After all, at any moment and under any circumstances, anyone may be pressed and cowed into hesitation and silence for fear that to speak up may reflect poorly, exercise futility, bring adverse consequences or even do harm. Aside from the ubiquitous problems of social loafing, bystander apathy, Anti-Critical Bias, cowardice lacking assertive honesty, function in the social network is simply inadequate to the needs of many people even in the lulls much less in their times of tribulation and struggle or the aftermath, and tends to be unresponsive simply from sheer inefficiency. The more so after social connectivity is damaged and subverted by scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility. As long as opportunity is tenuous to begin with, bullies can render the difficult impossible.

• Does social isolation ‘count’ as bullying?

More over, it becomes clear that first socially isolating the target makes it far easier to lie convincingly, thus drastically increasing vulnerability to criminal exploitation, particularly fraud as well as violence and extortion. Indeed, by contrast, the most destructive people, of course, often seem to be so very well connected, all the time! Whether they are mean spirited socially prominent student cliques, spousal abusers, petty thugs, crooked cops or corporate lobbyists and public officials.

Alas, that we must all eke out survival support and pass the time in an indifferent universe, even from a hostile social environment. There is little choice. What say can have the invisible and the unloved? What debt is owed them and by whom? So who can criticize the passive indifference of sheer unfriendliness? And once the isolation of unpopularity sets in, what is there to check the steady progress of of shunning into active hostility of mobbing and ostracism? What have I ever done to you? -wonder the targets thereof. The answer: You exist. Worse, you don't take a hint when not so much as a hint is preferred! To escape notice, you should slink away and move on when you first feel the chill. And when we pursue, you must move on again. For you are marked.

Often, the targets of bullying are simply admonished to toughen up! Of course, that only means adaptation, one way or another, to the status quo. But bullying is intrinsically impossible to adapt to. That is the entire point! Rather, what is needed is to play hard ball and achieve real progress. To force the bullies to be tougher on themselves, and the less self indulgent with their hostile impulses and self serving abuse.

I respectfully submit that, victim blaming and scapegoating aside, good people often do very much need to take responsibility for our failure to seek some way to find and implement an adequate societal mode of connectivity, with it's own memetic propagation and it's own defenses, so as to become effective and competitive with the ancient and obscene advantages of dominance and predation. Because as things stand the current situation leaves all such advanced acquired traits as the enlightened and progressive so cherish, at a significant short term social Evolutionary disadvantage. And this is detrimental to all rational Humanist democratic social progress.

And so, the apologists for the bullies may even be correct in their excuses that it is the responsibility of the oppressed, exploited and forgotten to adapt. The question is whether those very traits which that we value can be adaptive to the threat they so often confront, rather than only a handicap of dissidence and principle that the cowardly intolerant conformists simply advocate be sacrificed for the sake of fitting in with status quo so that bullies, enablers and submissive victims can all effectively be recruited continually, thereby.  

In other words, we want to be free, individual and good, but at all autonomous, without being helpless and vulnerable and of no use to ourselves or anyone else. In short, to bring under control the sacrifice of being true to oneself. To establish a more secure position. One aspect of predation, exploitation, dominance and bullying, is that they are proactive, responsive and benefit from connectivity and collusion. And that they subsume the society which they infest and propagate while marginalizing the competing opposition. Not only do predation and dominance propagate among the predators and oppressors, but oppression also propagates among the oppressed. 

Turning the tables?

Indeed, much as not only predation and dominance propagate among the predators and oppressors, with oppression also propagating among the oppressed, likewise democracy, reason and tolerance must also propagate. Nothing can be taken for granted and fair play must be zealously enforced by moral suasion at all times. Alas, all too often, such will be an uphill struggle. Whatever can improve transmission of democracy, reason and tolerance would be as proactive, responsive, cooperative and enhance connectivity in some coherent manner, much as are predation, exploitation, dominance and bullying themselves, but without predation, exploitation, dominance and bullying, because, of course, that would be entirely purpose defeating. 

Nevertheless, this hypothetical Memplex must be equipped with it's own defense, not only in the individual mind, but also within societal interaction. And so, it must also help to marginalize predation, exploitation, dominance and bullying, selectively non destructively enough not become or conform to the very predation, exploitation, dominance and bullying it seeks to oppose. 

And this protective propensity in functional society has a name. It is called, civility. And civility is very nice when one can find it! Far to rarely, alas. 

Nietzsche tended to view Altruism, morality, sympathy and responsibility, as an albatross, holding back the individual from self realization of freedom and autonomy. And there is no denying the personal sacrifice inherent in living by any moral principles at all. But it is through the workings of democratic values in society that moral constraint and compassion may actually aid and abet self realization. The only question is as to the feasibility of such a thing and the opportunity to overthrow the Post Modern Cynicism which Nietzsche foresaw and where in 'justice' signifies no more than the self serving interest of the stronger, exactly as the Sophist Thrasymachus asserts to Socrates in Plato's Dialogues. 

Clique Busters is nothing other than how decent individuals in a truly civil society would respond to bullying. 

To befriend the targets of harassment who need allies and also the targets being isolated by scheming and masterfully socially adept Relational Bullies, to organize response and openly scold, mock, heckle, thwart, kill-joy, and frustrate the bullies responsible and/or to covertly misdirect the bullies, even just to talk about what is going and what can and should be done about it with others at large in order best to raise outrage.

