Trolling IRL

This was a pretty funny description of someone messing with people for the "puerile desire to get on other people’s nerves," as she describes it (I thought only sociopaths find pleasure in messing with people?).

She describes the game thusly:

All you do is stonily deny any knowledge of a person or cultural touchstone that you should, by virtue of your other cultural reference points, be aware of. These will of course be different for everyone, but my favorites include:

Žižek, John Updike, MORRISSEY (only for experts), Radiohead, Twin Peaks, David Lynch in general, Banksy (only for streetfighters), Withnail and I, Bauhaus (movement), Bauhaus (band), Afrika Burn, the expression “garbage person,” A Clockwork Orange, Steampunk (this one is really good), Jack Kerouac, “Gilmore Girls,” Woody Allen, the expression “grammar nerd,” the expression “grammar Nazi,” cocktails, bongs, magical realism, millennials, Cards Against Humanity, trance parties, bunting, many comedians, William Gibson, burlesque, the Beats, The God Delusion, sloths, anarchism, Joy Division, CrossFit, “The Mighty Boosh,” and Fight Club.

Find someone who is crazy about Morrissey, and pretend you have no idea who that is. It drives people nuts. I don’t know why, but it does. Just kidding, I know exactly why, because I myself have been on the receiving end of the Žižek Maneuver. This girl I had a bit of a crush on told me she had never watched “Twin Peaks,” and it damn near killed me. The reason I had a crush on her in the first place is because we liked so many of the same books, and movies, and music. How could she have never watched “Twin Peaks?” Was she messing with me? How? It did not for a second occur to me that she just hadn’t got round to it. My immediate response was to believe that she had deliberately not watched it in order to get on my nerves. When she told me later that of course she had watched “Twin Peaks,” my eye started twitching.

This is the beating heart of the Žižek Game: the disbelief that something you care about has failed to register on the consciousness of another. The agony of suspecting that someone has looked at Slavoj Žižek’s Wikipedia page and thought “I do not need to know about this man.”

But I thought the most insightful observation of playing this, or really any other game or interaction with another human being, is that you can never be afraid to look stupid:

Your success in this game depends on your ability to cope with people thinking you are dumb. This is so important. Adolescent conditioning—I grew up in a city with a strong surf/skate subculture of people who like to get extremely high—means that I am not only comfortable with people thinking I am dumb, I actually lean into it. I pretend I’ve never heard of Roman Polanski all the time. I do not falter, and neither must you. Your opponent must never have the satisfaction of looking down on you. When they begin to scoff and roll their eyes, because how could you have never heard of the Weimar Republic, you must simply smile and shrug your shoulders. If you look abashed, your opponent has won.

Too true. In the law, it's hilarious to me (and looks terrible to jurors) for lawyers or witnesses to work hard backpedaling on some point in order to save face or pretend like they know what's up. I don't know why we care so much what strangers think of us, but most people do. You absolutely can exploit this. And if you can gain all sorts of situational advantages by refusing to let other people's opinions change who you are, what you are doing, or what you believe about yourself or the world. They don't call it "confidence game" for nothing. Good luck!

It was a pleasure to burn

This was an interesting question posed in a recent comment:

I am wondering if a sociopath devoid of any narcissism and sadism could function at all in society. I would venture to say that perhaps a certain level of those traits is necessary to higher functioning sociopaths. What would be the motivation for them to get out of bed in the morning and interact with people in a manner that is engaged/engaging enough to keep them functioning in society? They have blunted emotional response to negative stimuli, so surely they need a bit of emotional response to positive stimuli (narcissism) or they need to get something out of affecting people in some way: either destructively (sadism) or constructively (back to narcissism) - Beware, tough, the constructive sociopath is probably out to get you :-) 

I actually am having problems conceptualizing a sociopath without any narcissism or sadism. Wouldn't his behavior be more akin to that of an autistic person then, uninterested in interaction with people? 

I realize I am oversimplifying things here, but I am very interested in any response, especially from Machiavellianempath and ME.

