Hi - I am one of FOUR people who use the nickname "Fighter." We run a website called Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths (EOPC). We deal exclusively with adult on adult coercion online.

Dating/Romance Scams.
Online Romances that were just "games" to the predator.
Online Seduction & Romance made to get money or sex from the target(s)

We don't deal with pedophiles. We've been online since late 2004. We've often come to this site to read and get a feel for the place and finally felt we should join. We see so much online brainwashing and cultic behavior reported by victims being done to them. Many of them take years, if ever, to heal and very few therapists "understand" at all.

We've exposed a number of people and have posted stories on our site because the patterns are so obvious.

We believe Cyberpathy to be a form of narcissist disorder and sociopathy. The behaviors fit.

Glad to be here.
Fighter
EOPC

Hi,

I'm answering your post because a fellow member advised me to make a post about "romance scams".

I nearly got scammed by a guy online who contacted me via MySpace. He claimed to be interested in a relationship, said he was a civil engineer from England now living in my city. We messaged back and forth and then he said he had to work over in Nigeria overseeing the renovation of a bridge. At first he was to be gone for a week, then all this stuff kept arising to prevent him from returning to the states.

I was getting more and more suspicious, thankfully. Finally one day he complained about how "backward" Nigeria was, that they only operated on a cash basis (which is apparently true) and he was running out of money. He asked me to loan him $$. I immediately retorted, "You've got to be kidding me." Then I found myself saying, "You are scamming me. We are done. Good-bye."

Then I went Googling and came upon a site, [Romance Scams]. From what I read there, the guy perfectly fits the profile of a "romance scammer".

Amazingly enough, a few days after I figured out that this guy was up to no good, Oprah featured a show on scamming. I didn't get to see it, but am glad it was aired. Apparently lots of people are getting taken in one way or another by these people.

Thanks for your post!

Quote
Fighter
Hi - I am one of FOUR people who use the nickname "Fighter." We run a website called Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths (EOPC). We deal exclusively with adult on adult coercion online.

Dating/Romance Scams.
Online Romances that were just "games" to the predator.
Online Seduction & Romance made to get money or sex from the target(s)

We don't deal with pedophiles. We've been online since late 2004. We've often come to this site to read and get a feel for the place and finally felt we should join. We see so much online brainwashing and cultic behavior reported by victims being done to them. Many of them take years, if ever, to heal and very few therapists "understand" at all.

We've exposed a number of people and have posted stories on our site because the patterns are so obvious.

We believe Cyberpathy to be a form of narcissist disorder and sociopathy. The behaviors fit.

Glad to be here.
Fighter
EOPC

Check out the list of resources on the right hand sidebar of Fighter's site.
Fantastic.

And some great great quotes about the futility of forgiving people who are still predators, still comitting crimes in progress.

A heart warming story from a very intelligent lady who got away. This site is listed as one of the resources on Fighter's site.

[dontdatehimgirl.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2008 07:38AM by corboy.

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corboy
None of the posted links shows anything.

Actually the very last link works, the one that says "EOPC". Here, I'll post it for you: [[url=http://cyberpaths.blogspot.com/]http://cyberpaths.blogspot.com/[/url]]

My link to Romance Scams dot org works too.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2008 07:32AM by helpme2times.

Thanks guys, I finally figured out that the last URL was the one that worked.

Some things Ive learned:

1) Never, ever feel obliged to give information about yourself, just because someone else tells you all about themselves.

It was their decision to get personal on you.

It remains your decision to stay private if that is what you want to do.

2) If you start having dreams, such as being unable to log off your computer, even if you are trying to, or you have a dream that someone you are having an online relationship with has moved into your house or apartment, or is trying to force their way in, this could be a signal from your interior to SLOW DOWN AND ACTIVATE YOUR BOUNDARIES.

And, if you're a woman, it is not the end of the world if someone calls you a b---.

Learn to take it as a compliment. It means you have boundaries and cant be pushed around.

Another con is for creeps to accuse you of being 'too sensitive' or 'get over it' (when you're the one bleeding on the floor. By contrast, if the creep stubs a toe, it the fucking end of the world. Only their experience counts. The rest of us are just meat puppets to be used and kicked aside for their amusement.)