In the words of Benjamin Disraeli: “Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.” Courage is indeed the inner fire of determination and conviction only given the opportunity, howsoever to confront even a dangerous and more powerful foe, such as a clique of bullies opportunistically preying upon howsoever the weaker. For bullying is full of devious and cowardly bluster and evasion, quickly intimidated and smoke quickly dissipated once the advantage turns or in the face of possible damaging exposure and liability. Likewise, the hysterically jealousy, lying, name calling propaganda defamation and damaging innuendo leveled against scapegoats, potential romantic competitors, and other targets of bullying, and by which all such are marked for covert relational hostility and abuse, malicious gossip manufactured and proffered in Existential Validation of bullying, indeed is all smoke, dark narrative void of substance, morally, logically and Epistemologically, except for well practiced and coordinated manipulative threat into cognitive dissonance.

At any moment and under any circumstances, anyone may be pressed and cowed into hesitation and silence for fear that to speak up may reflect poorly, exercise futility, bring adverse consequences or even do harm. But the spell of social loafing and bystander apathy can actually be broken by the example and assertive honesty of even a single Good Samaritan, subverting the depraved mimesis of the bullies, and no less dramatically. -Which is actually important so that intervention is not simply by resented, in their dispirited amoral idle boredom, by the bystander audience as anticlimactic spoilsport and killjoy, but instead actually received and appreciated as a stirring appeal to participation in the uplifting renewal of civility reaffirmed. Bullies are a cliquish and cowardly lot!

Also to communicate, strategize and prepare to foil bullies, whenever malicious gossip reveals behind itself, mean spirited conspiracy.

Indeed, because the forces of good are so thinly spread, the Clique Busters must actually go out looking for the opportunity, no less than do the bullies themselves. Clique Busters will be proactive, answering calls for help, and even reaching out to those in need unasked.

And such intervention constitutes vigilantism only as do all random or not so random acts of kindness. -Vigilantism merely in mimesis.

The low guile of Clique Busters, intelligence gathering, clique infiltration, and generally out foxing bullies, is necessary for taking the initiative back from the bullies,, finding solutions with the very problem, and turning their strengths to weaknesses. Both so crucial to victory, as Sun Tzu emphasizes. Just as bullies target their victims, the Clique Busters must defend known targets of bullying and  scapegoats, and resist known bullies.

Another priority of Clique Busters, as with every good idea, must be to preserve the integrity of Clique Busters itself. Clique Busters is empowerment, but power must not be allowed to corrupt. Especially should the sort of bullies who pretend benevolence and even believe it themselves are ever attracted to join the Clique Busters! Therefore part of the mandate of Clique Busters must be the creation of protocols for maintenance of bully and bulling resistant social psychological health internal to Clique Busters, and adequate membership screening.

Possible options include sustaining Clique Busters as a Transactional Analysis social environment internally, and on the horizon the hopes of future interaction on the frontiers of advanced automated Sociometry.

In an untrustworthy society, everyone must tow the line in order to make connections and gain defensive allies in order to inspire fear in potential enemies. No one wants to be isolated and singled out. But genuine freedom of association requires that no one needs to be liked by everyone or feared by anyone. In the words of Adlai Ewing Stevenson: “A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.” Civility must be extend to all. Alas, this is all to rare. 

The Youth Culture Awareness Main Page cites School Bully Report 4/00 : 

A recent report issued by Duke University psychologists revealed that bullies are among the most popular boys in school from the fourth through sixth grade. The researchers surveyed teachers and male students in 59 classrooms from rural, suburban and inner-city schools in Chicago and North Carolina..  They explored the effect of bullying of classmates, which is often undetected or unpunished by school staff, on victims and innocent bystanders.  Duke University psychologist Philip Rodkin, lead author of the study that was published in the January issue of Developmental Psychology and other psychologists worry that popular bullies may be less likely to change their behavior than unpopular bullies because it works so well for them.  "These boys may internalize the idea that aggression, popularity and control naturally go together, and they may not hesitate to use physical aggression as a social strategy because it has always worked," Rodkin said. "But there will come a point in these boys' lives when this turns from an adaptive and fun to a lonely and potentially dangerous characteristic."  Parents may also unwittingly contribute to the problem by accepting or even encouraging aggressive behavior as long as their children are popular, Fisher said. 

    • Developmental Victimology

But, clearly, the break down of the adaptation Rodkin is counting upon does not always so reliably come to pass. Because the time tested tactics and patterns of the serial bully remain viable, unchecked and even highly successful in all manner of adult social context, none the least of which are the work place and even, most alarmingly, world affairs. 

Schoolyard bullies, after all, face a far greater statistical probability of growing up to become common criminals. Unless, of course, they are slick enough for Politics.

"Explain cliques and their mean maneuvers to your child as in terms of power and control, not friendship." Yes, indeed, and, or else, children, do explain it to your obtuse parents! "It is amazing just how diabolical these clique divas can be." Girls use a different kind of weapon: Parenting solutions for girlish scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility. 

 

Who will find themselves conveniently discarded once thoroughly pillaged of opportune connections for social climbing? What manipulative lengths of devious and unscrupulous self-serving advantage finally skirt the boundaries of covert relational bullying? With the requisite, of course, of any personal acquaintance for access to begin with, one cynical tactic of social dominance is that which is sometimes called: "friend thievery", beyond ambiguity of manners and mores, raising every specter of dramatic and ethical conflict from motivations of jealousy, dishonesty and exploitation and depending upon what lengths anyone ever goes to, even simply for excitement just to forestall sheer boredom.

    •Girl Talk: Why Do Girls Slut Shame Each Other? Answer: fear of competition

    •voices From The Hellmouth from the Geek-Profiling dept.  

    •More from the Hellmouth: Kids tell about rage.

    •hellmouth.org

 

   Screams from Society "The Student As Nigger" The Columbine Massacre  Geeks R Us

The Case Against Schools Alienation In The Life Of Students WHY NERDS ARE UNPOPULAR

Bullying Online and Offline 

I myself have found flamers and character assassins Online as Offline so irksome, tiresome and repetitive that, in order to save time I have finally simply compiled a stock answers to their distortions and accusations, into The Completely Inane and tiresome Ad Hominem FAQ for FoolQuest.com 

But I am not the only one who can attest the matter is frequently far more serious and dangerous than that.

