20 January 2010

Interview with a Misery Vampire: Part 1

"Misery Vampire" is I think, too charismatic a name for the people who exhibit behaviour that defines them as such.  Pointless Puke Sack or Worthless Shit Hound are much more apt names, but are not nearly as catchy and memorable, so I guess Misery Vampire will have to do.  If you’ve never heard this phrase before let me explain what it actually means.  A Misery Vampire is a person who for whatever reason thrives on the misery of others.  There are many reasons why a person might develop this type of personality and I by no means claim to understand or even know them all, but one thing is for sure… there is very little short of murder or becoming almost a complete recluse that can rid oneself of a Misery Vampire if one of them decides to latch their misery fangs into you.

There are possibly many people who fall into this category that I have known throughout my life, but most of them remained undetected.  My ex-wife I think might very well been a member of their ranks, although my judgment on that issue is a little clouded as you might expect.

It was only relatively recently that I actually encountered a full blown, stand up and be counted, card carrying member of their breed and recognised them for what they were.  However, over time I realised with great discomfort that this particular night crawler, this wretched, emotional leech of a person, had decided that it was I who would be a perfect supplier of woe and misery to provide them with their nourishment.

We'll call him Scott, (because that is his name).  Scott is one of the more common types of Misery Vampire that exists, because he lives “on-line”.  He spends inordinate amounts of time connected to the internet (far more than I do and that’s really saying something).  I guess he has a lot of free time, because he’s mostly unemployed (which does not surprise me in the slightest).  He has been doing some work part time here and there, but just the sheer number of hours he logs on the internet shows he has a lot of free time… more free time than can be filled with the nicer aspects of having free time, such as leisurely baths, getting plenty of sleep, watching old movies or massively long sessions of masturbation.  These pastimes are clearly not enough for the likes of Scott.  I can imagine that being unemployed and no doubt lonely for long periods of time could result in a situation where masturbation no longer holds the charm that it once did… a sorry state of affairs to be sure, but one I can see being possible.

So when one finds oneself in such a situation what then?  What is there left to fight back the waves of perpetual boredom?  If life has become so tedious and monotonous that a person fails to see that such free time could in fact be viewed as a gift from the gods in this modern age, and that such free time is in fact an great opportunity to explore almost any facet of oneself to the personal benefit of body, mind and soul… if one can't see that opportunity… then what?

Well this is, I think, the turning point at which Scott’s Misery Vampire gene became active.  I suspect a deep rooted subconscious voice buried under layers and layers of a tedious life and a pointless existence suddenly piped up and whispered in his inner ear something along the lines of…

“You know what…  you've got a pretty immense stock of frustration and disappointment welling up in here buddy you should do something about that.  I bet you could palm it off on someone else if you put your mind to it.  Yeah I bet annoying people to such an extent that they become emotionally unbalanced and lose control of themselves would be really entertaining too…  I mean emotionally you yourself are pretty fucked up as it is (not that you'd admit it), so how cool would it be to see if you could actually push someone else far enough and hard enough to the point where they get frustrated and miserable too… maybe even lose their temper… and I mean like REALLY lose their temper, even better if they can’t do a damned thing about it. I mean as long as you're safe, detached and out of their reach with no possible repercussions, who gives a shit if they actually explode into a murderous rage… in fact that would be about as cool as it could get… you'd be the master of emotion, the ruler or rage, the father of frustration… you could literally drive people insane with anger, fear, misery, hate… any emotion you choose.  You would be the god you've always suspected you could have been and they would be your shit puppet minions."

… or something like that.

And so the Misery Vampire is born within Scott’s mind, born of his own boredom, his own frustrations, his own failings, his own regrets and inner demons.  He loses a part of his humanity, he has changed in a way that only the constant interaction with the powerful and deceptively anonymous internet could have made possible.  He loses track of his true nature as someone who was (possibly) once a decent person and decides that he doesn’t give a god damn, flying fuck about how anyone else feels… nobody gives a damn about him so he figures it’s even.

