By Diana Holbourn
Becky and Other Students Discuss Psychopaths, Wife Beaters, Lead Poisoning Scandals and Other Depressing Things, but Also Have a Laugh
Book four of the online Becky Bexley series. Chapter 1.
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
Becky often spent time with her student friends at weekends, going into the university especially to be with them, since she enjoyed their company so much. They would often talk for hours in the quietest student bar, or outside when the weather was warm enough.
One Saturday they started another long conversation, where not long after they first sat down and started chatting, one of them said, "I was on an Internet forum I recently started posting on the other day, and someone said she liked me, which was a nice surprise. But then a man who, for some reason - probably only known to himself - has the username Atheistic Tyrant, said, 'And yet I still don't bother reading what she writes.'
"I joked, 'That's good. It means I can say what I want about him and he won't know. So let me tell you a secret about his real identity: He is, in fact, ... Gordon brown! He likes to come here to relax after a day's work at the office, ... since his prime ministerial office can be a bit stressful for him sometimes, probably because of all the criticism he gets. But I think he might deserve a bit more. So now you know who he is, you can call him to account for the terrible things he might have done. Say things to him like, 'Did you support Tony Blair when he dragged Britain into the Iraq War? If you did, how could you do such a heartless thing, or just stand by and let it happen? Call yourself a man of principle? If you do call yourself that, you're a raving hypocrite, and you don't deserve to be here polluting the forum. Get out!'
"I said, 'You don't have to tell him you know he's Gordon Brown. Just say those things using his username on here.'
"No one did that. It could have been a laugh if they had.
"One of the others on the forum asked Atheistic Tyrant if he was really right to refer to me as 'she', probably since I don't come across as stereotypically feminine on there, because I've got into some combative arguments. I joked, 'I thought everyone knew I'm a she by now. ... Well, except in the winter, when I turn into an indeterminate hibernating blob.'
"Actually, telling you some of that reminds me: I read a funny news story about how a note with instructions for the real Gordon Brown's make-up routine was accidentally left in a taxi by one of his staff. It said:
"'1. transparent brush. foam all over.
2. Small pot under eyes. dimple, creases, blended.
3. Clinique. super balanced make-up, all over again like painting a wall, and ears. shut eyes over lids then with make-up pad smooth over liquid.
4. powder (dark brush) terracotta gurlain, all over.'"
The students laughed. But soon after that, the conversation got serious, as one said, "You know we were talking about tyrannical dictators not long ago? I don't understand why it seems that people with psychopathic tendencies seem to make it to the top in politics so often - I mean, I might be wrong, but it just seems to me that quite a lot of the world's leaders are a bit psychopathic, - you know, with the way they start wars, and make their own people suffer if they criticise them, and that kind of thing. I read that quite a few American presidents have had psychopathic traits."
Another student said, "Things might not be that bad. I mean, think about the percentage of the world that's at peace at the moment versus the percentage that's at war. You don't hear about all that many wars going on in the world at the moment. I don't know about the percentage of political leaders who try to intimidate people who criticise them though, or the percentage that abuse their people in other ways. And I'm sure that when psychopaths do get into power, some really bad things can happen."
Another one of the group said, "A fair number of political leaders around the world do seem to be oppressive towards their people and opposition leaders who criticise them, from what I've heard. And even in this country, we can be surprised sometimes by our leaders wanting to drag us into war, like in Iraq not long ago. I did read that people with more psychopathic tendencies than the average person can be attracted to politics a lot of the time, and often make it to the top. Not that I would accuse any one person of being a psychopath; it would be difficult to know, unless they did some really obviously outrageous things, like starting a war for a reason that was clearly unjustified, or keeping chopped-off heads in their fridge, like I've heard one president of Uganda did in the 1970s. I'm not sure if that's true.
"But psychopaths reaching the top in politics is something I've been thinking about myself. And I don't suppose this is the whole explanation for why they might have a better-than-average success rate at getting into powerful positions, but think about it:
"Who's likely to be more motivated to do what it takes to get to the top in politics, someone who really wants to help people and do good for the country, who thinks about things carefully and tries to understand other people's points of view, who really hopes to do some good but is always wary of making mistakes, because they realise they don't know everything and can't predict the future, so they think they need to be cautious about making big decisions, so it takes them a while to make them and speak up for them, or someone who thinks they're going to get a great big thrill from having power over other people, who gets excited at the thought that the more powerful they get, the more they might attract girls to sleep with them, and be able to boss people around, and get lots of money and fame and attention, and watch people having to do what they tell them, and who enjoys the challenge of manipulating people into doing what they want?
"It's going to be the one who thinks they'll get a great big thrill from it, isn't it, because they'll be more confident about doing what they do, and more motivated to do what they can to get as much power as they can, like making efforts to be as persuasive as they can be that they know what they're doing. And if they want power so much, They won't hesitate to try and discredit anyone who tries to stand in their way, so as to try to make them less popular.
"Someone like that's more likely to be a bit of a psycho than someone who cares about other people and goes into politics to try to help them. And some people get a big thrill from taking risks, when more caring people try to avoid risks if they think there's a chance that people might get hurt if they take them. And people with grandiose ideas about their own importance and greatness, who are over-confident in their abilities, like narcissists, who tend to have at least some psychopathic traits, are likely to feel way more entitled to push their way to the top and to want power and influence than a lot of other people will; and they're the kinds of people who are likely to seek glory for themselves by dragging their countries into wars they're over-confident they can win, and things like that."
One of the group said, "Political leaders in this country don't normally seem to be that nasty though. And I've listened to a couple of politicians for a few minutes on the Parliamentary Channel once or twice, and the ones I've heard haven't sounded like raving psychos or anything; I don't know how representative they are of all of them, but they've sounded as if they've been having a sensible debate about problems; you know, they've sounded like people you could trust to know what they were talking about and to try to make sure some good things get done. They sounded genuinely concerned about some problems they were talking about.
"Another thing is: Even if a psychopath went into politics thinking getting to the top was going to be a big thrill, with the amount of time politicians have to spend in long debates, and listening to people's problems, and also having to listen to advisors telling them things about schemes they're enthusiastic about that they might not want to hear, you'd have thought psychopaths would soon realise it wasn't going to be as much fun as they thought, and leave to do something more exciting."
The student with the theory about why psychopaths might make it to the top in politics more often than other people said, "Oh yes, I'm not saying I think all politicians are raving psychos, or anything like that. Full-blown psychopaths are only a very small percentage of the population anyway, so it would be unlikely. I'm just saying that one explanation for why so many world leaders seem to be a bit psychopathic is that people who are all motivated by the thrill and other benefits they think they'll get from taking big risks and getting power will probably be more motivated to try to get to the top than other people will be. And politics in some other countries might not be like it is here, so it might be more appealing to them. Anyway, politicians in this country can probably always sleep through debates in parliament and other meetings, or just not turn up for them, so psychopaths won't necessarily have to endure them. And working to help people could just be a manipulative technique to gain popularity for some of them.