The formerly distant and impersonal Internet may be encroaching and closing in, faster than we think. "Perpetrators of social ills like bullying or stalking tend to use whatever media are available." Now, even text messaging on mobile phones. And here is a  parody (I hope!) warning of the abuse of Online resources in the perpetuation of sinister cause.

After all, there are already thriving communities of spite, not just cutting edge Web-tech in the dark service of ubiquitous Neo Nazis and various and sundry other legions of angry kooks, but forums of revenge, cyber-vandalism and, of course, just petty flaming. Not long suppressed, always testing to see just how much they can get away with, the stages of hostility steadily escalate from preaggressive behavior of inroads and encroachment upon personal boundaries indifferent towards the rights of another and generation of a hostile social environment, into whatever individual or collective pattern of overt and covert hostility.

Already for decades now on the Internet, flamers, short for for flaming assholes, have engaged in flaming, which is short for enflaming others with rage, that may consist of harassment, baiting, cyberstalking, disruption of forums, character defamation, malicious evil gossip, cyber-libel, slander against reputation, scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility, like manipulative strangers with candy, the trollish exploitation of confidence, harassment and sheer ventilation of Sadism, internationally ubiquitous or closer to home. But take the survey.

Prevailing guidelines for flaming, such as they are, scarcely constitute any embodiment of Critical Thinking, as flaming seeks to obstruct and subvert rational discourse of any kind. The mentality of flaming is iniquitous, in that being anti-critical, flaming does not seek to state, define or redress grievance or injustice reasonably or even press cogent criticism. Rather, the stated methodology of flamers is the highly subjective and flexible identification of unworthy classes of individuals, inferior beings, intrinsically deserving of abuse and provocation.

Or the evaluation of the quality and worth of expression of others according to the flamer's highly subjective and self-indulgent criteria, in order to rationalize lashing out at will, according to the morally bankrupt historically Fascist ideology of true honesty achieved only by the abandonment of all Civility and decency. But, far from unflinching honesty, flaming is predicated upon aggravation via unrelenting topic irrelevancy, the determined intent of drowning out signal with noise making heat without light and tends to be rationalized by victim blaming, scapegoating and defamation, one way or another. The awkward stigma and suffering of outcast state, social isolation, unpopularity, even involuntary celibacy, is typically most roundly mocked and virulently reviled by the very serial Relational Bullies and relentless character assassins who so often deliberately cause or exacerbate the problem in the first place with such utter impunity. Of course they will resent the target of bullying the more should nevertheless they ever succeed, romantically or otherwise, than when they only fail. To deny injustice and gloat about it, all in the same breath, flaming, in short, is the Online application of standard historically Nazi anarchic diversionary tactics, Sadistic persecution and self serving rationalizations thereof. 

But flamers can be of any particular political alignment or none at all. Indeed, the logic of flamers, such as it is, may begin from their pointless taunting of such tempting targets as obnoxious flaming Neo Nazis, repressive religious Fundamentalists, charlatans, hustlers and USENET kooks. But then the field rapidly expands to become all encompassing so as to make anyone at all, fair game for flaming, at least in the twisted thinking of the flamers. Only so long as they can get away with it. 

All of this is consistent with Anton Levay's fashionably depraved assertions of vengeance as any sort of a moral compass, that are actually immoral deception, having nothing to do with any simply amoral individual liberation and, indeed, can be nothing but a license to actout, omitting as they do any value of justice or proportion whatsoever. For all such is but the ongoing distortion of Nietzsche that began, historically, with his exploitative Nazi sister! Remember, Nietzsche, after all, despised Altruism and Persecution, equally, as Ecclesiastical vanity, Zen futile worldly attachment, snares and threats to autonomy. But the post-Nazi likes of notoriously Devil Worshiping Anton Levay, not only flamers, specifically, but bullies in general, often actually advance Sadomasochism as self realization, or at least on par with any other Hedonism. 

After all, any success in manipulation of the target of flaming, any response at all, for whatever reason, indeed anything short of somehow or other successfully barring or driving the target of abuse away or driving them into silence one way or another, is considered by flamers to embody consent on the part of their target to further abuse, according to Anton LaVey's puerile and facile Satanist Sophistry and Apologetics for Sadomasochism that bald facedly equates predation and baiting with courtship between informed and desiring individuals.

And by similar repulsive logic, often targets of bullying conditioned into passive resignation by the school authorities are then considered better adjusted, because, otherwise, if they still react, then they are thought to be bringing it upon themselves. But, of course, by contrast with any physical intimidation or attack etc. in Real Life Offline, flamers are quick to point out that Online with flaming, far less is at stake. However, this may be deceptive, as flaming may serve to brand the target for scheming and masterfully socially adept disruptive Relational Bullying, defamation, ostracism and further incitement to and co-validation of all manner of harassment and abuse, Online or Offline. 

Nevertheless, no different than bullies in general, there remains the one thing alone that still stops flamers dead in their tracks. And that is Civility, manifest as the moral indignation and disapproval of bystanders (instead of the all to common apathy) against the sheer ugly discourtesy, as bad form and uncool. Or the disapproval may also be effective coming from an authority figure such as a forum Moderator. Indeed, Even though, at any moment and under any circumstances, anyone may be pressed and cowed into hesitation and silence for fear that to speak up may reflect poorly, exercise futility, bring adverse consequences or even do harm, the spell of bystander apathy and social loafing can be broken by the example and assertive honesty of even a single Good Samaritan. But, otherwise, cowardice and apathy of the public or effective secrecy that conceals abuse or, indeed, anything at all less than staunch Civility at all, comes to the flamers, as to any other cliques of bullies, as tacit approval from society, thus enablement and impunity for abusers. Because, being devoid of actual conscience, heteronymous amoral sociopaths actually tend to be all the more mortified by miss stepping into simple faux pas. That is their weakness. 

