Cults, con artists and cray-cray in fandom

[transemacabre]

So today I scared the hell out of myself reading the 'sagas' of Amy Player aka a lot of other names and the Final Fantasy 7 cult house. My time in fandom has generally been a lot of fun, but over the years you will encounter crazies.

In my mind, there's like two kinds of crazy. There's 'sad crazy', like those women who think they're married to Snape on the Astral Plane. Crazy, yes, but they're probably not a threat to anyone but themselves. Then there's CRAY-CRAY. This second group are the sort of people who, a few hundred years ago, would've been living in a cave and yammering to saints and angels only they could see. But because we live in the age of internet, video games, and anime, the CRAY-CRAY amongst us can instead go online and not only proclaim to 'really' be Sephiroth or faeries or whatever, but find others willing to enable their delusions.

A note on real selves vs. imaginary selves: If you sincerely believe yourself to be a video game character, or some kind of animal, or a Hobbit, or whatever, then go ahead and believe that. That's your right. I reserve the right to think you are stupid and deluded.

What happened with Amy Player and his cronies, and the FF7 cult, is that these fucktards set out not only to live out their delusions, but to draw other people into their psychedelic fantasy worlds, use them for whatever they were worth, then disgard them when no longer useful. This behavior is straight up psychopathic and narcissistic. What's sick is that they prey on the most vulnerable people they can find -- people who feel "strange", lonesome, and rejected, people who have a difficult family life, people who are naive and inexperienced (Amy Player likes to manipulate teenage minors), people who find the real world disappointing and long for something magical in their lives.

Just look at how Maya, a person who barely escaped being a victim of the FF7 cult, describes herself:

I'm easily intimidated.
I'm nervous.
I have low self-esteem.

Somewhere, a psychopath is salivating over that description. That's EXACTLY the kind of person they can get their hooks into. And like most psychopaths (another notorious fandom figure, Usagi Kou, comes to mind) they're brilliant at finding willing victims. They're crazy, not stupid.

Jen would court people by telling them how "special" they were, inviting them to join her "family". Amy Player is a talented con artist who can convince people that his outrageous lies are the truth, skipping town and moving onto new victims whenever caught.

One thing I noticed about almost all the testimonies from escapees of the FF7 cult is that when they first moved into the cult's house, they would go along with whatever Jen (the leader) wanted, because they "wanted to be a good guest". When Jen hit them up for money, they'd go along with it, and before you know it, they're working for the cult, doing everything Jen wants, buying her whatever she wants. Jen becomes more and more controlling, listening in on their phone conversations, reading their journals, monitoring their internet use, etc. This sort of controlling behavior is very common in abusive boyfriends/husbands, too. It's a means of seperating you from your support group -- your friends and family -- and making YOU dependant on THEM.

One unfortunate part of dealing with these people is that some of them are very good at not appearing insane at first. The thing is, sooner or later the mask will slip, and you will see the CRAY-CRAY underneath. I met a girl through a friend who, at first, seemed very intense but otherwise very friendly and funny. The first couple of times I met her, I really liked her. But then one day, out of nowhere, she started telling me, "You know, people think I'm a freak because I'm sexually attracted to serial killers, but I can't help it!" That is one of the only times I have ever stopped, looked at someone, and thought, Danger! Danger!

But Mipp! I hear you cry. You're being SO MEAN to these poor CRAY-CRAY people! They can't help it!

My perspective is like so, when it comes to abusers, flakes, liars, unreconstructed alcoholics and addicts, and yes, the CRAY-CRAY:

Some people are broken.
That is unfortunate.
It is not my job to fix them.

Straight up, end of story. It is not worth spending my time, energy, effort, money, or precious years of my life to try to fix your CRAY-CRAY.

So please, please take care who you associate yourself with, online and offline. I'm not saying be afraid, and I'm not blaming the victim, I just want y'all to be safe, healthy... and sane.

Comments

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Good post! I've known one or 2, including one girl who wanted to do a particular creative writing course because she thought she would be able to seduce the writer who was running it. She seemed to have the idea that poetry was a sort of sexually-transmitted disease, that sleeping with a poet would improve her own work. Mind, this was the same girl who was planning the most godawful piece of Mary-Sue Porntagenet fiction I've ever heard of, this side of Graham Shelby...

[mrasaki.livejournal.com]

This is all so very true. And I feel that many fandom participants are in particular vulnerable to it because they may have social anxieties, small social circles, and limited social experience, as well as low self-esteem and etc. Add to that the Nerd Fallacies (in particular, the 'I should be accepting of all behaviors, no matter how unpleasant or inappropriate, so that I too may be accepted by all') and it's just a recipe for disaster.