I've been thinking about this recently, particularly after coming across the novel Farenheit 451 again. I love Ray Bradbury, and this is a favorite of mine. The narrator of the story is a fireman, tasked with burning books, et al. in a dystopian oppressive regime. Although (spoiler alert) he eventually comes to see the folly of his ways, he still (and refreshingly) acknowledges with great candor the pleasures of his previous work:

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

I can also say with all candor that it was a pleasure to burn. Some of the worst things I have done in most people's eyes were great pleasure to me. That's why I did them. I understand that people wish that were not true, and I feel the same to an extent. I know some of my supporters wish that I was neither narcissistic or sadistic, but I suffer from both in varying degrees that flare up in different contexts. I don't feel like there is anything inherently wrong with these traits (as illustrated in the comment above) anymore than I feel like there is something wrong with deriving pleasure in destruction. It's more about how and the context in which they manifest themselves, right? And the particular standard of morality you adopt? And whether you are on the axis or the allied side? And whether you can control yourself or should know better or whether you embrace it or pretend otherwise or some other stuff? I don't know, I don't really understand it all, but I'm trying to also learn your perspective on these things, so thanks for being patient.

Why not prey on the weak?

I think it's a myth that sociopaths tend to prey on the very weak. I typically don't, at least. I don't have a categorical rule against preying on the weak, but unlike the mighty lion I just don't tend to go for the weakest wildebeest. And why is the lion always going after the weak? It must be because eating is more or less a chore for him. He must not get much additional pleasure in taking down a fast wildebeest and eating it then just settling for the slowest one. Eating's more or less a chore for me too. I also will not go out of my way to make eating more difficult than it needs to be -- for instance won't travel to the grocer in inclement weather. Not to say I don't enjoy eating or even sometimes the experience of eating/acquiring food, but like the lion I just don't see the point in making it harder than it is to achieve my endgame.

If the endgame in eating is largely consumption of calories, what is the endgame of interacting with people? It's not pure consumption, although that is certainly part of it. No matter how you describe "consumption" with regards to people, whether number of sexual partners or number of friends or people that love you or who would do anything for you, everyone has some level of standards. You don't want to consume just any person, you want to consume a particular type of person, a particular quality of person or for a particular reason. Consumption isn't just about numbers for anyone, including sociopaths. Yes, I could target more people if I only went after the weak, but I don't need to do so, nor do I want to do so. I don't see the point in mindlessly stacking up conquest after conquest, it just doesn't appeal to me. My endgame is not adding another name to my list of conquests, it's the process and pleasure of making the attempt.

In fact, if I see someone weak, I usually just ignore them. If I see someone emotionally limping along in front of me, most of the time I make like the Levite priest in the good Samaritan story and cross over to the other side of the street so I don't have to even look at them. I like my prey to be strong with a tragic flaw, like Achilles. My dream prey would take every ounce of mental strength, agility, and ingenuity to conquer. My dream prey would keep me up at night wondering how I was going to win. I would suffer setbacks and wonder if I would ever recover. I would experience small victories and feel the exhilaration of attaining some progress, however incrementally small. My dream prey would take everything out of me, and that would be the value of it -- all of me.

I wonder if lions ever hunt for pleasure. Other animals certainly seem to:

A story of exploits: love and marriage (part 2)

I replied:

I guess your wife is right, there are always "other" ways to go about doing things. I don't know if I would say "better," I actually think that what you did was masterful. If your wife is giving you a hard time about it, maybe spin it off as saying, "Look, this is just proof that I would honestly do anything for you. I know you're not planning on coming home with dead bodies in your trunk anytime soon, but I want you to know that if you did, I would be ok with it."

What do you think?

He said:

Since that incident my wife has come to terms with what I am.. or rather, what I am not. Someone who actually cares about the people around us, I say "us" because I do care about my wife.
She knows I don't process emotion "normally". I do love my wife, she knows the way I love is different from say, how her parents love each other or how the couple down the hall way loves each other. She seems to be ok with that kind of love because on the surface where everyone can see it, its the same.

Who's to say that a love fraught with logic and reasoning isn't just as good as what everyone else "feels" ? or whether or not its the same ? Maybe I process the "emotion" on a conscious level where in they process it subconsciously. I know what love is and how you're meant to act when you love someone I just don't "feel" love, for anyone. My wife is smart, attractive and very quick witted she serves a purpose, a barrier, she keeps me happy physically and together we are very fortunate financially, she makes me laugh and she "gets" me, up until that "incident" she had always understood me and made allowances for how I acted, the "incident" as we call it in our home was the first time she knew what I did was conscious thought not instinct which is what scared her I think, but now she has come to terms with that and is dare I say "impressed" with me.

I don't know though I do feel a niggling, like maybe she should be with someone who LOVES her in the true sense of the word. She is younger then me, and so much like me it's not funny, here's hoping she is either more like me then I know or learns to be like me maybe then I wont "feel" bad about keeping her.