"And when you think that psychopaths are often charming and good at persuading people of things, like good salesmen are, and they can be ruthless with people they think of as rivals so as to try to make sure they get the power instead of the other people, such as by doing everything they can to discredit them, then it's understandable that they might be more likely to succeed at getting to the top, and more likely to drag their countries into war than other people would be, because they think being ruthless is acceptable, and they like taking risks and grabbing the chance to get more power or influence, and they can think of winning wars as a way to get glory for themselves."
One of the group said, "Maybe how successful they are at dragging their countries into war will depend on how many of them there are, because the more people there are with attitudes like that at the top in a government, the less likely they'll be to be opposed by a lot of other senior people in government when they want to make decisions like that, because there'll be a smaller percentage of people with opposing views. That might at least apply in democratic countries, where people with opposing views can feel free to have a say, instead of being afraid to speak their minds in case they're dragged off by military police or something.
"I think people who want to stand for parliament should always be tested for psychopathy. Actually, I think it would be good if that could happen to everyone who wanted to be a politician, all over the world, ideally! ... Mind you, people can be horrible and unscrupulous without being psychopaths, so I'm not sure how many nasty people it would really weed out. But I think it would probably at least go some way to reducing the number of warmongers in politics, so the world would be a safer place for everyone. Not that I think that would actually be possible, because psychopaths who are in power wouldn't want to bring a law like that in. And it would be even less likely where countries are run by dictators who are psychopaths, where a parliament would have no chance to vote on such a thing.
"But I read that there actually is a test for psychopathy. Actually, there's more than one. I was reading about this man who's studied psychopaths for years. I think we'll probably be learning about him on the course soon. I don't know if you've heard of him - his name's Robert Hare.
"He says he once did a test on volunteers in prison, some of whom were diagnosed psychopaths, and some of whom weren't, to see if the brain activity of the psychopaths was the same as other people's. Groups of letters were continually flashed up in front of them for a while, some of which were nonsense, but some were real words. The volunteers were asked to press a button when they recognised a real word, while the tester measured their brain activity and how quick they were to press the button after each word. It turned out that the volunteers who weren't psychopaths pressed it more quickly when words that gave them a slight emotional shock came up, like 'rape' and 'cancer', than they did after the nonsense words or words that wouldn't likely stir any emotions, like the word 'tree'; and the jolt of emotion could actually be measured in their brains; but for the psychopaths, there was no difference when a word like rape was flashed up and when a nonsense word was, as if words like rape just didn't bother them at all.
"So that might be one possible psychopath test. Another one was devised by this Robert Hare bloke, and it's given not to the psychopaths themselves, but to people who know them, like their work colleagues. It's a questionnaire called the Scan-B, and it asks them all about the suspected psychopaths' behaviour. It's not given to the people being tested for psychopathy themselves, because they can't necessarily be trusted to be honest, since psychopaths often lie. ... I suppose the work colleagues of someone being tested might lie a lot too; but it seems that's the chance the testers are willing to take. Anyway, it's not just the opinions of the people who know the people being tested that determine the results, since after all, work colleagues with a grudge against them could say unfair things about them; but other things are investigated as well, like any court reports that exist about them, and any opinions of psychiatrists who've interviewed them.
"The tests measure how much people have the character traits of psychopaths, such as being charming on the surface and good at talking their way out of things, and callous, with no true empathy for other people. It seems from what I've read that psychopaths tend to think a huge amount of themselves, and have shallow emotions. They don't feel remorse or guilt, although they can pretend to; and they're impulsive and irresponsible, doing things without thought to the consequences, like cheating on their partners, or having a lot of unprotected sex with strangers, not being concerned about whether they'll get pregnant. They're good at conning and manipulating people, and lie a lot without hesitation, because they won't have any qualms of conscience about doing things like that, and will likely get a buzz from it.
"I read that a lot of violent offenders like wife beaters have psychopathic traits; but if they don't score highly enough on the test to be classified as psychopaths, they'll likely still score a lot higher than most people would.
"People are given a score of between zero and about forty, I think. If they score over thirty, they're classed as violent psychopaths who might well be the type who'd want to be serial killers, or who actually are. But Most people score about five.
"But people who score between about twenty-two and thirty can be classified as subclinical psychopaths. They won't necessarily be violent, but they might do a lot of damage to people around them, by, say, often cheating on their wives or husbands, or being the bosses of companies that put profits way before safety, so they can yell at their workers a lot, or make them work in conditions that might be hazardous, because making improvements to safety standards would cut their profits, or they can be warmongering politicians, and that kind of thing. It's those kinds of psychopaths that this Scan-B test is designed to detect, so it'll be possible to weed them out before they can do damage. They're better at planning how to get away with what they want to do than full-blown psychopaths who tend to act immediately on impulse are."
One student said, "Yes. I myself read that full-blown psychopaths find it more difficult to plan things and are more reckless and impulsive than subclinical psychopaths are, as well as being more violent, so they're less likely to be able to make successes of their lives, partly because they'll likely be spending quite a high percentage of them mouldering in prison, ... or whatever people in prison have to spend their lives doing.
"I read that there have been brain scans on psychopaths that have shown that they've got less grey matter in the parts of their brains that process emotions than the average person has. I think grey matter's made up of various kinds of brain cells, some of which help people be thoughtful and think about the consequences of the actions they feel like taking. So because they've got less of it, it's harder for psychopaths to control their urges to do things than it is for most people.
"So, say someone really annoyed you and you thought it would be good if they were killed because they were just so annoying, maybe a psychopath would take that idea further than most people would, and actually decide to murder them. But I think the higher they score on the psychopathic scale, the less meticulously they'd be able to plan the murder so as to leave as few clues to their identity as possible at the scene, so the more likely they would be to leave more of them that the police could pick up on, so they'd be caught more easily. ... Well, maybe not all the time. They might know to do some things that wouldn't take much planning, that would be simple to do, but that might eliminate a lot of clues that it was them who committed the crime. I mean, you do hear about serial killers that the police take years and years to catch; so some of them must still be pretty good at hiding their tracks.
"But when it comes to motives, I think serial killers often don't just kill people who annoy them, but people they might not even know, but who just happen to be in a group they've got a grudge against, like if they've developed a hatred of women because a few women rejected their sexual advances, and they hated that, so they decided all women needed to suffer for it or something.
"But anyway, I can't be quite sure about this, but I've read that the part of the brain that most people use when they're trying to control their impulses to do just whatever they feel like doing, which partly works by giving them pangs of conscience, is actually the same part that helps people plan and make decisions, and there are more connections in the brains of psychopaths between that bit and the bit that makes people feel good when they do things they want to do, or when they think about doing them, than there are in other people; so the decision-making part might get more influenced by pleasure signals coming from that bit than most people's would be, so they're more likely to make the decision to give in to the temptation to do them; and because the bit where the conscience normally is is impaired, psychopaths might get more pleasure out of doing just what they feel like doing than most people would. So that'll be an incentive for them to do more of it. So if they enjoy hurting people, they'll feel like doing it more.