And all that is really needed for the introduction Civility into a culture, is a few plants in the crowd. A way of teaching in the field by demonstration. In turn leading to consensus building for moral suasion. The Clique Busters concept, Online or Offline, is about the covert engineering and orchestration of Civility and even the exposure of bullies and their cliques with intervention and counterpropaganda. 

 

 

 

Everyone gossips, but malicious gossip and name calling

in particular, have special conspiratorial and anticompetitive adversative mode of Memetics:

There is tremendous advantage in hypocrisy, being: the imposition of constrictive norms that diminish fitness to thrive and are difficult and costly for others to violate, but not you. The fundamental types and tactics of bullying populating the bullying circle, consist, if not of violence out right or at least intimidation, then even well orchestrated harassment, bullying mimesis,  scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility, isolation, ostracism, protractedly escalating of syndromes of shunning and mobbing, ambient or stealth abuse. by disruptive pranks, peer pressure and evil gossip towards isolation and ostracism.

Beyond proselytizing, consistency, consensual validation and demonization to rationalize all manner of abuse, bullying memes employ what Aaron Lynch has dubbed the adversative mode of memetics, effective sabotage in of suppression against all dissent, the attacking and/or undermining opponents and competing thoughts. Since it may also frighten many nonhosts into silence, an adversative mode memplex is such as will be predatory upon competing memes. Indeed, a sufficient level of bullying and intimidation will suffice to silence and parallelize opposing culture. Moreover, likely opponents, less proximate to nexus of cliquish interaction and power, and hence any harder to intimidate can always be kept in the dark, even as repressive elements expand outwards and increase in their strength and number.

For, to paraphrase Sun Tzu, malicious gossip is like water, flowing to the lowest places, and avoiding the high moral ground. Or like an electric spark to excite the evil doer, passing between the readiest conductors, while avoiding the insulation of morality or credulity. Such is the memetic vectorization of malicious gossip and highly organized mean spirited conspiracy characteristic of typical adversative mode memes.

One standard strategy of bullies is simply to persistently propagate hate speech about the targeted person in order to incite hostility by any disturbed personalities or fanatics. Bullies can often be hard to identify and oppose due to their two-facedness, as well as the power connections they've established. Such bullies are devious manipulative consummate liars. And, often, it may even take low guile to thwart low guile. And therefore, as to the place of and the need for low guile, in the good fight, it does well to remember how George Bernard Shaw reported no pang of conscience what so ever, in pointing the fox hunters in entirely the wrong direction after the frightened quarry dashed by before his very eyes. And as much can be said of the righteous who gulled the Nazis at every opportunity to protect the persecuted. Even courageous Pacifism must draw a demarcation line from sheer spineless conflict aversion.

Not long suppressed, always testing to see just how much they can get away with, the stages of hostility steadily escalate from preaggressive behavior of inroads and encroachment upon personal boundaries indifferent towards the rights of another and generation of a hostile social environment, into whatever individual or collective pattern of overt and covert hostility. The name calling and innuendo of bullying typically denigrates the individual, attacking appearance as strange, unattractive or provocative, impugning upon sexuality as eager, inept, immoral, predatory or strange and deviant, while mocking the very luzerly suffering inflicted by bullying and all social isolation thereby exacerbated. In the words of Sonya Barnett at the very first SlutWalk in Toronto: “Enough of being told that we should be ashamed of ourselves, ashamed of our appearance, ashamed of our pleasure and ashamed of being victimized.”

 

When to hold your tongue: Is it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary?

“Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.”  — Elbert Hubbard

Free thought and expression are rightly to be prized, especially the candid and impersonal exchange of the most brutally honest criticism and even however controversial, but also the frivolous gossip that is such a part of human "primate grooming rituals" and consensual validation, the corroboration of reality by comparison of one's own perceptions and concerns with those of others, even anecdote so revelatory of character. Everyone gossips, but malicious gossip, in particular, has special conspiratorial and anticompetitive adversative mode of Memetics. And here is the rub. Because the most vulgar gossip partakes of the same ambiguity as teasing, that in good humor either are harmless (not to be taken seriously by anyone of sound judgment or good character mindful to the recognition and modification of distortions) and even caring and inclusive, but, just as with actually hostile teasing, in malicious evil gossip via any medium or in any context, slander against reputation, Cyber-libel, internationally ubiquitous or closer to home, all constitutes exclusion by means of devily scheming, slippery and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility, raising ugly passions, sowing confusion and instigating harassment outright, even violence.

As the saying goes, let us strive, always, to take things in whatever spirit as intended: Indeed, even for gossip, there can always be higher caliber and greater substance in loftier intention attended upon with better sensitivity. Beyond mere empty idle gossip there is always the unburdening of oneself by crucially purposeful consultation in the resolution of personnel issues with others. But we must remain ever mindful of sliding into sheer gossip, guilty minded time consuming idle talk or rumor, especially as concerning the personal or private affairs of others, worst of all in vengeful hostility and reproach of perceived shortcomings, all behind another's back; typically stirring up strife, far from ever hoping to gaining insight and working things out. Cronyistic backbiting and  scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility undermine reputation and hence the quest for recognition, obscuring the true character and value of the target of bullying from public perception, assuring as a consequence, social isolation and powerless unmet needs, generally preventing redistribution of opportunity. Bullies often seek to pro-socially characterize the targeting of an individual for defamatory malicious gossip and backbiting as raising an alarm howsoever warning others in the community about said hapless individual presumably deemed undesirable in light of whatever slander or else by sheer mean spirited petty and picayune peevishness. Exactly thus, even in grade school, the rational for bullying may already evoke a sort of bush-league vigilantism. In truth, however, though it is no longer so easy to seize ones neighbors' property by accusing them of witchcraft, the must virulent slander and ostracism often comes from romantic rivals for the same romantic prospects, or those who have borrowed money from their hapless target, now reluctant to pay it back except in the currency of heaping ever fresh abuse!

