Can you be Had? Conned? Fooled? I sure can!

[thepainterdoug]

Wow what kind of culture are we creating and living in? I have had a series of communications with people on and off line with the same result
They are either not them, or not who they present themselves to be.
And they dont care.

At a real person film maker gathering, I met 6 people. All so enthusiastic to meet and talk
People saying, ohh Im reliable. Im for real, yeah saying what a bunch of losers out there who dont follow up. yada yada !
Shared phone, email, instagram etc .and I wrote them all. 0 response

Online, met several people. No One who they claim to be. Its an art form. Pretend to be someone and con them is their calling .
But I dont understand what their end game is? My email? my web site, its all public anyway

Wow I just spoke to a woman for 3 days on line . Photos , stories , all their sincerity etc. And when you smoke them out, they all have a comeback as if you didnt smoke them out. They are fake offended and then they then just continue, so how are you? etc WTF

Complete phony scam people. But what is the end game??
What a loser generation.

has anyone been conned or scammed? most wont admit it, but I dont mind doing so. there are so many ways to get lured in.

doug

[onawah]

I don't have any personal stories to share, but I've seen enough scammer videos online to know that there are all kinds of scammers out there and apparently they can be quite patient sussing out their victims before they actually play their hand. Which always involves stealing your money or your identity or whatever, one way or another.

Posted by thepainterdoug (here)
Complete phony scam people. But what is the end game??
doug

update: I should add that I have had plenty of stories to share about narcissists that I have had to deal with in person, but none online.
I did have one narcissist acquaintance who could not bear to be in my physical presence but liked to call me on the phone, until I finally realized her game and that it was just by taking up that much of my attention that made her feel "recognized".
When I realized how I was being played and declined to talk with her any further, she became furious and called me some very choice names.
I think what really angered her was that she realized I had finally figured out her real motivation, and that was what made her finally gave up.
(She or "it"... if it was actually a demonic entity which was controlling her, and
sadly, I think it probably was.)

[Flash]

Posted by thepainterdoug (here)
Wow what kind of culture are we creating and living in? I have had a series of communications with people on and off line with the same result
They are either not them, or not who they present themselves to be.
And they dont care.

At a real person film maker gathering, I met 6 people. All so enthusiastic to meet and talk
People saying, ohh Im reliable. Im for real, yeah saying what a bunch of losers out there who dont follow up. yada yada !
Shared phone, email, instagram etc .and I wrote them all. 0 response

Online, met several people. No One who they claim to be. Its an art form. Pretend to be someone and con them is their calling .
But I dont understand what their end game is? My email? my web site, its all public anyway

Wow I just spoke to a woman for 3 days on line . Photos , stories , all their sincerity etc. And when you smoke them out, they all have a comeback as if you didnt smoke them out. They are fake offended and then they then just continue, so how are you? etc WTF

Complete phony scam people. But what is the end game??
What a loser generation.

has anyone been conned or scammed? most wont admit it, but I dont mind doing so. there are so many ways to get lured in.

doug

All of us have been scammed or conned, even those that are not yet aware of it.

They are thaaaat good at it. Dr Ramani, an expert in narcissism (real scammers usually are presenting themselves very well but have no inner sensitive life), she thinks that about 25% of the population has heavy narcissitic traits or are clearly pathological. That is a lot of people.

Narcissism has double in the last 15 year in North America. I mean here pathological narcissism diagnoticable in the DSM-5 (psychiatrists manual) as antisocials.

The stats are 4-6% are pathological narcissists (however they do not go to psychiatrists or psychologist because they think they are perfect and others are to blame for their own irresponsibilities) and are rarely directly diagnosed.

But it can be infered by their victims who must consult because they are so damaged by them.

Alos there is 1-2% psychopaths of course all psychopath are pathological (those research are more replicated), 2% borderline, 1-2% histrionics - those are all goup B of the DSM-5 manual, antisocial people and extremely damageable to others.

So add it up, 6+2+2+2=12% patholocially sick. Now add those with heavy traits, we are surely near 25%.

If you feel great meeting people and forget them or feel down the following days, you had been had with a stimulation provoking a shot of dopamine in your brain (as cocaine does, targeting the same receptors as dopamine). Hence the down when dopamine gets lower.

Turn the page and go to real people, learn to detect truth versus emptiness or worse, manipulation.

Their intention: getting something out of others they want (you were not what they want). Always a gain intention (money, time, social ladder, recognition, name it), never for other, always turned towards themselves.

How do you syphon otehers? through control and power games. You probably are too difficult to worth playing those games with, which in my book is excellent regarding your personality.

Edit: by the way, you see this from the left and right all over the western countries, the same manipulation tactics and discarding ways. Hyenas fighting hyenas.