"I actually heard that judges can sometimes give psychopaths more lenient sentences because their brains are wired in a faulty way. But what if with at least some of them, the over-connections between the reward and the decision-making centres have grown the more crimes they've committed, rather than being always there, so enjoying their crimes has made more connections in their brains between the reward-giving parts and the decision-making parts, and that's at least partly why there are more of them?
"You know the saying, 'Use it or lose it'. You know, if you don't practise something, you get worse at it over time. Well that's probably mostly because you forget how to do it so well; but maybe it's partly because if you're not using the connections between one part of your brain and another one that both help you do things like it, like the one that gives you the ability to do it and the one that makes doing it feel rewarding, so you want to do it more, maybe the brain can decide it doesn't need them any more, so it gets rid of them. I'm not sure, but I think something like that can sometimes happen; and I think the opposite can happen too: The more you like doing something, and the more you do it, the more connections grow in your brain to help you.
"I read an article about meditation, that said that the more people meditate, the more they can develop connections in their brains between the amygdala that controls stress levels, and the part of the brain where people make decisions and think. So maybe what's happening is that the part of the brain that helps people be thoughtful gets more used to telling the part that triggers off feelings of stress that it doesn't need to worry so much because things aren't as bad as they might seem, and that's what increases the brain connections between the two parts. I don't know about that. I suppose it could sometimes mean that meditation's stressful after a while because the brain can't cope with not being used to think of much for a long time, and then the people meditating develop more connections in their brains that are pushing the decision-making parts to decide to stop meditating. I don't know.
"But maybe that can show what kinds of things can happen. Maybe the more often psychopaths enjoy committing crimes, the more connections will grow in their brains between the reward-giving parts of their brains and the parts where they make the decisions to commit them, so the more pleasure they feel when they commit them, and the more easily they'll give into the temptation to commit them, making the decision to just go ahead.
"The part of their brains that give most people a conscience might have been damaged, but just having a damaged conscience in itself wouldn't lead to people committing the horrendous crimes some psychopaths commit, I wouldn't have thought.
"And even if their lawyers think they might be growing more brain connections the more they enjoy committing their crimes, instead of their abnormal brain connections being the reason they commit them, they probably won't say anything, because defence lawyers aren't paid to find out what's really the truth, but to do everything they can to persuade the jury to find their clients not guilty. So they probably wouldn't mention that they're wondering about that. So a lot of judges might think that if the psychopaths just can't help themselves, they don't deserve such long sentences.
"But it's probably never as simple as them just not being able to help themselves. I once heard someone on the radio say he'd heard quite a few wife beaters say they do it because they lose their tempers and just can't control themselves; but he's asked them if they'd ever hit their boss, and they're shocked by the idea and say they'd never do that. So he said that proves that if they want to control themselves, they can, since they must get provoked when their bosses shout at them, but if they can resist hitting them, because they know they'd lose their jobs if they did, then it doesn't make sense that they couldn't resist hitting their wives if they wanted to.
"So even if you haven't got a conscience because of brain damage and you get more pleasure out of committing crime than most people would, so it's more difficult to resist the temptation, that doesn't necessarily mean you don't deserve to be punished as much as other people do, who probably have their own reasons for committing their crimes anyway that could justify shorter sentences if the judges really thought about it, like having family members who got them into crime instead of teaching them right from wrong. All kinds of things could justify shorter sentences.
"But prison sentences aren't just for punishment; people are also locked away because the public need protecting. So giving serious criminals shorter sentences sounds dangerous! And it's not as if psychopaths don't know what they're doing, such as business owners who put a lot of thought into covering up evidence that workers or customers might be being harmed by harmful chemicals they're using in their products, or criminals who plan their crimes.
"mind you, some of them will be better at doing those things than others, especially if they're subclinical psychopaths."
The student who'd been talking carried on, "I learned some horrible things in history at school about companies that ran factories in Victorian times, where safety standards were so terrible that lots of people ended up badly injured, like even having to have legs amputated - before anaesthetics were invented as well, - and that kind of thing, because there were so many accidents because of machines that didn't have safety guards, and for other reasons like that. Or they were working with chemicals that were known to be dangerous, killing people horribly after they'd spent some of their working lives breathing them in; and children worked there too, for long hours every day, because their parents weren't paid high enough wages to make a decent living without their kids being employed too; but nothing was done to try to make conditions better, until some hero politicians spent literally years trying to persuade other politicians to make laws that said safety standards had to be better.
"I think it's pretty sick that it often took that long! But I think a lot of the politicians who didn't want things changed had financial interests in those businesses, because they were shareholders, so they got part of the profits, or they didn't want things changed for other reasons- maybe they were sometimes friends of the bosses of those companies, or had other jobs helping to run them; and improving safety standards would cost money, so those companies' profits would go down a bit if new safety laws came in, so they might not have been able to take home quite so much money themselves. And I think some company bosses would send people to try and persuade parliament not to change anything.
"And maybe sometimes, some politicians didn't want people in the same class as them to stop voting for them, and any politician who voted for the changes would risk losing the votes of company bosses who had to spend money improving things. The kinds of people who worked in factories with bad working conditions didn't have the vote themselves in those days. You know, you hear about women having a lot of difficulty getting the vote; but until fairly late into the 19th century, I don't think most men had it either; I think only rich people did!
"You might think it should have been easy for workers to just change their employers if they had bad ones; but I think so many employers were bad that it was difficult, and they didn't have a welfare state in those days, so leaving a job might mean starving!
"Those bosses who ran companies that had really bad safety standards might not have been psychopaths; but if they weren't, goodness knows how they slept at night, when they must have known what was going on!
"I think conditions might be just as bad today in some parts of the world, with children working in dangerous places as well as adults.
"And I think you get things happening like people who've been high up in the management of some arms companies leaving those and becoming politicians, and then persuading other politicians that a really good thing to do would be to spend loads and loads of money investing in new weapons systems made by those companies, or to make trade deals with countries where they can sell lots of arms to them, even though those countries have got a reputation for getting involved in wars where a lot of civilians get killed, and that kind of thing.
"I mean, I'm not saying I think everyone who does that kind of thing is a psychopath. Maybe the majority aren't. I think in prisons, there's a much higher percentage of psychopaths than in the general population. Mind you, you'd expect that."
One of the students said, "This is a heavy conversation! I think I need to go and get a hefty can of coke and a cake to fortify myself against the depression it might cause!"
They all decided to get some food and drink before carrying on the discussion.
When they'd sat down to eat, one of them smiled and said, "I wonder how many of us are eating cake for therapeutic purposes here, to console ourselves after hearing depressing stuff. We always seem to be getting some after hearing depressing things. Maybe we're all fatter than we were when we came to university, just because of that.