Now let's get this straight, Scott is far from stupid (unhinged possibly, but stupid no), in fact he likes to think that he’s smarter than most of the people he knows online and for the most part he may even be right.  He knows his way around the internet (he’s been doing it for years after all).  He likes to spot the flaws in the social networks, something most people don’t even give a second thought to.  He finds loopholes and design flaws and then his active imagination comes up with interesting ways to use or exploit them… maybe for no good reason except because it is possible.  He understands that the big organizations like Facebook and Myspace have a lot of work on their hands dealing with literally tens of millions of account holders and the untold number of complaints that they must generate every day.  He knows that these social networks are now so large that they almost resemble digital dinosaurs, huge and powerful creatures who have unknowingly sacrificed something very important to gain their power and their size.  They have sacrificed their speed.  He is but one single smart man,  a tiny insignificant entity scurrying between the feet of the behemoths.  Darting out of their reach, reacting faster than they can.  Changing and altering on a whim, exploiting the weaknesses that they are obviously unaware of (or they wouldn't exist) while the monsters above have become slow and lumbering beasts, restrained by their processes and procedures, their priorities and profit driven politics.  As an individual he is almost invisible to the very powers that have given him the means to misbehave and misuse their systems.  He is a "non entity" to those that have provided him with the very tools to carry out his devious actions and spiteful play… he is safe from the monsters, he is safe to become his own kind of monster.

The Misery Vampire has found the fertile lands of the social networks… and in them, an almost endless supply of potential victims… a never ending food supply to satisfy his hunger.  His life of boredom is over, he now has purpose.  He now has drive, he's turned his existence around and he becomes very efficient at what he does, he fine tunes his weapons and skills to the point where he feels invulnerable to those fools who would ever dare to stand against him.

Now I must admit that the title of this blog entry is a little misleading.  There will be no interview with Scott, as I would never stoop to engaging in any form of conversation with him.  He is a parasite and so I would no rather wish to interview him than I would wish to interview a tape worm (a creature with which he has much in common).  It is more of a catalogue of events written to highlight the existence of such creatures as he and to warn you my dear reader to be wary of them.  Not only because of the changes they can make to your life (which are numerous) but more importantly because of the changes that you will make to yourself in an effort to defeat people like Scott if you decided to stand up to them.

I'm sure it would delight Scott to know how much trouble and pain he caused during his campaign against me.  I'm sure he would dance a little jig if he knew that he was personally responsible for raising my personal stress levels to a point where I had trouble sleeping at night.  I'm sure he would almost dislocate his jaw laughing with glee to know that for a time, he was the first thing to cross my mind when awaking and the last thing I thought about as I tried to get to sleep at night.  Should he ever discover this blog he might actually just explode with pride in his work… but I honestly don’t care anymore, because despite all the pleasure this would no doubt give him, I can rest assured that such shallow pleasures are probably the only ones he gets.  In fact I'm pretty confident that I've built up such a comprehensive profile of his personality and life that I may even find it within my heart to pity him a little (not a lot you understand… but a little).  Why?

Well you see to disrupt my life as much as he did, he had to have compiled a fair bit of information about me… he almost certainly had "a file" on me.  What he doesn't know, is that because he pushed me so far and like him I am no slouch when it comes to putting the internet to my uses… I also had my own file on him.  And what people like Scott never recognise is that if you piss enough people off for fun, one day you're going to piss someone off who's not gonna continue to just take on the chin like all the others.  One day you might just push too hard against the wrong victim, one day you just might create your very own Nemesis.  And although I'm sure he never realised it, that's exactly what happened when Scott pushed me just that little bit too far.

As I mentioned he no doubt had a file on me… but the file I ended up creating on him was so comprehensive and complete, that it included contact information and conversations with people very close to him… addresses, phone numbers, covert photographs and most importantly it included a list of people just like me, people who had become victims of this particular Misery Vampire.  I brought them together to share their knowledge and experiences… I networked.  


These people had been enraged, frustrated, distressed just like me, but until now they had been out there on their own.  People who had been desperate to get back at Scott if only they could, but who never previously had the ability to do so.  But I had brought them together… I had given them hope of revenge and closure.  I had shown them that no matter how intelligent and devious Scott was… he'd met his match.  And within this group of angry and now united people,  were a small core of very angry people, a core network that spanned the globe… a group who (without him ever knowing it), were very, very close to Scott… a network of people who made it perfectly clear that they were capable, prepared and ready on my word to move in… and kill him.

To be continued…