think that as a sociopath and narcissist, living with the same person for 25 years would make me go crazy. I know that I lived one summer with a friend of mine and I felt like killing him after 2 weeks but I couldn't tell him to leave cause I was in a hole financially. Anyway when I got out of the financial hole I was hating him with all my guts and he used to be the person with which I could get along the easiest.

    I think that if I would have to live in a cage with another man for 25 years I would probably kill him after one year and live by myself the rest of the time.

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  10. anon April 14, 2011 3:15 AM

    Its mixed. One on hand you would be the master of the world. The last human, the best of the best and a god among everything else. On the other hand you have no one to rule over. The animals are too dumb. But still i think its fun to imagine.

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  11. anon April 14, 2011 3:15 AM

    Btw what time zone are you in? We might both be ex-pats

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  12. "sea witch, you are boring, stfu now or I will slay you like a new york hooker"


    Lets be friends?

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  13. If you don't like someone, then you fucking kill them, it's that simple, you go to the extreme or you shut the fuck up.

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  14. anon membership to my strangling club is closed, I've already got a solid burlap wrapper, I do need a 23yo and 26yo hooker for our little game tho lol

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  15. SHOOT EVERY GAY, HOMO AND BEEPER DEAD.

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  16. Cocaine Alcohol And RageApril 14, 2011 at 7:38 AM

    stfu

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  17. Today's article hits home with me, actually. It's a question I will have an answer to within the year, for better or worse.

    My father raised me, and we moved a lot. I haven't lived in one place more than three years for my whole life. Roughly 16 of those years were with him. About two years ago I moved to his city to take care of him and get myself back in the Will. We don't see each other very often now, as he's been in and out of the hospital and nursing homes for about a year now.

    I do wonder though, what will happen when he's gone? The only vaguely solid part of my life? We were never very close, other than proximity. He's a textbook narcissist, and I'm quite sociopathic. Even though I can't feel any mental strain, or sadness, seeing him go has physically manifested itself in me. I've been more sickly the last few months, my bloodlust has gone through the roof, and I'm constantly anxious.

    If someone doesn't have an answer to this question, I'm sure you folks will get one in the coming months from me. Either from a reply, or from a reply of absence.

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  18. Notable is trying to impress the crowd. Ha ha ha.

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  19. Good God Not Able, what drivel. Peeling away your vapid sentimental fluff reveals that you're waiting for your old man to kick the bucket so that you can collect your inheritance as your body slowly rots too. News flash: no one gives a fuck. Piss off, smother him with a goddamn pillow already, and leave SW to the true sociopaths.

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  20. If you spend 25 years with one person, and this is assuming it's possible for you, yes you will build some sort of attachment. You might not realize it until it's gone and ponder later about it. Perhaps you won't feel emotionally attached, but we all recognize conveniences and if conditions are right we respect them to a certain extent. So long as you do not go to extremes (FULL attachment/ZERO attachment) in your thought process you actually would realize this after 25 years, indeed. I myself could never spend 25 years with just one person as people exist today, but the only psychopath walking this earth's surface who is 100% immune to any form attachment at all is only a psychopath who was extremely emotionally hurt when it came to attachment/learning attachment in the first place, and this is not to say they will interpret emotions normally either, it is just ONE example of how our minds can work given controlled circumstances.

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  21. Reader, & M.E.,

    this is definitely one of the more interesting ideas brought up in a mail, and I'll give my two cents - but I haven't published today's article at my own blog yet (it's about Psychopathy and myself - I'm a psychopath), so I'll be back once I've done that.

    Interesting idea indeed.

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  22. Isolation like house arrest, or isolation like solitary? I'd probably go off kilter after a month or two unless I had a steady stream of books, or at least a television (à la Oldboy).

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  23. "I'm a psychopath"


    No, you are an autistic douchebag with identity problems.

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  24. @Post. This place has evolved, and you haven't run along now.

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  25. I've spent more than 25 years with one person. It's called marriage, and it's HELL.

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  26. You meant devolved, didn't you anonymous at 10:03?

    Yeah, you did.

    And nope, this aint Post Modern.

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  27. Forget about the other person. Spending 25 years in a cage is a horrifying idea with or without the cellmate. However losing your sole source of entertainment would be tragic. I'm sure some type of mutual relationship would occur that was beneficial to both. I mean if it was the desert island scenario were your continue existence was made easier by having another with you then I'm sure there would be a feeling of loss. I mean they were literally a piece of your world. Now a total void would be there. Words would lose meaning. Another piece gone. Other things would obviously follow suit. A single person is absolutely meaningless. Literally there is no reason to live if you are the only one alive of your species. Unless you are immortal but no one is. Eventually your existence will end and it will be as if you never were there in the first place. So utterly pointless.
    @note Do you think somewhere in the recesses of your subconscious that you feel attached but some disassociated wall separates your consciousness from feeling it?