Con artists and predators never, ever will admit you saw through them. They want people to feel off balance, so a gamster will never give you validating information. They'd rather die than do that.

Finally, these gamesters are story tellers. If they had to take a vow of silence, they'd be unable to operate.

A lot of men want to be heroic rescuers.

A lot of women want to nurse a wounded soul back to health.

Gamesters play into this shit.

And we cant rule out that some of them learn trance techniques and then practice them in cyberspace.

'The Anticult' has done a lot of posts on RR.com describing methods of Ericksonian hypnosis and how story telling is utilized. Do an author search on The Anticult, all dates and all forums.

You can add 'story' or 'stories' and this may yield some information on how this shit can hook us in, even from a computer.

Finally some folks out there think gaming is actually some sort of spiritual practice. Folks who buy into Carlos Castaneda material talk about this. It lends itself to cyberspace and can serve to rationalize trolling that is merely annoying to the worst kind of relationship abuse perpetrated through computers.

(quoted from other sources)
Someone who still believes in Carlos Castaneda defined stalking in this way:

stalk: To pursue quarry or prey stealthily. ~Webster's dictionary

The art of stalking as discussed by Don Juan involves the Stalker taking on the role of another persona or character, and using that character to influence another's actions through their assumptions about the character the stalker portrays.

A form of stalking occurs in courtrooms, when the defendant dresses ,grooms and acts like a polite gentleman in order to appear respectable and thus influence the judge and/or jury in a positive way

Another person wrote:

Also about "stalking" - I think Castaneda's term has somewhat different meaning than the usual act of stalking. His term means more "con" or playing false roles with great conviction not "stalking somebody" - it surely also is illegal in its extreme forms...

A former follower of CC wrote'

Hi Mark,

The quote was contradictory to common sense because it was an appeal to the ego-specialness elitist pretending to be a *warrior*.

And Carlos sure did have an antireligious streak in him. It was a matching bookend that he required his own teachings to be taken with a dose of antifaith (suspending judgement).

Suspending judgement meant ignoring the common sense of conscience, so that you could then be free to lie to others (stalking), take drugs (move your assemblage point), and pretend to be god (warrior) in your fantasies (dreaming).

From a conventional standpoint, stalking is living a life of disinformation in which all other persons are not really persons but are to be used, toyed with and disposed of as objects.


A 'stalker' pretends to be something he or she is not, and exploits the sincerity of others, feeling powerful by knowing he or she is pretending to be real, while sniggering that others are taking them at face value.

Castaneda called it part of warrior training, but its merely con artist nastiness.

He also claimed you could 'erase your personal history' which was just another way to change your story any time you wanted it to and treat others as objects to use and throw away.

[www.metafilter.com]

this tiny quote I think gives a core insight:

Quote

In David Mamet's film House of Games (1987), Mike explains to Margaret that a con artist's goal is not to gain the confidence of his mark, but to give* his own confidence to the mark.

posted by cenoxo at 9:00 AM on February 21, 2006

I am not sure if this is exactly the case, but what seems to happen is that cons exude confidence.

Others may call it 'inspiration'.

One woman entangled for decades with an abuser, insisted, 'He gave me the world'. (Ignoring what she had lost)

But that confidence is false, a compensation for an empty inner self, which is why these operators need people who are sincere and play by the rules and have no hidden agenda.

Those who are human enough to feel frail and falliable, long to feel confident and THAT may be what draws so many to the con artist.

ASo perhaps part of what happens is that the con artist manages to insert something of that confidence into the target and usurps the subject/targets otherwise prudent adult self and activates the inner child in the target. --its like a dope dealer who sells us an intoxicant.

And..a lot of people dont want to give up that high of feeling confident or inspired and will defend the con artist who is the source of the inspiration. They equate inspiration with truth, with proof, and ignore that it is merely a feeling, one that can be triggered by cocaine, speed or morphine.

Getting high doesnt 'prove' anything to be true.

Its just the way an addict is desperately loyal to his or her dealer.

Folks refuse to question what or whoever has inspired them.

But that ability to instil confidence seems, in the case of the con artist, to come from an inner core that is, essentially, empty.

That ability to instil confidence may well be based on a set of technqiues learned by persons unable to achive an intimacy with others made possible by open communication where techniques and trickery are unncessary.