"Mind you, talking of eating cake for consolation, I had a funny conversation on an Internet forum with a man I'll call Spider Sneezer, where I joked about doing that. He said something I didn't like one day, and I teased him. Instead of reacting, he just seemed to go quiet, which was unusual for him. I joked, 'Poor Spider Sneezer. It seems he was so shocked by something I said that he's disappeared. OK, sorry Spider Sneezer. I didn't mean what I said seriously, or all the things I could have said to tease you but didn't, like a joke I could have thought up if I'd tried about your nose, and how I could have thought of calling you a barnacle on the face of the forum if it had occurred to me to do that.
"'Oh well, I'm disappearing myself now. So shocked am I by my appalling behaviour that I need to go and ... well, eat a nice cream cake or something to recover.'
"Then Spider Sneezer said something, and I joked, 'Oh, now he's back. Now I have a dilemma. Do I stay and forego that nice cream cake I promised myself, or do I stay? I mean go.'
"Spider Sneezer joked, 'Please don't let it kill you though. We could have a make-up session instead. I'll hire a make-up artist specially. Then we can get ready for when the curtains go up on a story I'm about to write here.'
"He sometimes wrote stories on the board where the forum members were characters in them.
"He said he'd be insulting other forum members in it rather than me, and I teased him that I hoped it would be a fun story, although it was possible it might be something I could make fun of instead.
"Then he seemed to go quiet again for a little while, and I joked, 'Oh no, he's walked out again! OK, sorry again, Spider Sneezer. ... Perhaps I'll go and have that cream cake to recover from my distress at my appalling behaviour after all!'
"Then he said something else, and I joked, 'Oh no, he's back again! I'm getting annoyed with him for standing in the way of that cream cake I want now!'
"Then I said, 'Oh it's allright, he's gone again. Now I can go and get it.'
"A little bit later I joked, 'Good. Got it! In fact, I took the liberty of getting two! This will be a great reward ... I mean consolation, for my bad behaviour earlier. If the rewards are going to be this good, perhaps I should pick on Spider Sneezer more. ... Ah whoops, that was a horrible thing to say. I think another cream cake is in order now, as more consolation for my bad behaviour!'
"I didn't really eat any cream cakes. Mind you, that's a thought - imagine if eating cakes was an official therapy, so someone could go to the doctor and say they were feeling a bit down, and the doctor might say, 'You probably just need to do a bit of comfort eating. I'll prescribe you a big cake!'
"Or imagine if someone could go to a psychologist, and instead of being given therapy, they could be advised to eat cake twice a week for the next few months to cheer them up."
The students giggled, and one remarked, "Doctors would soon be treating more people for obesity because of all the cake they've prescribed them!"
Soon after that, the conversation got serious again, as one of them said, "You know we were talking before about how some company bosses have seemed to be a bit psychopathic, not caring about their workers and putting them in harm's way? I've heard about bad things that have happened fairly recently where companies have put profits way above people's well-being. I heard that there were companies selling lead paint for years and years that knew full well it was dangerous. I think the dangers of lead were even known as early as Roman times. Possibly before. But at least one of those companies increased their sales a lot by making the packaging appealing to children, and giving out colouring books to children that made the paint look cheerful and enticing, with the intention of getting them to plead with their parents to get some to paint their houses with to make them look nicer.
"About half the paint mixture consisted of lead, or in some cases even more. But it might not have been declared as an ingredient on the label, I'm not sure. It created dust that would float around people's homes, so people would be breathing it in, or get it on themselves, especially while the painting was going on, or when the paint deteriorated, or if it was being replaced with other paint by companies and not enough precautions were taken to prevent residue from old paint from dispersing around the place when it was removed. I'm not sure what precautions need to be taken to prevent that. People could often get it on their hands and then eat something, and swallow the dust along with their food. And lead has a sweet taste, so some children would want to lick the walls of their houses because they enjoyed the flavour, or pick up flakes of old lead paint that was falling off the walls and eat them.
"Companies would put lead in paint because it made it look prettier because it gave it nice colours, and also because it made it dry more quickly, and because it could make it look fresh for longer and protect against moisture eventually corroding what it was on, such as when it was put on garden gates and pipes outside the home that would be rained on, or things that would need to be washed sometimes, like toys. Another danger for little children was that a lot of them suck their toys; so they were also ingesting lead that way.
"Lead's so toxic it can cause brain damage. High doses can even kill people. But lower doses can lower IQ levels. And it can damage the kidneys and other organs, and cause ADHD and sometimes aggression in children, some of them when they've been exposed to it in the womb. It's even thought that violent crime could have increased because it made some people who were exposed to it as they were developing more impulsive and aggressive. High doses can make it harder for people to learn to read and write, and give them balance problems, among other things.
"There were alternative substances that could have been used in paint instead of lead; but it took a while for ones to be developed that had all the beneficial properties of lead paint and were just as effective, such as being as moisture-resistant as lead paint, so they'd last as long on the outside of houses.
"Lawsuits have been taken out against companies that sold the lead paint, and lots of money's been won that's gone towards removing lead paint in people's homes. But there's still a lot left.
"In America in 1991, attempts were made to get the government to pay to have the lead paint in some houses in poor neighbourhoods where most of it was removed, which could at the same time have created jobs there by employing people there to remove it, which would have been good because there was high unemployment there. The government could have benefited from doing that, because the new workers would also have got to pay taxes, so the government would have got some of the money they put into the scheme back. But the government wasn't interested, I think partly because the government in power at the time had an ideology that governments shouldn't interfere in people's lives any more than they have to. (I think that's especially when it comes to allowing businesses to be free to make a profit the best way they see fit.) And it was partly because it would have cost a lot.
"It took a lot of research about just how much lead children were ingesting and the effects it was having on them before governments could be persuaded to do something about it, like banning the sale of any more lead paint.
"I read that in the 1920s, companies even set up a group to campaign against government legislation that would have limited or banned the use of lead paint, and even legislation that would have required them to put warning labels on cans of it. and the group was also set up to find ways of improving the image of companies selling lead paint, and to block the use of safer replacements for lead in paint, since they were making so much profit from it. But it seems that where there've been laws limiting the sale of lead paint, alternatives have been developed more quickly.
"The lead paint industry had a lot of success at discouraging the authorities from bringing in bans on lead paint, and getting them to repeal them when they were brought in. And it got them to water down the wording they wanted them to put on the warning labels on cans of it. It was some time before successful bans began to be introduced.
"And I read that some propaganda put out by some companies selling lead paint even blamed parents for their children's lead poisoning problems, saying it was their fault for not preventing them from sucking toys painted with it and putting their fingers in their mouths, and even that the reason the children were getting poisoned was that they had a disease that gave them an unnatural compulsion to put inappropriate things in their mouths. But lots of little children like to do that really.
"They threatened lawsuits against television channels that were making programmes about the dangers of lead paint, even though they knew how dangerous it really is.