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  28. "unless I had a steady stream of books, or at least a television"

    you sir are a faggot of epic proportions. i hope you're not american, cos real americans drink beer, watch tv and fire guns all day. books are for homos and queers. this is a fact because i've never read one, and i'm not a homo.

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  29. @note

    Parents are typically the barrier between the child and death in child's mind. I get the feeling you started seeing your own mortality as you lose him. Your anxiousness is a sign of increasing awareness of your own death not his.

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  30. the reader's questions do not exactly follow from the story. the if part does not fit typical socio behavior either for a socio to start speculating its consequences.

    so, all scrambled posts to follow, yet note's self-revelation was remarkably interesting even for himself.

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  31. kesu,
    you ommit the h in 'where.' has happened at least three times in the past few days. what gives?

    i started feeling sorry for the h. so will start pugging one somewhere else to cover your deficit.

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  32. oops... plugging, i meant...

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  33. "Unless you are immortal but no one is."

    Wrong! Your ignorance is only matched by your arrogance. Why do you think so many people are so tormented? I've never yet been properly buried but I have endured more than 25 years in a grave beside a stranger. Please think before you type.

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  34. did you root them in the grave

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  35. The idiots seem to be running amok today.

    @Just hasking
    I type one handed a lot so I skip letters or reverse them often. I'm usually clicking around while doing it with the other hand. So I don't proofread.

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  36. "The idiots seem to be running amok today."


    You're one of them.

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  37. yo fool i aint no idyot. and u a retard wic why u cant spell and mss letters.

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  38. Kesu, if you ment when you talked about the Beta it' in "Acting the part(part 1)

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  39. Thank you tik. Hopefully the person who wanted to know will see that and be able to go back and look at it.

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  40. None of you are worthy of being my beta.

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  41. Anonymous Anonymous said...

    "Unless you are immortal but no one is."

    Wrong! Your ignorance is only matched by your arrogance. Why do you think so many people are so tormented? I've never yet been properly buried but I have endured more than 25 years in a grave beside a stranger. Please think before you type.

    April 14, 2011 10:46 AM

    Amen to that, except the part where you're still under the impression some of the "its" around here can think.

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  42. Food for thought? What happens when the beta executes the alpha and assumes the alpha's position?

    Is it bad to have you do all the work for me? You seem narc and ignorant enough for the job, but the whole time you had no idea it was you who were applying for me, did you?. Now, go into a psychopathic panic and kill your beta please.

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  43. I've contemplated letting loose his mortal coil before. But the old son of a bitch has a hell of a will to live. He should have been dead a year and a half back, but he keeps holding on. I can respect that will to live. I'm not going to compromise his life just so I get a chunk of change that I don't really need (but it would be nice!) He doesn't have much time left.

    I'm not worried about him, I'm worried about me. I really don't want to go to prison/get myself killed over some stupid shit because my mind and my body don't properly communicate, or at least give me a heads up that I'm about to lose my cool. A bloodlust can be a difficult thing to manage.

    I wonder if the trolls here really are as angry and stupid as they sound. I wonder whose buttons they actually push. You would think at a Sociopath blog that we'd have a higher caliber of trolling, but no =/ Such is life.

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  44. For M.E. "Am I crazy, or are the others crazy?"

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  45. Learn to use the expression "mortal coil".

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  46. tnp, you see sociopathic SW trolls aren't trolling because they are trolls as such, they just want instant reactions to their verbal abuse, so it's an impulsive spew rather than a thought up action from you're classic run of the mill troll. the antisocial troll sees the classic trolling as a waste of time (he is above such trolling) and he is bored so he wants to offend, quickly.

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  47. @Postmodern Sociopath: My sincerest apologies. I thought I was using it properly in this sense, as his daily burdens include almost unbearable pain and suffering, as well as being a bastard that no one likes :P But, I'm not a Shakespeare enthusiast, so I'll leave the details to you.

    @Troll Guide: If by antisocial trolls, you mean antisocial idiotic trolls, then we can agree. However, I have seen some heated debates and arguments from a few regulars here over simple insults like 'slut'. So I will give you that...

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  48. Regarding today's post.

    Topic; An alternate take on "Emptiness"

    "lack of self-definition contributes largely to the persistent feeling of "emptiness" that plagues sociopaths. One time i referred to it as always being aware of the abyss and people accused me of being dramatic, but i meant it in the literal sense -- a void, a vacuum of not just self or sense of self but of non-relativistic reality."

    Buddhism greatest contribution is their contemplations on emptiness. The Western tag on void is it represents some kind of hell. How about the void as the doorway to an ultimate freedom?

    The great Buddhists are/were probably wired for this, just as like many here.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emptiness

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  49. "However, I have seen some heated debates and arguments from a few regulars here over simple insults like 'slut'. So I will give you that..."

    Narcissistic supply.

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  50. When you say "I despise you, you are horribly evil" to a narcissist, it's like saying "I love and appreciate you" to an uber-empath.