I realize I rambled off the subject but though maybe you could use it for another topic ? Who is to say "we" as sociopaths are wrong in not feeling emotions as opposed to using logic and reasoning for a substitute?

A story of exploits: love and marriage (part 1)

Here is a fun story from a reader about his recent exploits:

Dear M.E,
I would like your view point on something that's recently happened on my side of the cage.

I have a "friend" of a friend of mine who on his bucks night decided to get a stripper, now that seems like the norm, not something I'm personally interested in, Anyways back to the story. On his bucks night after the stripper came to his house we moved on to the city to have a few more drinks and to see where the night took us, we ended up at another strip club....fun.

The groom to be proceeded to have coitis with said stripper. I said nothing I like to keep "information" because you never know.

From the strip club to another club we see my wife and her friends dancing away we meet up and have a drink together my wife and I go outside to chat and be "married" we come back in my buck/groom to be is gone, I ask around about the groom and he is said to be in the toilet with none other then my wife's friend, they are making woopie (cute term for what was actually going on). Once again I keep this to myself. We go to the wedding they wed they buy a new house its all happy days, till recently they wronged myself and my wife, I wont say how or why but none the less wronged. I put into action my plan.

THE PLAN - by ME(not you me)
Step 1.Don't let them know I'm upset, I like acting so this will be easy. Have lots of conversations about "adultery, cheating, infidelity". She is a paranoid person in general so making her think about these subjects will be easy as well.
Once these subjects take root in her mind we play the waiting game, I wait till Valentine's Day. I send her a bunch of flowers to the school she works at, then within the flowers is a note "your husband has committed adultery play the game and try and find out WHEN!"
My thoughts on this were as follows.
Flowers in front of her kids and fellow workers = Happy
+
Note that brings up a lot of topics shes already paranoid about = Sad
=
Confused

Happy + sad = Confused

Confused people make for an easy target, she will inevitably seek out someone to talk to about these "thoughts" she has been having, cue me, I can be very nice and helpful on hard to talk about subjects.
I will lead her to the "right" conclusion.

They had a BIG fight he admits something happened she forgives him we are all happy friends again.

One year passes, they get pregnant. time for step 2.

Step 2.
Month 1 and 2 - I have a new phone to play with, I start sending him random messages saying how I enjoyed myself so much with him.
He did as I thought played them off as a wrong number.

Month 3 and 4 - while around for barbeques and fun activities I started putting perfume into the air conditioner in their room. My wife has a great selection of perfumes she really has good taste I always compliment her on it.

Month 5 and 6 - myself and a mate start showing up every Friday night and Saturday night and taking him out with out making plans she comes home to an empty house, we take him to a strip club so he doesn't want to tell his wife where he has been, I tell him not to say anything because I don't wont my wife to know either, being as though he has already been in trouble with strippers we wouldn't want them to break up. She starts freaking out, but it seemed like she didn't want to say anything because of the baby.

Month 8 - I find some of my wife's lingerie and... well leave evidence on it.....I leave it in his Ute, wait a little to let it dry out etc. I start with the phone calls again and the messages. I send a note written in a woman's handwriting with the same perfume from month 3 and 4. I love how subtle a smell can be but how much power it can have at the same time its very exhilarating, the note says sorry. I send him another text that says I'm sorry I had to tell your wife I couldn't be the mistress anymore and that I accidently left some lingerie in his Ute.... his wife reads it and finds the lingerie - game over for them, they get divorced and she now has a baby by herself and they sell the house and are no longer happy. I win.


My wife has found out about this... from me, I think I wanted someone to know what I did maybe get some credit, but alas she is very.... upset that I have done something like this....I don't know I don't think I'm a sociopath in the basic sense of the word more so I just don't like being fucked over...anyways, what I was wondering is reading that do you think could I of approached it in any other way ? maybe a way that would get me in less trouble... I don't know.

Cheers.
some other me.

Flexing power

I thought this Hyperbole and a Half comic, "Menace," had hilarious parallels to the mind of a sociopath child (and even sociopath adults). My favorite insight on self-imposed limitations:

The dinosaur costume was the greatest thing that had ever happened to me. The previous Halloween, which was the first Halloween I could actually remember, my parents had dressed me as a giant crayon, and the whole experience had been really uncomfortable for me.

But being a dinosaur felt natural.

And powerful. 

The feeling had been slowly intensifying ever since I put the costume on that morning, and, as I stood there in the middle of the classroom, staring off into the distance in an unresponsive power trance, it finally hit critical mass.