"Children are still getting lead poisoning in some areas even now, because although lead paint was banned in about 1980, a lot of older houses, especially in poor neighbourhoods, still have lead paint on the walls, and some toys are imported from countries where they don't have such strict rules about lead paint. And there's still lead in the soil around some houses from the dust it produced, and around school playgrounds where it was once put on playground equipment.
"Part of the reason for lead being in the soil is because of the lead that came out of car exhausts when it used to be in petrol though. It's believed that lead in petrol harmed people a lot too. It was introduced in the 1920s because it made engines more powerful and protected them from certain kinds of damage. There were harmless alternatives that could have been used, that were known about at the time, but some were more expensive, or said to be less effective. And there was talk of how a lot more profit could be made if fuel producers could invent their own solution rather than having to pay other people a huge amount so they could buy all the alternative substance they would need for all the petrol they were likely to sell. One alternative was ethanol, which could be made from distilling grain, and it was possible that people could make it themselves instead of using petrol. Oil companies didn't want that, because it would have prevented them from selling so much oil to be made into petrol.
"The manufacturers of leaded petrol disregarded the dangers of putting lead in it, even though quite a few men in their factories got ill, and some even died from the amount of lead they were taking in, and the companies were criticised by doctors and public health experts. The companies paid some scientists and funded their own studies that were biased in their favour, that made misleading claims about lead in petrol being harmless to the public; and they tried to discredit scientists and doctors who were trying to alert people to the dangers. Bans on leaded petrol were brought in at first in a few places; but the companies managed to persuade the authorities to repeal them.
"It seems lead in petrol was eventually replaced with ethanol, which could have been put in it in the first place.
"That's the kind of thing that can happen when companies put profits way above safety."
One of the students said, "I've heard things like that. It shows how you really do need good governments to make laws against companies doing things like putting profits so far above the safety of their customers that they're even willing to sell them things that do them harm to make money."
After a slight pause in the conversation, another student said, "Talking of being poisoned, I was thinking the other day: You hear about people who are interested in space travel getting excited about the possibility of finding water on Mars. But even if they did, it wouldn't necessarily be safe to drink. Imagine if they found a load, so they thought that would make Mars easier to live on, and some astronauts spent months and months travelling there in a spaceship after years of planning, and then they drank some of the water there, and it turned out to be poisonous, so after all that, they just died."
Another one of the group said, "NASA's probably thought of that. I expect they'd do tests on it first. Well, hopefully.
"Hey imagine if the astronauts who went to the moon discovered that it really is made of green cheese, like the old joke says. Imagine if instead of bringing moon rock to earth, they'd brought chunks of ancient cheese back here. I wonder if anyone would dare eat any of it. You'd hear news reports that said things like, 'This cheese is thought to be well over a billion years old. No one knows who made it or how it got there in the first place.'
"Or imagine if the moon was made of spam, and when the spaceship the first men to land on the moon travelled there in landed on it, it sank right into it and came out the other side.
"Actually, talking of spam, I remember a conversation I had on an Internet forum, after I started a thread in the humour subforum there, and its name was displayed on the forum's front page, like the names of the threads that have been most recently posted in are, and then some spammer came and put some spam in the humour forum about how people could buy Viagra from them or something, so its spam name got displayed on the front page instead of my thread.
"I joked to someone there, who calls himself Crocodile Eater, for some reason, 'If you like eating spam as well as crocodiles, there's a spam thread in the humour forum that needs eating right away. It knocked my new thread off the top spot. That shouldn't be allowed! Go and gobble it up for me!'
"Crocodile eater said, 'I do like spam, but not without tomato ketchup imported from Florida. That's the way I eat crocodiles too. Give me some of that stuff, and I'll happily gobble all the spam you want me to, taking care, of course, that I don't eat away too much of your ego at the same time.'
"I joked, 'You're about as likely to eat some of my ego as you are to be able to send me a postcard from the moon. ... You can't do that, can you?'
"Crocodile Eater said, 'Can't I? You just wait and see.'
"I replied, 'Go on then, you have a go.'
"Then he joked, 'Oh by the way, I forgot - the moon doesn't exist. It was disproven long ago. You see, this 'moon seeing' is a common symptom of a disease of the retina that you start getting when you get advanced in years. The alternative, that you are hallucinating, is no better.'
"I said, 'What? You mean that huge lump of cheese I've been seeing in the sky night after night isn't the moon? Then I wonder what it is? Scary! Or if it is the moon, it's a pity you say it doesn't exist. I was going to ask if you'd kindly attach about 2000 ladders together and climb up and get a big lump of that cheese for me. It looks appetising!
"'Or how about you find millions of ladders, attach them together, and then climb up to the sun and get it down for me? It keeps escaping behind clouds, or zooming off to Australia in the winter and things. If you could bring it down here so I could have it in my house, it wouldn't be able to escape any more, and I could have sunshine all the time!'"
The students giggled. Then one of them said, "Imagine if all the psychopaths in the world could be persuaded to go on an intrepid mission to bring the sun down to earth to stop it escaping. They might never come back. Imagine how many warmongering politicians and bad bosses the world would be rid of then!"
One of the students who'd been talking earlier said, "Yeah. To get serious again, I've read that when it comes to these subclinical psychopaths we were talking about before, who like to con and charm or bully other people, but are capable of making successes of their lives because they don't do things that are bad enough to make them likely to spend most of their lives in prison, but who crave exciting lives, and don't really feel for other people who are suffering, they tend to be drawn quite a bit more to certain jobs than others, - ones where they'll get some excitement or an adrenaline buzz. I think journalism's one, where some people are always feeling under pressure to chase the stories that'll make the most interesting news, so if there's a disaster, people with psychopathic tendencies might feel excited by the challenge of being quick on the scene and finding eyewitnesses to talk to, while other people might just find it depressing.
"And what I read said that other careers subclinical psychopaths are often drawn to are ones where they can have power over people, like politics, business management, being police or lawyers, or even religious leaders. So if they do bad things, it might affect far more people than just their families or the people who have to be nearest to them. I don't know why a lot of them are attracted to those careers - maybe they boost their egos or something when they can have power over other people; and some of those jobs will be more exciting than the average career, so that'll suit someone who enjoys behaving a bit recklessly or craves an adrenaline buzz.
"Mind you, having said that, the vast majority of people in those careers won't be psychopaths. Apparently full-blown criminal psychopaths only make up about one per cent of the population, although I read that some studies have given the impression that maybe somewhere between five and fifteen per cent of a country's population are subclinical psychopaths, who are still pretty ruthless or uncaring, but often not in an illegal way; or when they are, they're often not violent, and they're often skilful enough not to get caught. So most people in every career probably won't be psychopathic. There might be a higher percentage of psychopaths in the careers they're attracted to than in most other careers though.