.com

In plot,"unity of action," Sequence and Logic, but according to the Zen, distinctly from dharma, dealing in morally neutral physical problems and classifications of causality, karma is the psychological and sociological causality pertaining to human interaction, actually neither so universal nor measurable as to qualify as an actual physical law, yet nevertheless, the highly consistent and observable tendency for good effects to result from good causes: skill, prudence and benevolence, and bad effects to result from bad causes: malice, incompetence and stupidity. A rational percept of compassionate responsibility grounded in foreseeable consequence, taken no less seriously in Judeo-Christian thinking. -In modern terms and context, that bullying is unsafe. And this is in no way limited to such abuse as violence and harassment outright, but applies to the entire range of underhanded covert relational hostility and even ordinary thoughtlessness, all profoundly karmic.

• Negative and positive communication in social networks  

"Judge not lest ye be judged" [MATTHEW 7:1-5] is the famed scriptural admonition to those ever among us least fit to judge yet most eager to do so, not to silence those actually injured by wrongdoing, needing comfort and succor, at all knowing firsthand whereof they complain. For we all remember what the Good Book tells us about appearances (at least anyone who has ever channel surfed in on the climax of 'The Man With the X-Ray Eyes'): "If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out." - [MATTHEW 18:9] Indeed: "Believe nothing you hear, and only half of what you see." For to begin with, it is the mind and not they eye that sees. And hearsay first traveling through the minds of however many others, isn't even the product of ones own individual thinking.

Herodotus observed: "A man calumniated is doubly injured -- first by him who utters the calumny, and then by him who believes it." Any medium so vulnerably unguarded as the proverbial grapevine, is so easily subverted by power mad attention craving liars and instigators without scruple, no values of truth or justice, no sense of responsibility and not the slightest concern for the awful damage they bring about.

A concise scriptural selection on evil gossip is further elaborated in The Mouth that Roared and the calumny of evil gossip, particularly as false witness received into bureaucratic due process, is testified to in FAMILY ABUSE!

Prophet Muhammad said :“Do you know what backbiting is?” They said, “God and His Messenger know best.” He then said, “It is to say something about your brother that he would dislike.” Someone asked him, “But what if what I say is true?” The Messenger of God said, “If what you say about him is true, you are backbiting him, but if it is not true then you have slandered him.” (Muslim)

Backbiting (gheebah), then, means abuse, callous, deliberate harmful libel or defamation, even in mere mention behind the subjects back, in their absence, but of course, not neutral information, innocently intended. However, according to Islam, one who has suffered injustice seeking redress, is exempt, as is inquiry into pertinent information as to the reliability of others, pertaining to ones actual dealings with others, particularly with regard to outcomes of litigation and court rulings, all a legitimate inquiry of reputation, let alone the exchange of intelligence upon enemies actually presenting a clear and present danger. Backbiters are well advised to amend their ways and seek the forgiveness from the ones harmed. For backbiters are said to take upon themselves a thousand fold, whatever trifles and venial sins of those whom they have maligned and who are thereby cleansed thereof. And that makes sense, because one who, one way or another, effectively seeks vengeance or to pass judgment over such empty grudges in all disproportion and with no redeeming purpose, at the very least, certainly ought to forfeit the right to complain any further about it.

Indeed, likewise, Confidentiality in Jewish Law and "OOPS! I SHOULDN'T SAY THIS... OR SHOULD I?" specify the distinct moral obligation neither to receive nor to transmit bad-mouthing for fear of the destructive and unclean fallout dust (la-ashon ha-rah), poisonous exhalations of second hand heresy, ever, except in such case of clear and present danger wherein the prudent moral obligation becomes actually to make and/or take heed of any warning altruistically motivated simply in order to actually guard against whatever genuine danger and harm. But an untrustworthy society tends exactly to the reverse, brutally enforcing modest silence but only regarding serious problems exactly by means of clamorous alarm over trifles and lies, as well attested in Deviant Women in Early Modern England.

“If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.”  —  Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Leviticus 19:16 admonishes against deadly self serving self advancement by the circulation of slander by vigorous tale bearing that then only motivates the hearers to heartless idle bystander apathy and leave their neighbors, shunned, pariah, alone and falsely maligned without recourse, in whatever circumstances or situations as unfold, to fend for themselves even for their very lives or those of others important to them, as connectivity to their world and every vital resource, comes apart at the seams, crashing down around them. In the words of St. Bernard: "Slander is a poison which kills charity, both in the slanderer and the one who listens." And I should know:

My own ability to help someone very dear to me and embroiled in a long and escalating cycle of dysfunction, exploitation and abuse, was vastly diminished by my own social isolation induced by willful and orchestrated calumny. No one even suspected much less appreciated my struggle to help protect her very life as it turned out, much less to befriend and assist, because of shunning and mobbing driven by conspiratorial evil gossip, envy and great whopping lies. And so, finally, grieving the loss of a close relative, she was destroyed, as far as I can make out, literally bullied into a fatal heart attack by another truly malignant relative standing to inherit. And her death was even that much more unnecessary and avoidable, only were I not so entirely left to my own devices and my life not under such unremitting attack. I had no one to turn to, no one to reach out to for insight, no resources of any help.