I had to find some way to use it. Any way. Immediately.

The other children screamed and fled. The teacher chased me, yelling at me to stop. But I couldn't stop.  I was a mindless juggernaut, a puppet for forces far greater than myself. I had completely lost control of my body. 

All I knew was that being a dinosaur felt very different from being a person, and I was doing things that I had never even dreamed of doing before.


Of course, I had always had the ability to do these things — even as a person — but I didn't know that. I'd just assumed that I was unable.  As a dinosaur, I didn't have any of those assumptions.  It felt like I could do whatever I wanted without fear of repercussions.

The repercussions were also exactly the same as they were before I became a dinosaur.

I just experienced them differently. 

On why in order to fully feel our power, we often feel the urge to destroy or wreak havoc:

The thing about being an unstoppable force is that you can really only enjoy the experience of being one when you have something to bash yourself against. You need to have things trying to stop you so that you can get a better sense of how fast you are going as you smash through them. And whenever I was inside the dinosaur costume, that is the only thing I wanted to do.

On losing the power of the dinosaur costume:

I was infuriated at the injustice of it all. I had become quite dependent on the costume, and it felt like part of my humanity was being forcibly and maliciously stripped away.  I cursed my piddling human powers and their uselessness in the situation. If only I could put on the costume . . .  just one more time.

Seeing the good in the bad

I liked this reader comment on what it was like to be the victim of "ruining":

Calm down on the ruining part. My worldview was totally twisted two years ago by a socioblabath. After the initial shock I was recovering for months. I that I could never experience joy again. In my following psychological quest for answers I became aware of things I was obnoxious to before. Before the path crossed my yellow brick road, my main concern were my looks. I made myself up before an exam as if I was going to Fashion Week. Histrionic. Promiscuous. Superficial. Attention-craving. Self-centered. The only thing I like about my former self that I, even then, felt happiest when making others feel good about themselves and their lives. But I was so busy trying to be a Kim Kardashian, that I hardly took the time to do so. At 24 I was behaving like a deluded child. Then I was hypnotized and drained by that 'thing'. In hindsight, what really broke my heart is that I failed to charm him. I thought I was a bonus in his life. I thought he was lucky to have me be infatuated by him. But the only time he felt good with me was in the end. When I looked at him in pure shock for witnessing the manifestation of evil. You could tell he loved that. And now, two years later? I appreciate my friends and family as never before, I hardly wear make up and it looks like I'm graduating cum laude for my masters. Instead of plotting my new headtwirling look, I'm busy helping my retired neighbours get money from their insurance company for their sinking floor. What I'm trying to say is: because of that asshole I realized I was heading in the wrong direction. Ruined? 

Another along similar lines:

I second this. My life too was enhanced by a psychopath. At first I thought he was my ideal man - tall, dark, handsome, rich and charming. I soon found out he was a self-obsessed user. These days I know a thing or two about evaluating a person's character quickly.

I am happier and more joyful than I have ever been because I learned first-hand that all that glisters is not gold. I have re-aligned my values and my life is richer. Plus I can spot an asshole at a thousand paces. Wealth per se no longer impresses me. It's all been quite freeing. I wish I'd met him sooner.

And a sociopath's appreciation of being called out:

Having someone else call you out on your bullshit is beautiful too. The beauty lies in the display of ability and intelligence, whether it's my successful lie or the other person's successful perception of my lie. Seeing someone else be beautiful does not diminish my appreciation of its beauty.

Better off post-sociopath?

A reader writes about how he appreciated having sociopaths in his life, if for nothing else because they add excitement and color to life and brought out different aspects of his own personality:

I'm much better off for having sociopaths in my life at one time.  Have you ever read Jack Kerouac's "On the Road?"  Whether you have or haven't, I'll give you some context: JK, in my estimation was a very shy empath, hence the raging lifelong alcoholism.  He found himself drawn to Neil Cassady, a sociopath who probably had some bipolar disorder thrown in as well.  Cassady brought so much fun, spontaneity and wildness into Keroac's life that there literally would be no "On the Road" or Jack Kerouac if it weren't for Cassady. 

Anyway, in all honesty, I'm probably more like Keroac in temperament - a good bit more outgoing, but nonetheless, an introverted empath.  My best friend through much of my childhood and adulthood is the co-founder of a website that's a household name now.  To make a very long story short, he cut me out and threw me away when I was no longer convenient for him in the internet businesses, however I wouldn't trade the experiences and pain for anything.  It's the time in my life that's worth writing a book about (which I have), and if we're really all honest with each other, I would bet that its sociopaths that make life more interesting, and worth writing about in the first place.