"But you've got to have a whole set of characteristics to be classified as a psychopath; only having a few of them won't classify you as one. For instance, if you're quite uncaring and violent, if you haven't got the other characteristics psychopaths have, you still won't be classed as one. Likewise for people in business, who don't seem to care about the people working for them, and might always be criticising them unfairly. Some might be subclinical psychopaths, but not all of them. Some bosses could probably just be classified as bad-tempered scumbags, - well, not officially, of course, but maybe just by the people who have to work for them. They might sometimes just be people who get impatient with their workers because they're always being put under pressure to achieve certain targets by tight deadlines by their own bosses, so that makes them impatient, because it always makes them feel in a hurry to achieve things, and that kind of thing.
"Psychopathic bosses score lower on the psychopathy scale for criminal psychopathic traits like anti-social personality disorder than full-blown psychopaths do, while criminal psychopaths might score a bit lower than them for the characteristics that would help them be successes in life, like being charming and manipulative, but higher for others like violent behaviour.
"The thing is though, people need to have almost all those traits to classify as a full-blown psychopath; just being really uncaring or lying all the time or something like that wouldn't get someone classified as one. I think people can have quite a few of the same characteristics psychopaths have and score quite highly on the psychopathic scale without scoring high enough to actually be classified as a psychopath. I mean, you know, some people could often tell lots of lies and like to con people or be violent without being certified as psychopaths. But then, they still wouldn't be nice people to associate with.
"But the kind of traits subclinical psychopaths often score highly on include being smooth-talking and charming on the surface, such as by flattering people and coming across as especially respectful. But it's really fake respect, just put on with the intention of getting things they want. And They can think a huge amount of themselves. Some might boast about how talented they are, and that kind of thing. And they typically tell a lot of lies. They often like to con people and manipulate them into doing what they want. They tend not to feel guilty or sorry for any bad things they do. They can seem to have big outbursts of emotion like remorse or sadness, say if someone tells them how their actions affected them; but they're cold underneath, just putting the emotion on. They can be uncaring, and can do things that upset people without batting an eyelid; and they'll often try to blame other people for the bad things they do, not wanting to admit responsibility when things go wrong.
"But they can seem to be more fun than non-psychopathic people sometimes, maybe sometimes because they don't care about other people, so they have far fewer qualms about making fun of them than a lot of people would; and other people can find it entertaining."
A student called Jessica said, "Wow, some of that sounds just like someone I used to chat to on an Internet forum! Well, I don't know if he was a real psychopath, but he did seem to fit some of the description you've just given. He did seem to be narcissistic anyway, thinking a massive amount of himself, and not caring about other people's feelings. I nicknamed him Psychopops, but that wasn't the name he used on the forum."
One student asked, "What happened?"
Jessica said, "... Well, it's a long story, but if you really want to know ..."
The others said they did.
So Jessica told the story. It turned out that it really was a pretty long one. She said, "Well I actually thought he was a laugh to have around at first. He used to mysteriously seem to come onto the forum just to make fun of certain people, even though he'd never had an argument with them before or anything, so no one knew why he had anything against them. Then he started coming to the forum more often and saying more things that I thought were entertaining. I thought it was just humour at first, with him exaggerating things about how talented he thought he was; but later I started thinking he probably really meant what he'd said, because he seemed so narcissistic. He would say things like:
"'I may win a Nobel for this - I've disproved Newton!
"'Newton's first Law of motion says that every object will either continue to be at rest or always moving, unless the force of another object changes what it's doing. But that's stupid, because it doesn't explain how objects got to move in the first place. If no force was moving in the first place, how could it act as a force that made other things move! And if an object was moving in the first place, it must have got to move without the action of another force pushing on it! So Newton's so-called law simply can't be true! This simple observation, yet overlooked with such amazingly deplorable lack of foresight by supposed "Greats" such as Newton himself, shows how simple it is for me to crush Isaac’s theory, similar to the way I so often crush my opponents in chess.
"' Having thus crushed Newton with such terrible force, leaving the wisps of what is left of his ideas grovelling in the dust, I now take my leave to go on to crush my next wretched victim. Goodbye.'
"Well that sounds reasonable, not that I know anything about science. But some of the people on the board told him he was being stupid. I told them I didn't think they were being fair, since I thought he just put things like that there for a laugh. I started asking him to put more of his theories there. He put one there because I asked him to that said something like,
"'I may win a chair at Harvard for this…my brilliant theory ‘B’! This theory deals with some common sayings, and my comments upon them, which mock them and mock them and mock them till they scream for mercy, only no one hears them, because I have ripped out their vocal cords by a searing flash of my genius:
"'Money doesn't bring happiness -
But it does prevent a lot of sadness.
"'Don't cry over spilt milk -
Why not? Cry enough, and the tears will dissolve with the milk, and the mixture will flow into the nearest river, whence it will be taken up by the water cycle. Next time it rains, you will get it all back.
"'Do not speak unless you are spoken to -
If every person on earth followed that advice, no one would be speaking.
"'I would have smashed to atoms yet more "wise" sayings, only they all scattered, screaming in fear like flour in a typhoon when I put out my hand to put them in my bag. In a flash of pity, I decided to leave them alone for now, and, hoisting my sack over my left shoulder, I strode off into the distance, laughing, and kept going till I disappeared over the darkening horizon in the falling dusk, and walked out of this page. I am the greatest!'
"He would often say he was the greatest. I thought it was a laugh at first.
"I actually wondered for a while if he was a certain person who'd been on the board before but had got banned, who I thought was a laugh. I thought he might have somehow managed to get back on the forum. I think that person got banned because he used to wade into debates that weren't very good, often where people were saying things that were bigoted or ignorant, and say things like:
"'You float in a putrid, foul sewerage pond, and yet the rotting verbal stench that is ejected from your mouth overcomes all the wafting surrounding aromas.'
"'And, 'How dare you enter this noble forum, totally unannounced and lacking intellect, integrity and courage. I will take this major breach to the security council of the UN. You putrid molding slab of filthy weasel carcass stench!'
"And there was another time when he said something to someone like, 'The propaganda that you yield to on an almost daily basis falls neatly into 67 broad classifications - each having at least 17 sub sections. It will take some time for me to go through your neurotic weaknesses in a public forum like this. Plus, I have over 1,700 patients on my books at the moment; I couldn't really look into your case until early 2013. You will have to wait, I am afraid - you will have to wait! In the meantime, your foul stench will continue to linger - so I will know how to locate you.'
"Another time, he said to someone something like, 'Actually I have conducted an extensive and exhaustive analysis of your public comments, and it is crystal clear from the results that at least 98.74% of your statements are mistakes. At least make an apology to everyone in here for your fraudulent behaviour and obscene public nuisance.'
"And in the science subforum, he said one day to someone, 'Define a black hole. What is the temperature profile of a black hole? You have 163 days - I want a full report on my desk by then.'
"And one day he said, 'I wouldn't take any notice at all of my public utterances if I were you - not unless you can afford the subsequent therapy and medication required to recover from the neural damage caused.'