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  51. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  52. I'll see what I can do, Soulfulpath. Ive been getting a lot of different advice from a lot of different types of folks, lately.

    I'll probably do what I always do and pick whatever hits home the best and go from there.

    Just like philosophy in general, a concept doesn't always work for everybody. That seems to be a recurring theme with folks like me ;)

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  53. do not take criticism well.

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  54. Okay, my two cents:

    I have actually been in the situations you mention, Reader. That is...

    I have been locked up with only one other person for company 23 and 1/2 hr a day over several months.

    And I've been locked up in solitary confinement for several years (not my own choice in any sense of the word, it was forced on me by the authorities).

    Since the situation with only one companion wasn't strictly limited to only him, and since I knew it would end within two years at the most, I'm not sure it really applies to your question.

    But in a way you can say I did have to relate in terms of behavior and personality. I always choose my personality for each situation and the individual/s I want to interact with, and in this case - since I was with him 24/7 - I stuck with pretty much one personality for a long time, but not until it was over.

    There's comes a point when you've established who is in power. And for me, once that is settled I can usually switch between many personalities, though it will still to some extent rely on the other individual what kind of personalities you create.

    I'll add that I believe this to some extent is the case also with neurotypicals/empaths. But obviously it goes beyond the normal with psychopaths.

    Then there's the solitary confinement situation. What can I say about it? I'm not sure if there is much to say. What kind of person was I? I don't know. I do know 'I' was there and that I had a sense of 'self' as opposed to 'others'. But I'm not sure what to say about a certain personality.

    I can relate to what M.E. says about it being relaxing sometimes to not have to focus so much on choosing the right kind of personality to express yourself as. I also take 'days off' for this very reason once in a while.

    Outside of a prison situation there quickly comes that restlessness and urge to go out and seek up people so that you can 'perform' a version of personality again.

    In solitary confinement I couldn't do that, and I remember a deep frustration setting in after a few days. Over the first month or so it grew and I was very close to having regular tantrums, like I did as a child when I didn't get my way and was hindered in my freedom of action.

    Somehow I was able to put 'myself on hold'. I honestly don't know how to explain it, and definitely not in relation to what 'personality' I had or if I had a 'true me' personality at all.

    I think perhaps I did what M.E. expresses:

    "My brain is like a stomach whose lining has a hole, it constantly needs stuff to process otherwise it starts eating itself, so to speak."

    Except I didn't go crazy. At some point I stopped 'eating at itself' and went on hold. But it did leave a kind of negative 'back hole' inside of me that's always there. It's an awareness, but not much else.

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  55. "My brain is like a stomach whose lining has a hole, it constantly needs stuff to process otherwise it starts eating itself, so to speak."

    Yes. When your brain takes a breather (and you're ready for this) and you want to have company, the person you choose is the person whom with you can let your hair down. They won't bother the shit out of you, they won't keep pulling on your pant leg like some needy fuck, they won't ask you to do anything taxing for them because they are emotionally self sufficient.

    Good Luck!

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  56. As far as I am concerned you are a weird if you don't want to kill your mate a little bit every day.

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  57. If you have a person like this and they don't ask anything from you wouldn't you just start using them like a tool or a function. Wouldn't they lose their excitment to you?

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  58. Man, Picachu, I don't understand why you haven't killed Ash yet. I hear that guy is a total prick, and you like, shoot lightning, little dude! Who would believe a cute little critter like you would do such a horrible thing...

    Surely, you don't look dangerous.

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  59. Postmodern Sociopath said...
    Learn to use the expression "mortal coil".

    April 14, 2011 12:50 PM

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  60. Soooo since no one wants to answer my question I will ask another, which Anon who's posted over the last week do you think is Madusa?

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  61. .
    When you say "I despise you, you are horribly evil" to a narcissist, it's like saying "I love and appreciate you" to an uber-empath.

    is this right?

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  62. It doesn't to the Narc I know, but their a female.
    Maybe that makes a difference.

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  63. Hello Fairy princess notme <3

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  64. hello Tik!

    long time no see!

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  65. I have been reading just not commenting much.

    Lot's of changes going on.

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  66. Butterflies all of you.

    With a impish grin.

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  67. Someone is obsessed with me, I see.

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  68. I have a silly {read: drunken} urge to comment on this post, but I think we all know what that response would be.

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  69. what is this, a mutual appreciation society for socially retarded faggots? wipe that impish grin off your speshal face, tik, or I'll replace it with a glasgow smile and fuck your pwecious fairy pwincess up the ass <3

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  70. shut the fuck up

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  71. why don't you shut the fuck up and piss off back to speshal town with your butterflies? sw is for people who don't need make believe bodyguards douche

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  72. I don't know who my Bodygaurd is but thanks, it good to know. Hope I can do the same for you.

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  73. Sociopaths are known to be good spellers. They have big DICKS and are very SPECIAL.

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