By the way Ms. Thomas, I love your book.  I am now a practicing psychotherapist, a profession mostly populated by empaths, and your book provides the greatest insight into sociopaths of anything I've ever read, and I have a stack of books up to my chin about sociopathy.  

If you feel so inclined, I'd love to ask you some questions; I'll start with one: you said in your book that Mormons were some of the sweetest, most loving people you've ever met, or you said that about people at Brigham Young, I believe.  How do you as a sociopath react to sweet, kind people?  Do you see them as rich source for gain and opportunity, or do you enjoy the love you feel, or some combination of both?

My response:

I like sweet people as long as it comes from a genuine place. I think that most people who are self-actualized or able to see the big picture tend to be a little bit sweet and generous because they realize that life is short and there aren't really winners or losers (at least not in the rat race), so why not make friends with your seatmates. And a lot of Mormons are this way. It is like I said in the book -- Mormons believe that we are all spirit brothers and sisters and of course you're going to act more generously with your brothers and sisters than an enemy or non-relative, so there is generally a lot more social capital that I have with Mormons than other people.

But I guess to get more to the heart of your question, I like who I am around them. I'm really impressionable, like a chameleon, so when I'm around goodhearted Mormons, I'm more goodhearted myself. I'm also more willing to take risks and consequently I feel more effective, like I'm leveraging my assets in a way that is clearly making a difference in the lives around me. That makes me feel powerful. And I feel more in control of my own self when I am being that way, like it is my best self. It's one of the times when I feel most engaged in the world. Oddly one of the other times I feel most engaged with the world is when I'm playing a long con or mind game ("ruining people"). 

Worth the trouble

A lot of people wonder why anyone would be friends with a sociopath, or flat out assume that no one would want to be friends with a sociopath. The funny consequence to this mentality is that people assume that I must have no friends. The truth is that there are a lot of people who appreciate having me for a friend. I am not the type of person that they will come to if they just want a shoulder to cry on, but I am a great person to consult if there is a problem they want solved. I'm very good at coming up with workable strategies to help them accomplish whatever it is that they want. And I think a lot of my friends just appreciate my unique perspective, and even my amorality. I don't judge them, so they can be honest with me in a way that they can't really with most other people. People tell me a lot of secrets for that reason.

It's not even always the obviously positive or pro-social aspects of my personality that people are attracted to. I think sometimes they like the sort of negative or dangerous aspects of my personality -- the risk or excitement I bring to their life. Some of them are masochistic and like the pain. Some even like the ruining, perhaps because they want parts of them broken -- like breaking a jaw to reset it in better alignment. And I can see why too, so much of our personality is an accident of the way we were raised or the culture we were born into. Maybe we don't necessarily like those parts of ourselves and need a little help getting over them. You could see a therapist, or you could just enlist the help of your friendly neighborhood sociopath. That's why I found this recent email from a reader to be so interesting:

In high school I had a friend who was almost certainly a sociopath. He took pleasure in ruining people. I let him ruin me to a point. He tried to warn me in various ways. I paid no heed. But why not? I had something to gain by being 'ruined.' I was a painfully uptight young man. There were things I just wouldn't do. Under his influence, I did many of them and to my surprise, survived. He helped me with my scruples. (In Catholicism, 'scruples' refers to "An unfounded apprehension and consequently unwarranted fear that something is a sin which, as a matter of fact, is not.")  I'm much more relaxed now, though still basically uptight.

I'm drawn to sociopaths. They have something I need. The smart ones, the ones who don't end up in jail, have a delicate moral sense. They know where the lines are. They find my scruples amusing, as if to say "Oh you poor thing, that thing your afraid to do isn't a sin in anyone's book. Someone should let you out of your little cage."

I've often wondered why he tried to warn me. Wouldn't a totally evil person keep his bad intentions to himself? Yes. So again, why the warnings? Mainly, he wanted to be understood. Everyone needs to be understood. In my opinion, the effort to understand a sociopath, though fraught, is worth the trouble many times over.

When I read that, I thought maybe the sociopath respected his friend enough to get a sort of informed consent? Or found the friendship worth enough that he didn't want to necessarily lose the friend by making him a target, so wanted to make sure that the friend was at least aware of what was going to happen? What do people think?