"And he said, 'You are arguing with a supreme fool you know. The wisdom of a fool CAN be profound - you have to search through the rubble to find the gems of wisdom.'
"He was always saying things like that. I thought it was a laugh. I thought Psychopops might be him for a while, but then I decided he probably wasn't, because he was nastier.
"He started getting a bit nasty not long after he first turned up. Mostly just in a fun way at first though, so it was entertaining, for me anyway. He used to taunt another forum member, saying horrible things in an amusing way. Actually I would have defended the member he teased, but he'd once come out with some kind of pompous cack, criticising me for defending other people, saying I must be just doing it because I didn't like people's eggshells being trodden on because I was squeamish about having my own trodden on, or some nutty nonsense like that. A lot of what he said was nutty actually, as well as being a bit creepy. That was partly why I thought it was amusing when Psychopops picked on him. Instead of showing he was bold and brave and could tolerate people treading on his own eggshells when it happened though, he hypocritically complained to the moderators and asked for the man to be banned. So much for that!
"I started having fun with Psychopops. We started teasing each other in fun. There was one day when I ordered him to be silent or I'd reveal some shocking secrets about how the government of the country he came from was handling things, - things I said I didn't know anything about, but that wouldn't stop me.
"Then I said he could talk again, saying, 'I've decided not to do those things after all. But I've heard something scandallous! I don't know if it's true, but the person who told me tells me they witnessed it all on a spy satellite, that had stopped for a nap over your country, so it picked up everything in clearer detail than it would normally when it's zooming around the earth. Surely this can't be true though!
"'They tell me you're so keen to make your country look like a successful sporting nation that you approached the England cricket team with a special offer; you said that next time England played a series of matches against your country, you'd pay them 2 million dollars if they'd purposely lose them all.
"'Really, despite the impressive credentials of the eminently-qualified amateur spy satellite observer who told me that, I'm having difficulty quite believing it. ... Perhaps it was more like 2000 dollars? And for goodness' sake, why did you offer to pay them dollars when you must know they'd prefer the money in pounds?'
"Psychopops joked, 'It's true, and you won't believe how hard it was to persuade them to accept money as payment. At first, they were demanding that I pay them in cocaine. I mean, the impudence of some people!'
"I didn't understand why, but at the same time as we were saying things like that to each other, he started declaring that he was in love with me. It seemed a bit daft to me, because he hardly knew me. Actually, he started doing it before we'd hardly spoken at all. But he kept doing it, including starting two threads one day asking me to marry him! I wonder now whether he misinterpreted a joke I made, thinking it meant I'm rich, because he started declaring supposed love to me not long afterwards. But at the time, I didn't really know what to make of it. I put it down to some kind of daft but cute soppy kind of affection. I turned out to be very wrong about that! That was probably a naive thing to think and I should probably have known better. But I didn't know any better at the time. But I thought I'd just treat his declarations of love and things as a bit of fun at the time, hoping they wouldn't get any more serious than that, because all I wanted was a bit of entertainment.
"He did seem to be saying them in fun. He'd write stories where he'd propose to me, or where him and me were going out together, and they'd say things like:
"'Jessica and Psychopops were taking a walk in Lover's lane, when suddenly, Psychopops stopped, and went down on one knee in front of Jessica. The scenery knew that dance by heart. All you had to do, if you were a tree, was to jump up and down, and if you were a hedge, you went round and round. So the trees jumped up and down and the hedges went round and round, and Jessica and Psychopops stood still in the middle, admiring it all.'
"Well, obviously he didn't call himself Psychopops in that story, but that was the kind of story he'd tell. And at the end of each part of a story, he said he hoped it was making me fall in love with him. I think it was his idea of flirting now. But it just seemed strange to me at the time. I hoped that if I just joked around with him, he wouldn't get any more serious about it. So I made silly jokes, like saying I wouldn't be able to marry him because the pope had proposed to me only the day before.
"He started flattering me after that by writing stories about me being a famous actress, and things like that. I can understand what people mean now when they say psychopaths can be charming. I mean, I don't know if he was really a psychopath or not. But sometimes he talked to me in an especially respectful way, as well as flattering me, as if he really was fond of me, or thought I might really be famous. He used to put links to love songs on YouTube on the board, saying they were for me; but I thought it was a bit weird, so I ignored them.
"Then one day he wrote me a funny love poem, after we'd been teasing each other quite a bit. It went something like this:
"'A Tribute TO Jessica, My Betrothed
"'I was strolling along the streets of fame,
Basking in the glory emanating from my name,
Caring naught for neither beast nor man,
Revelling in the knowledge that everyone was my fan.
"'I stood upon my pinnacle of intellectual power,
Little knowing that this was the eleventh hour,
Of my pride, my joy, my might, my mammon,
For I was about to fall for a woman.
(And then, curse it, it happened...)
"'The years of success must have rendered me complacent,
For when, turning, I beheld a stranger, it was anything but pleasant.
I marvelled that she was standing on the same lofty level as me,
But seizing my rapier, I thundered, "I'll make short work of thee!"
(This is where it gets exciting!)
"'We crossed swords, and a battle commenced,
One of vicious attack and superb defence.
A struggle that would go down in the annals of history,
As the only one in which The Greatest failed to blaze a brilliant victory.
(See what happened when the damn thing ended, will you?)
"'As the echoes died away, and the dust began to settle,
I perceived that here was an antagonist worthy of my mettle.
I had at last met my Moriarty, my Evil Genius,
I was sure of this as I was that my middle name was Phineas.
(Who should have been flying by at that moment, but that nuisance, Cupid.)
"'Spotting me, Cupid stopped and reached for his bow.
"A customer," he mused, "A client, what ho!"
Grinning like a Mormon, he pulled out an arrow,
And shot it straight into my big toe.
"'I turned, and suddenly, Moriarty had gone,
And so had the rugged crag I'd been standing upon.
I was suddenly in the middle of the Garden of Eden,
Surrounded by an orchestra playing a lilting piece by Heiden.
"'Floating before me, where Moriarty had been,
Was a vision of beautifulness the world has never seen,
(I know! Dont YOU ever make grammar mistakes when in intense emotional turmoil? Jeez!)
Clasping her to my bosom, I showered kisses on her upturned face,
I twirled her around and whispered hoarsely, "Jessica, my mate!"'
"I didn't understand why he would say those things, but I thought it was nice that he'd write a poem like that. But when he kept going on about being in love with me, I started trying to put him off. I did start to get fond of him after some time, but I didn't fall in love with him! One day, I tried to hint that I wasn't interested by joking that I couldn't go out with him because I'd decided to become a nun. That's apart from the fact that we live half a world away from each other.
"He tease me, saying, 'Dont you think it's the height of insanity to become a nun when you're one of the most notorious shoplifters in Brit history,(a history which is by no means devoid of petty shoplifters either?)'