Ongoing abuse doesn't only harm the target of abuse, but those who witness and live in fear with that abuse. Every alternate possibility of outcome in 20/20 hindsight, depends upon better outreach on my part for connection to help and support from any more expansive social network, in short, upon me being popular and connected. I often wished that I could just phone up central casting and surround myself with staunch social "proof" (informational social influence) in my own support and reliable good influences for her to role model, functional adult expectations and emotional support without the conditionality to which she was all too acustomed. She was always curious to to meet anyone coming into my orbit. Social cues where what she was most responsive to. Whereas interpersonally, she was prone to ambivalence and inertia. What she needed in order to develop the wherewithal better to begin steadily overcoming conflict aversion and cope with all that was to come, was the consistency of inclusion in any more functional and uplifting web of support, with functional expectations and autonomy support instead of the insecure conditionality and codependence to which she was accustomed. But I could not share with her what was never within reach for myself, in no small part because of envious Relational Bullies running such constant interference to prevent it. But shielded in hypocrisy, they will never be called to account for the incalculable harm they do by fraying the very fabric of society only in order to monopolize all connection fir themselves and make all other beholden to them as self appointed gate keepers. Bullying is unsafe. Harassment is frightening and debilitating. Slander is deadly. Calumny and ostracism are often lethal.

Bullying is not only incessant and ever escalating, but therefore completely open ended in its cascade of sheer bad karma, confluence of cumulatively mounting unfavorable circumstances, terminal clusterfuck. There are no limits of moderation. And petty conspiratorial campaigns of shameless slander and malignant hate speech are only the beginning overture. Slander may be said to be murder with words, resulting in social death. But the utter destruction of an individual by incessant bullying, can and all too often does, one way or another, end in actual physical death. The sabotage with impunity, the predation and social network terrorism, that is bullying, produces the added painful hardship and impassible obstacle to bring about the tipping point of tragedy for the already vulnerable typically targeted for bullying.

One problem with any traditional strict injunction upon gossip, is resultant rejection, stifling and willful deafness to gossip as it swirls around one, failure to perceive and to address problems, missed opportunity to render vital assistance in any functional web of support. Gossip is the medium of reputation and accountability, the means by which one hopes to know what to expect of others, even the most idle curiosity that remains the medium of compassion, a call to alarm and assistance amongst friends and neighbors in trouble. Alas, however, how readily the proverbial grape vine, so completely unshielded, is infected and infested with dishonesty and malice, then locking up and failing to provide equal time for rebuttal;. The problem is that the individual listener is still burdened with the responsibility to filter such inputs as gossip, to search out reliable sources at all, and to judge and observe when gossip is telling us more about the speaker than anything else! So don't 'drink the Kool-Aid': Cognitive dissonance not withstanding, if the sensation of peer pressure stifles the voicing even of begged questions, then it's not actually the person under discussion that the hearer truly fears.

But noting is as insidiously perilous than constant deviously scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility in which different people are manipulatively misdirected, intimidated, prevented and discouraged from contact. It will be important, therefore, to speak truth to power, to thwart malicious gossip by organizing campaigns of countergossip, befriending and sticking up for the unjustly maligned and slandered, while discretely facilitating networking, communication and eventual interaction between individuals who would not otherwise have the opportunity, and to teach others the habit likewise. At the very least, targets of cliquish isolation and manipulation are better off with any crucial opportunity simply to compare notes. After all: If your not supposed to talk to me, then what am I not supposed top tell you?!

For in order to advance their standing, bullies may lay in wait for others to slip up. Ah, but bullying itself is no faux pas, precisely because it is maliciously deliberate. Of course, this flies in the face of the opposing ideals of civility, where in, on the contrary, honor and esteem accrue in actually helping one another to save face, especially in matters of little moment. To begin with, social grace is simply not the enforcement of custom. Social grace is like ballroom dancing, wherein the consummate skill and dexterity is in making others, no matter actually how awkward, feel graceful.

When a cult-like clique of bullies engages in mass opinion making, building themselves up and targeting scapegiats and rivals for deviously scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility, isolation, ostracism, protractedly escalating of syndromes of shunning and mobbing, ambient or stealth abuse, such cliques of bullies only disseminates selected (dis)information at such time and circumstance as they choose, and lead the target of propaganda indoctrination along in a group environment they control, so that one never is availed of any opportunity to look too closely at the big picture, particularly such that no one in their right mind and good conscience could ever fall for!

No less than any emotional vulnerability, such uncritical acceptance as above once achieved may tend to leave one vulnerable to well known and standard Methods Used in Brainwashing.

Undisciplined mentation simply follows the pattern of whatever habits and ideas have been absorbed first. And bullying simply panders to insecure impulsiveness, sinking even deeper into coercion, manipulation and lying, only magnifying the specious illogic of insecure impulsiveness from sheer projection in the sense not only of the specific classic denial mechanism of the observer's own emotions, but more generally, the somewhat unthinking figuratively Solipsistic lack of imagination to simply assume that the nature of all things and people is generally little different from ones own. And amoral sociopathic patterns such as bullying color perception and behavior even further by adding to such Narcissism an even more deeply depraved indifference to others, which is also so helpful in lying convincingly.

However, Critical Thinking, by contrast, seeks better judgment by striving to take everything into account, including itself, in order to be self correcting. Critical Thinking rests upon sound interpretation of written text; the well-balanced, coherent composition; the lucid comprehension of all what one hears about and experiences oneself; and the persuasive argument. Critical Thinking must rest upon proficient reasoning skills that can assure competency in inference, as well as upon proficient inquiry, concept-formation, and the cognitive skills to render ideas from one form, function, or context to another, and also to recognize that which may be lost in translation thereby.

