I used to have a lot of people around me. People that appreciated some core values about my character and the way I was choosing to tackle some issues. I believed that keeping it real was enough for people to understand my motivation and reasoning. I was wrong.
I was never the guy that would praise my followers. I would instead handle them the way I was handling just about everyone else. Tough Love. I didn’t do politics with them because I despised politics as a practice being used by weak and spineless individuals. Soon enough, I realized that most of these admirers of mine didn’t really fancy my harsh critiques. They started clamping together, distancing themselves into jerk-circles.
A few years passed and a few of these people started copying my character while badmouthing me in their inner circle. I believed that the rest would be able to see through their bullshit and hypocrisy. I was wrong. Little by little they crafted a new persona based on the pieces they took from mine. It was almost like a seamless transition. This is the first time I truly experienced an identity theft.
You see, people don’t really like you for being you. People like qualities of your character and if someone can copy these qualities then they wouldn’t mind. Most can’t even tell the difference. I had even people confuse my face and language with the people that stole my style. It was really an eye opener as to how easily people can be manipulated. In one instance, we happened to be all together by accident. This one guy who copied me the most, was sweating all over and couldn’t stop going to the bathroom. I believe he had a panic attack because he didn’t know how to express himself without looking like an impostor.
Combining their pathological presence in social media, they managed to reinvent themselves, build careers, hitch-ride on accomplishments that I made. I didn’t mind since I was actually seeing who was the real friend and who was the spineless weasel that just needed another leader to follow. Eventually, I decided to let go of everyone but a selected few. I would say the ratio was close to 1/100.
These guys that managed to steal my social identity used to be extremely silent, down to earth, rarely speaking or voicing an opinion. They just sat there gaining information, asking for advice and slowly reinventing themselves until it was time to strike. They acted like blank canvases that needed brushstrokes in order to be someone.
I wouldn’t change anything if I had to do it all again. I wouldn’t want any of these people around me anyways. If someone is so easily manipulated it means that the same thing will eventually happen to them again and again. In the end, people get exactly who and what they deserve. All of them, with no exception, were at some point under psychiatric medication and a few even admitted publicly that they had feelings of guilt.
On a macro scale, this is exactly what I observe going on in the real world as well. This is exactly why we almost never get honest leadership and end up with manipulators that basically will do and say anything to keep themselves in control. And yes, humanity deserves these people because I believe they had the chance of choice and they made it based on superficial appearances.
You see, you can steal someone else’s identity but you can’t hide from suppressing your own. You can try and fool everyone else but you can’t fool yourself. The mirror will always stare at you no matter how hard you try to escape. And I couldn’t possibly think of a better punishment for the copy-cats and their followers