[onawah]

Avalon's thread on narcissism is very instructive and kind of fascinating in a dark, weird sort of way: https://projectavalon.net/forum4/sho...ght=narcissism
I've been getting quite an education over the years in recognizing the different types of narcissists and how to deal with them.
You don't have to be dealing with them in person to get drained of energy--they can even do it online.
If you are an empath, it's advisable to become well versed in the subject as empaths are a narcissist's favorite prey, and they seem to have a kind of radar when it comes to locating empaths.
One reason why I don't doubt for a minute that there are demonic entities involved.

Posted by Flash (here)

Their intention: getting something out of others they want (you were not what they want). Always a gain intention (money, time, social ladder, recognition, name it), never for other, always turned towards themselves.

How do you syphon otehers? through control and power games. You probably are too difficult to worth playing those games with, which in my book is excellent regarding your personality.

Edit: by the way, you see this from the left and right all over the western countries, the same manipulation tactics and discarding ways. Hyenas fighting hyenas.

[JohanB]

The sad thing to me is that we get "super skeptical" about almost everything we hear / read / see...

A once "close" business friend verbally assured me he was "with me" on a complicated issue, but when the time came to "vote" about it, he made a 180°. When i confronted him in private, he's excuse was, "I changed my mind". I felt betrayed to the extreme and although we still communicate often, I just feel i cannot trust him. To me it's a life principal, always keep to your word.

O yes - I have been scammed out of a few buck often by people promising they will pay me back - i see it as "church" contributions

[norman]

Stepping into situations and 'relationships' that are dangerous currents I naively mistook for still pools has been a lifelong learning story for me. They come in many forms and often have nothing to do, directly, with individual narcissists.

The snags and dangerous currents seem to me to be far more than any single individual person. They are established entrenchments of deception and unhealthy motivations and habits that masses of people normalise to varying degrees as what they probably assume is just simply survival in a world that demands it from them.. Those who do it 'best' carve out very comfortable positions in it for themselves, others, especially the very young, see them and their comfortable positions as role models, and so it evolves, and evolves and evolves.

It's one aspect, a big one, of what I keep on calling the upside down world, or the inverted world. It's dynamic origin IS an inversion. I don't believe it's possible to "fix" it within the inversion reality at all.

Some would say it's also impossible to reverse the inversion, an inverted wrong assumption too, that then breeds intellectual fudge factors trying to philosophically and idiotically squeeze square truth pegs into round fallacy holes (or is that the other way around?). I disagree, but, standing in and describing the view from the uninverted perspective is hard enough without having to scrap about it with inversionst armies of intellectuals.

I digress.

[rgray222]

Doug, please don't take this the wrong way. I am not making an effort at humor; I actually believe this.

When things like this happen to me for no apparent reason, I often conclude that I must have been a real jerk in a previous life. I wonder, is it possible that I never lived up to my commitments? Did I act enthusiastic when talking to someone with no intention to follow up?

When one or two people don't follow through on commitments, that's unfortunate, but when it is a bunch of people, then I believe there is something more at work here.

It is a rare life that is in perfect balance when you leave this human existence. So the balance that is needed is always catching up in the next life or even the next few lives. This is why things seem so unfair to so many people, but when you look at the much bigger picture, it pretty simple stuff.

[thepainterdoug]

rgray222 thanks, I do not take offense. well of course its possible over a lifetime, to have done the same thing to others now being done to you. but I do not get the sense that i am this person who scams or disses others etc. it just doesn't ring true for me. It is also something I am referring to regarding this current cultural climate. Cell phones, tech , video games and so on, people hiding behind apps, tick tock, no need for eye contact and personal interaction.
I know many people who say they dont trust anyone or anything . Thats pretty sad

no , the stuff im talking about is not something I take part in. Im never not the real me, I never post false facts, fake pictures or represent myself as someone im not.
So, Im not getting back what I deserve but quite the contrary. As Norman mentioned, its an upside down world in which some people think it seems cool to not respond.
As if not responding at all is "winning"

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by thepainterdoug (here)
has anyone been conned or scammed? most wont admit it, but I dont mind doing so. there are so many ways to get lured in.

doug

I can't recall anything major like this that happened to me! (But maybe I'm just blocking the memory )

However, this is what happened once to a friend of mine.

He ran a successful small business, and had a beautiful million-dollar yacht. But (for reasons I can't quite remember in detail), he had some kind of a problem with taxes, and so he asked a longstanding close friend of his, someone he'd known since childhood, if he could temporarily transfer the legal ownership of the yacht to him.

His good friend agreed to help him out.

When the financial issue passed, he asked his friend to transfer the yacht back to his own name. The friend replied:

"Sorry. That's just how life goes."