Of course, as the saying goes, always consider the source. All manner of self serving should also be questioned, as a perennial motive for slander and abuse. For, as the old saying goes, "believe nothing you hear, and only half of what you see." Indeed, there may even be surprising insight buried amid the spewing bile of sheer spite, beyond just (quite rightly forbidden) acceptance at face value, for the careful and analytic listener to follow up and investigate for themselves. 

If encouraging Critical Thinking can improve life, it will be because Critical Thinking increases the quantity and quality of meaning that individuals derive from what they perceive and also that which they will be apprised of second hand, that they express, and how they then will actively respond, to deviously scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility, evil gossip or anything else. Who does a serious and competent biographer interview as authoritative? Those who strive to isolate first themselves, not to mention everyone else, from whomever the biographer's subject? Surely such would fall more into the preview of a mythographer.

The proposed 'Vulcan Master' TV game show is conceived as an effort to help popularize Critical Thinking.

 

counterpropaganda/countergossip 

“A friend is a person who says nice things about you behind your back.”

Of course, Clique Busters ultimately aims at building effective and open consensus against bullying. At any moment and under any circumstances, anyone may be pressed and cowed into hesitation and silence for fear that to speak up may reflect poorly, exercise futility, bring adverse consequences or even do harm. But at some point, we must speak out for Clique Busters to begin propagating culturally. That is why protest and counterpropaganda attack operations are also key to Clique Busters, Online, by flyers, buttons, other handouts, eye witness video and word of mouth. Yes, consciousness raising and orchestrated countergossip,  expanding counter-mimesis and with a vengeance! And this may necessarily entail that bullies may come to experience dystress from harsh public criticism of their behavior. The bullies, after all, are to be pitied, having scorned every true friend to teach them right from wrong. And some one must arise to tell them "no". 

But, in that case, what is hoped will distinguish Clique Busters counterpropaganda from the bullies own repertoire of defamation? In a word, justice. Instead of the kill-joy of abrupt intervention without resolution, instead, civility to subvert bullying mimesis by involvement with dramatic meaning and honest moral value beyond the impunity of bystander apathy that only panders to scapegoating.

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The awkward stigma and suffering of outcast state, social isolation, unpopularity, even involuntary celibacy, is typically most roundly mocked and virulently reviled by the very serial Relational Bullies and relentless character assassins who so often deliberately cause or exacerbate the problem in the first place with such utter impunity. Of course serial bullies will typically only resent the target of bullying the more should nevertheless they ever succeed, romantically or otherwise, than when they only fail. The implicit sophistry, twisted logic and hypocritical selectively applied impossibly high standard of scapegoating and victim blaming, is that should any flaw whatsoever ever be found in any individual's social skills, the manner in which they interact with others in groups, therefore any level or tactics of hostilities against them become, if not moral and actually socially constructive, then at least at all understandable. And furthermore, whenever anyone is thusly singled out, that may be taken as an indication that naturally the problem resides with their social skills and such. Such perverse common sense only needs to be spelled out, as often and repeatedly as necessary, in order thereby to collapse under its own weight of corruption and cowardly indifference. For the plain intent is simply that the vulnerable at any time, should fall by the wayside, beaten and discarded, as an example to others to timidly content themselves with repression and exploitation. "Look what you made us do!" complain the bullies...

Not mere criticism, but truthful grievance, is the motive of CliqueBusters goal put forth not merely of dominance, but of moral victory and value. -And certainly not martyrdom: Never should perfectly truthful targets of bullying have to fear sounding crazy or pathetic ever again!

 

Tactics for undermining petty demagoguery

A speaker who starts by forthrightly explaining how he wants his audience to respond may be said to practice the most honest and transparent techniques of direct persuasion. But if, instead, other cues are utilized to demonstrate and inculcate the desired "correct" validated frame of response, this is nothing more than somewhat heavy handed Behavior Modification and suggestion building up mounting peer pressure.

 

For example, even the most trivial and picayune and even utterly boring, prosaic narratives may be delivered in the most hushed dramatic tones of incredulity, ridicule and outrage. After all, a petty peeve may incorporate some particle of truth, but it remains picayune and must be exposed, ridiculed and denounced as such. In such event, CliqueBusters should invite others to listen from hiding to any such scenario, and then infiltrate by first joining in to feign approval and amplify the loud-mouth bully, who will be at first delighted, but then, to the loud mouthed bully's horror, shifting into raucous parody, all before the gales of uproarious laughter from the audience that the Clique Busters have brought in tow to help make fools of the petty bullies. Covert video recording can then be deployed in extensive follow up counterpropaganda to the effect that whatever evil gossip accusations against the target of bullying tend to be so utterly without merit as to be laughable, and that there is always, in persecution, impunity, a manifest crisis of real accountability.

 

Of course, defamation tends to unfold behind the back of the target and/or may be sprung on the undefended target of bullying by surprise, and so response may be difficult. Hence, effective covert infiltration monitoring of the cliques of enemy bullies is requisite, as is support and defense of the target of bullying, for any intelligence gathering and counter-operations culminating in a sting to turn the tables on the bullies and liars. Dramatic "tisk-tisk" shock and great relish expressed in the exchange of evil gossip often serves to render it somehow surprising, conclusive, damning and the more humiliating. Of course, evil gossip quickly becomes self validating, as does the typical McCarthy style bureaucratic manufacture of fraudulent information. Both patterns are similarly characterized by a mob mentality and transfer of individual responsibility for all statement and action. Of course, all evil gossip and McCarthyistic abuse of process as often accompanies the most thoroughly orchestrated harassment, should be quickly repackaged and emphatically disseminated by Clique Busters into righteously indignant counter-accusations of kangaroo court, ambient or stealth abuse. malicious evil gossip and pernicious lying.