We are needed to fill the con artists empty core, while being conned to think we are despicably weak and have nothing to offer.

Readers are invited to look at this article from the EOPC site:

It gives a super run down on how the 're-entrapment' process works. Persons who have been through a series of
these misfortunes can come to fear they are under a curse. They are not.

This is a process that can be understood and dismantled through psychological means. But one must work
with a professional to do this. The article is an excellent start. Thank you, Fighter.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

PREDATORS HUNT THE WOUNDED

[cyberpaths.blogspot.com]

The latest from Exposing Predators website. Thanks again, Fighter.

Two tiny exerpts from a great article

[cyberpaths.blogspot.com]


(note from corboy. The Rule of Three is good. However, someone once said, if someone lies to you once about something supremely important, such as concealing previous marriages (or an ongoing one), children from a previous marriage, history of crime, health status, history of serious mental illness (as in they take their medication only to stay stable long enough to get you involved and then once they marry you they go off their meds or re-activate their addictions...if its a single lie about something as important as this--dont even wait for the rule of three. RUN.)

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3 - When considering a new relationship of any kind, practice the Rule of Threes regarding the claims and promises a person makes, and the responsibilities he or she has.

Make the Rule of Threes your personal policy. One lie, one broken promise, or a single neglected responsibility may be a misunderstanding instead.

Two may involve a serious mistake.

But three lies says you're dealing with a liar, and deceit is the lynchpin of conscienceless behavior.

Cut your losses and get out as soon as you can. Leaving, though it may be hard, will be easier now than later, and less costly.

Do not give your money, your work, your secrets, or your affection to a three-timer. Your valuable gifts will be wasted.

Quote


(PS If someone claims there is no such thing as absolute truth, or in some 'separate reality' truth vs lies dont matter, or that its through lies that some higher truth is revealed--run like frigging hell or they'll make you as crazy as they are.)

7 - Do not join the game.
Intrigue is a sociopath's tool.
Resist the temptation to compete with a seductive sociopath, to outsmart him, psychoanalyze, or even banter with him.

In addition to reducing yourself to his level, you would be distracting yourself from what is really important, which is to protect yourself.

Amateur psychoanalyzing is a form of 'intrigue.' A lot of psychopaths con us into mourning their wounded miserable childhoods for them.

We get conned into fretting about the buried humanity of the abuser, caring more about their 'potential' and thier 'latent talent' than about our own current well being.

Many of these crooks hang around in therapy just long enough to learn its concepts so as to run mind games and con good hearted people into parenting them.

Or, those who think they've escaped from a con artists clutches spend YEARS trying to psychoanalyze the con artist, as if the person had some stable core or conscience.

If someone begs you to help them figure things out, tell them to work on it.

If they beg you to recommend a shrink, dont do it. Let them find one.

If they beg for one more chance to 'make amends'

tell them,

'To make amends, treat your next (partner, spouse employee, etc) better than you treated me.'

DONT TRY TO FIGURE THESE PEOPLE OUT

JUST GET AWAY FROM THEM AND KEEP UPGRADING YOUR OWN BS DETECTOR.

Years ago, I met a clinical psychologist who was a forensic practitioner. He evaluated people in the prison system--hard core people, serving serious time.

He said he had met virtually no one in the prison population capable of admitting any agency/responsibility for having done something that had landed them in prison.

I asked him how he kept from being charmed and conned.

'Because we have their records' the clinican replied. 'A guy can be
lying like hell to me, be utterly convincig, but I have his rap sheet and it describes what he did to other people.'

The best way to protect yourself from a sociopath is to avoid him, to refuse any kind of contact or communication.

The only truly effective method for dealing with a sociopath you have identified is to disallow him or her from your life altogether. Sociopaths live completely outside of the social contract, and therefore to include them in relationships or other social arrangements is perilous.

Begin this exclusion of them in the context of your own relationships and social life.

You will not hurt anyone's feelings. Strange as it seems, and though they may try to pretend otherwise, sociopaths do not have any such feelings to hurt.

You may never be able to make your family and friends understand why you are avoiding a particular individual. Sociopathy is surprisingly difficult to see, and harder to explain. Avoid him/ her anyway.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/2008 11:39PM by corboy.

An article

[culteducation.com]

Does this qualify as cyberpathy?