His friend kept the yacht. There was nothing my friend could do. They never spoke again.

[Tintin]

Posted by thepainterdoug (here)
Wow what kind of culture are we creating and living in? I have had a series of communications with people on and off line with the same result
They are either not them, or not who they present themselves to be.
And they dont care.

At a real person film maker gathering, I met 6 people. All so enthusiastic to meet and talk
People saying, ohh Im reliable. Im for real, yeah saying what a bunch of losers out there who dont follow up. yada yada !
Shared phone, email, instagram etc .and I wrote them all. 0 response

Online, met several people. No One who they claim to be. Its an art form. Pretend to be someone and con them is their calling .
But I dont understand what their end game is? My email? my web site, its all public anyway

Wow I just spoke to a woman for 3 days on line . Photos , stories , all their sincerity etc. And when you smoke them out, they all have a comeback as if you didnt smoke them out. They are fake offended and then they then just continue, so how are you? etc WTF

Complete phony scam people. But what is the end game??
What a loser generation.

has anyone been conned or scammed? most wont admit it, but I dont mind doing so. there are so many ways to get lured in.

doug

I understand what you mean here Doug, very clearly.

I'm about to embark on a new creative musical enterprise here after a good decade away doing other things. Having before (for nearly 3 decades) been involved in a band and working with many good people I also learned early-on that the creative disciplines are very often filled with fickleness, or vacillation, non-commitment; it can drive one nuts when no fruit is borne, or 'nice' people are just saying things they think you want to hear. I'm not sure it's really being conned, or even fooled though, probably more a case of being riddled with low-flying procrastinators. I simply wish them well, on their way

[shaberon]

Posted by Tintin (here)
I also learned early-on that the creative disciplines are very often filled with fickleness, or vacillation, non-commitment...

In music, I got one of the first simple examples. Someone shows up saying, oh, I play this, I have a studio with all this equipment, come on out.

Never saw them again. I asked what was up with that scene and:

"He doesn't have any of that stuff. He's a liar".


There's deception in the "celebrity grooming industry" just like there is in some trade certificates, "go heavily into debt for some job training you won't be able to use".

It's a personality type that's relatively common. I consider them dead inside, but that doesn't stop them from acting. I don't know of a way to prevent this. It's just another form of idiocy we are forced to deal with. Fortunately, I've never been "victimized" by an actual financial scam or anything like that; on the other hand, it means there are few of integrity to actually work with, which terribly weakens the populace.

[thepainterdoug]

Thanks All

Onawah / someone talking to you for attention? yes I get that. People need attention. As an artist musician ,living on my own, no romantic relationships anymore, I sure do need attention! lol We cannot help but be so impressed and swayed by what looks like the winners in the world, TV mainly, sports figures as well as music, receiving such love and adulation and wonder why we dont rate on the attention scale? Most of us live uninteresting lives according to the term interesting. It usually breaks down to unique, special, notable, remarkable, talented etc . How does a good honest bank teller, an crossing guard person compete with actors and sports personalities? So I feel people are starved for attention not being relevant.

Bill/ thats a dreadful story that makes you want to crawl under a rock that a friend for that long would do that? Thats why I love the saying, "a friend is just and enemy you haven't met yet." I just weathered the loss of a person I believed to be a really good friend as well . Once I forwarded him money for work he had not yet completed, he ran off ,ghosted me, no communication, no return e mails and still owes me half that money. Wow, the end of a 7 year friendship over that? It makes you ask yourself, is it me?. But no. I stopped that noise of guilt in my head because I am compassionate to others and offer help. Offering help is seen as weakness and its them thats weak and non integral.

Tintin/ music, the arts are sketchy, pun intended. I am a song writer and cannot tell if people, family friends say they like my new song because they are telling me what I want to hear? or they simply dont know if they like it? either way, they just cannot be honest about it
I am with you on this and would like to speak to you about music .

I think many people lack purpose. They look for validation from the outside and when they dont find it they become actors, taking on false veneers I fall into this trap every now and then and need to remind myself of it.Its ego.
But people are actors. We all are, since birth, we learned how to "play it" How many people are not ok with who they are? Post pics of themselves not as they truly are, and stake claims in stuff they dont do?

I say again, if it wasn't for my discovery of NDE testimony and what en mass seems to be real and make sense,I may have already left the stage.

blessings all
doug

[onawah]

True, it's natural to seek the attention of others, but with narcissists it's an unnatural relationship; not a real exchange, but a one way street. You are recognized by them primarily as a source of energetic supply to be discarded once you are no longer useful, though they can pretend to be a giving person when it's necessary to keep the masquerade going.

Posted by thepainterdoug (here)
Onawah / someone talking to you for attention? yes I get that. People need attention.