"I joked, 'But I only lift shops from the country you come from, and their owners have always been very grateful to me. You see, as we all know, people where you live are only three inches tall. So their shops are tiny. Usually no one sees them so they don't buy anything. But as an act of kindness, I often lift their shops onto my shoulders and hold them there for a while. Two at once. Then people see them and buy things.
"'And since people where you come from are only 3 inches tall, dating you would be a disaster even if I wasn't a nun. I'd probably squash you flat under my foot by accident. That would be very sad.'
"We often used to tease each other like that. But he started getting more creepy over time, and then suddenly he got downright nasty. Now I think he might have planned that all along, or something like it; but I couldn't understand why it was happening at the time. But I've since discovered that what narcissists typically do is to first idealise a person, and then devalue them, and then discard them. So maybe that was what was going on. He stopped being entertaining, but just got mocking, telling me I needed to do more things to please him if I wanted his love back. I think he misinterpreted my teasing as flirting, and got it into his big head that I really was falling in love with him.
"He started boasting about how he had a new real-life girlfriend. But then he started sometimes telling me he loved me all the more, and then sometimes saying I'd have to try harder to amuse him if I wanted his love back. I thought it was a bit yucky that he'd talk like that to me when he had a new girlfriend, as if he thought I'd want to be in some kind of competition with her for his affections, so I tried to hint to him strongly that I didn't want that kind of relationship with him. I told him I'd prefer to go out with his girlfriend than him, joking that I was a lesbian. But nothing I said made a difference. He seemed to think whatever I said was flirting, and meant I was trying to get him to love me!
"And I was annoyed, because a couple of other men on the board were convinced I was flirting too. I've heard it said that it's quite common for men to mistake what's meant as ordinary friendship for sexual attraction. It seems they can do that even if you're joking that you're a lesbian, and things like that!
"He started getting downright nasty and insulting, saying, 'You bitch' this, and, 'bitches like you' that. And when I asked him why he was getting nasty, he would say things like, "Ah, come now, baby, why would I want to insult my little Jessica? As long as you toe the line with me and understand who's in control, and meekly follow me when I bellow that we are going here, there, or wherever, the only insults you're likely to hear are those that my fists make on the cook's face after I'd caught him leering at you suggestively. Nah, you be an obedient little lady, and I even might start thinking about fulfilling your life's one dream by stroking your hand and mesmerising you with my eyes, and severely beating up other forum members when they dare to dream of flirting with you.'
"He kept accusing me of playing hard to get, as if he just couldn't imagine it could be possible that I wasn't actually in love with him, and that I would have gone off him by then even if I had been, and wouldn't have wanted to date someone who already had a girlfriend!
"I said it would be nice if he could go back to being entertaining like he used to be, saying it had been good at first because with all the things he used to say about crushing scientists beneath his feet and things, I thought he was whimsical and creative, and I used to like the way he flaunted his ego in those days, but recently he'd just boasted abusively, so that was no fun, so it would be nice if he was more like the way he used to be. He went off into an enraged rant, saying things like,
"'Who was asking you for advice? I flaunt my ego the way I want to. You like the way I do it, stay, if you don't, get the hell out! Dont you ever, ever try to tell me how to do things, do you understand me? I do whatever I want, whenever I want, and I make no excuses to anyone! Shut up if you don't like it, bitch. Always remember that every time you do some dumbass thing like criticising me, you are running the terrible risk of me not answering the phone when you ring me up, desperate, on pins and needles, to be engulfed by the masculine majesty of my deep, sexy Voice, just like one of the million other bits that I convert into my lifelong slaves on a daily basis with a single, almost lazy glance of my irresistibly seductive eyes. You are walking a tightrope, talking like that, woman.
"'What have you done this time? Here it is - telling me I'm not cute and whimsical, and more - don't talk trash. I'm all that and more; you're just not clever enough to realize it, that's all. Anyway, I've got busy with six other women on the Internet. I met them on forums and chat sites. We chat up on a daily basis. I'm alternately charming and aggressive to them now, and I've got them living for that moment when they can come online and chat with me. What a laugh - they don't even know me, and they are already in love with me! Well, like I said, I've got a way with women - online or face-to-face doesn't matter.'
"Well, if he thought the way he was behaving was whimsical, I could get that kind of 'whimsicality' by lifting up a manhole cover and climbing down and sitting in a sewer! I wouldn't need to talk to someone halfway around the world to get it! And as for phoning me up, he'd actually asked me to, but I wasn't in a hurry to do that.
"He said worse things as well, boasting about how he'd made me fall in love with him, like saying something like, 'I used to come to the board and flaunt my wit and be playful. Me and Jessica spent afternoons teasing each other, and I used to flatter her with my skilful charm, till she started falling in love with me. My glib tongue that could go in an instant from poisonous as cobra venom to as smooth and caressing as butter; the irresistible charm that I could ooze from every pore when I so wished-well, what girl could have been blamed for finding me hopelessly irresistible? And, like twenty-seven of her online predecessors, Jessica was no exception. It was a love that went in the blink of an eye from a mere flicker to a flame, to a raging wildfire that threatened to send her into permanent Shrink therapy.'
"As if! And he claimed he'd asked me to phone him up and I'd said yes, and that he was with a friend at the time, who'd burst out laughing and congratulated him and asked how he had that effect on women. He was absolutely certain I was infatuated with him.
"I told him he was talking rubbish, and he said, 'OK, cut the crap. You aren't kidding anyone but yourself, Jessica. You want to pretend you aren't infatuated with me, at least do it convincingly. Your reactions to stuff I say here only reveal how much you are "into" me. Trust me, I've seen it happening enough times to know the symptoms. You're probably a hard to getter in real life, but you want me, you have to live up to my standards that I lay down for women who want to go to bed with me(real life, like my girlfriend, or online, like you and tonnes of others.) And I ain't gonna lower my standards one iota for you. So you either be funny like you used to be, or continue to live a dream that will never be realized, and you'll have to go on hugging your pillow and crying, or whatever you women do when the guy you like isn't getting attracted to you. (That's what I've seen my sister do, so I guess you cry about me every night too. Sorry, but I ain't too moved by that.) I ain't got time to waste on you lovelorn bitches. Jeez!'
"That was just a fantasy going on in his silly head. Soon after that I cut contact with him. He was banned from the forum not long after that. I started thinking it would have been better if I'd just ignored him from the start instead of having fun with him, since maybe I should have known he was nasty really when he bullied other people on the forum before we started talking much.
"As for him mocking women for supposedly falling in love with him when they didn't even know him, it was funny he should say that, considering all the weird declarations of love he'd made to me earlier, when I myself had thought it was strange that he'd do that when he didn't even know me! Not to mention a relationship between us being absurdly impractical because he lived halfway around the world!
"But talk about misreading signals! If that's really what he was doing, maybe it must have been because his ego was so big it blocked the truth from ever being able to find a way to get past it so it could shine the light of revelation on his thick skull!"
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