--- In [email protected], "meowthirteen" <meowthirt...@...> wrote: > > This is a fun game > Wanna play > Bluey?
Meow, because you're new here and sweet but a bit of a twif :-), I'll explain something to you. My "spiritual background" is a little different than the TMers you might meet here. I spent 20 years or so in spiritual environments in which 1) seeking attention in the form of positive feedback or "strokes" or "pats on the back" was considered an incredibly low-rent thing to do, and 2) anyone doing it was purchasing a one-way ticket to being ignored -- by the teachers or by his or her fellow students, or both. Thus I don't respond either to Edg's "I'm going to throw a tantrum and threaten to leave unless enough of you respond to me" childishness, *or* to invitations to "play" that are devoid of content. If you want to discuss something with me, come with something in hand to discuss. For example, when you are able to see "Amelie," if you like it and want to rap about it (which is not out of the question, because I think it'll be *just* your kinda movie), I'd be up for that. As for Edg and his latest meltdown, I think I predicted this turn of events rather presciently last week, the *first* time he tried to feed off of your attention. It's worth a replay, because it obviously worked the second time: To put things in the terms of the vampire metaphor in vogue recently :-), there are fictional vampires and there are real vampires. The fictional ones suck blood. You deal with them by waving crosses and wearing garlic. The real vampires suck attention. Truth be known, they are far hungrier and far more needy than the fictional vampires. You deal with them by...duh... withdrawing your attention from them. Try it, and watch what happens. What happens is what Edg has been doing today, being so obviously *needy* and hungry for attention that he's made panicky post after panicky post after panicky post all day, trolling for attention. *Any* attention will do. If he can't get someone to praise him for his flaccid writing, he'll try buttering up a newb and trying to get them to think he's nice. When that doesn't work (for obvious reasons), he'll try to appear intellectual, and as you so rightly sussed out, *that* is so laughable as to have pred- ictable results. So then he resorts to trying to insult or taunt someone into arguing with him about something so petty that only he would think it worth arguing about. And when that doesn't work? Well, insult them again and try to spin the fact that the intended victim didn't consider him worth pissing on, much less wasting time on, as something else. Sound familiar? It should. You've correctly identified the same tendencies in another poster here, who runs *exactly* the same number on FFL on a weekly basis. You see it in the way she responds to Ruth or Sal writing her off as not worth their time by asking the person who just wrote them off a bunch of direct questions, to try to lure them back in. If that doesn't work, she goes for insults, again to lure them back in. So far, Ruth, Sal, and a few others have been the most successful at treating these nonentities like the nonentities they are. Their success has reinspired me to do the same thing. My theory is that the best way to deal with the atten- tion vampires is not to give them any. Let them go hungry for a while and then just sit back and watch what they DO. They always DO the same things. It's the same thing that old impotent fictional vampires do when they've gotten too feeble to catch their prey. They howl.