 

Often, blithe argument against whatever misunderstanding may, by eliciting whatever the same decoding error or falling back upon whatever the same faulty background information assumptions, even seemingly confirm, compound and reinforce the same confusion. The more so, then, when cunningly inveigled into futile struggle with deliberate and malicious distortion.

 

In the words of G. C. Lichtenberg "The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted." Indeed, a standard technique of lying and defamation is to take anything out of context. But the lie may then even be exposed by restoring whatever omitted salient detail, unless, of course, all such rebuttal is obstructed, shouted down, or buried. And, again, false context and bias may even be manufactured by the Big Lie of sheer suggestion, strong peer pressure combined with Appeal to Spite, as when utterly dishonest and hostile interpretation is presented as preface to bias quotations and citations from the target of bullying, ostensibly damned in their own words. Indeed, such bias and suggestion in propaganda are well known to often override even the evidence of the senses, let alone Critical Thinking! Any response then becomes difficult and complicated, on the defensive, relying upon an appeal to reason and demanding of others to get beyond the great flourish of presentation and actually scrutinize for themselves whatever purported evidence in question before them, to see if indeed it at all even supports or corresponds to the distorted allegations at all. By the time the truth is at all dragged into the light, it will be hard work to sustain anyone's exhausted patience in order to regain the initiative and evoke moral outrage against the lying bullies.

 

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Hence, the target may be faced with a most calamitous dilemma of either getting sucked in to a cycle of attrition and exhaustion or else of passively abandoning all defense against the most damaging covert relational hostility and defamatory character assassination. It is in such event that Clique Busters intervention and support can be crucial, to regain presentation and context of whatever quotations and citations, restore accuracy, expose distortion and regain initiative and reverse scapegoating, better if quickly, before public opinion firms and sets. 

 

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” — Mark Twain

 

Character Assassination, covert relational hostility and manipulations in society: 

After all, at any moment and under any circumstances, anyone may be pressed and cowed into hesitation and silence for fear that to speak up may reflect poorly, exercise futility, bring adverse consequences, reprisal, or even simply do harm. The lower are the standards of Critical Thinking and justice, the more indistinct, exaggerated and picayune may be the grudges held against the target of bullying in evil gossip. Not liking someone else's vibe, for little particular reason, is often all the self justification a belligerent bully ever needs, just so long as they are never called to account and expect to get away with it all, one way or another. There is tremendous advantage in hypocrisy, being: the imposition of constrictive norms that diminish fitness to thrive and are difficult and costly for others to violate, but not you.

Indeed, the mentality of Bullyspeak, such as wherein the actingout of every petty animosity is discussed and encouraged as if that where the most reasonable thing on Earth! Within the dynamic of their cliques, the bullies, in their fragile Narcissism, co-validate in manipulating themselves away from Critical Thinking and empathy, and to condition people, unconsciously, to become uneasy in the presence of a target of bullying that they seek to ostracize, bullies will haunt their prey, raising tension in the vicinity every time their hapless quarry is ever present. Such instigation is a manipulation of herd instinct which is part of a clique's standard Affinity Scam as well as Persecutor-Rescuer headgames.

But more than this, there is always the bully's repertoire of dirty tricks: Deviously, the deviously scheming and masterfully socially adept Relational Bully casts a chilling effect, the threatening pall of humiliation to intimidate others from connecting with one another, typically separating the targets of isolation by exclusion from all others and especially the targets of isolation and exploitation within the peer group, and to prevent them from comparing notes and helping one another in standing up to and ever overcoming the bullies. And, in addition, by harassment of the target of bullying, he or she can be made so upset or frightened as to seem vaguely threatening to others who are kept in the dark and out of context. That is another reason why bullies often resort to sly practical jokes that they hope will not be perceived by apathetic bystanders and social loafers.  

Lastly, the gulf which is cultivated by deviously scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility, peer pressure, ostracism, dehumanizing Character Assassination and bigotry, exacerbates isolating and paralytic tension which thus becomes self validating. Of course, ridicule and abuse against the underdog are enough to encourage imitation, unless, instead of prevailing apathetic social loafing, such provoke immediate bystander or authoritative honest outrage.

Cult-like cliques do not serve merely isolate their own membership within. Rather, cliquish cronyism seeks control of connection between others entirely so that all others must curry their favor, tribute which they must be systematically refused. Even beyond ostracism against and social isolation of any individual target of bullying most particularly, deviously scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility and abuse of power often more generally employs manipulative intimidation divisively in order to keep other people or even groups or classes of people, all separate from on another, in ongoing sabotage, under any pretext or taboo, undermining competing social cohesion outside the oppressive dominant clique. Therefore CliqueBusters must also network and collaborate in order to monitor covert relational hostility and provide intentional social context and backchannels in order actually even to orchestrate contact and communication, not only for targets ofdeviously scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility, but for everyone else as well, in order systematically to mend all connection and outreach continually undermined by relentless Relational Bullies.

 

 

Does the devious practice of covert relational hostility fall within freedom of association? 

CERTAINLY NOT! 

The entire point of covert relational hostility is ambient or stealth abuse to obstruct, subvert and misdirect consenting association. Relational Bullying is not an expression of the bully's freedom of association. What a pernicious lie to ever suggest that it ever could be! Rather, covert relational hostility intentionally robs the target of their freedom of association, thereby making very broad adverse impact. 

"The rain it raineth every day
Upon the just and unjust fella
But more upon the just, because
The unjust has the just's umbrella"

There is tremendous advantage in hypocrisy, being: the imposition of constrictive norms that diminish fitness to thrive and are difficult and costly for others to violate, but not you. Putting someone at a comparatively unfair disadvantage, or by unfair means, is robbing them. Woody Allen said that “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” But not for targeted individuals of serial covert relational hostility and ostracism. It's worse than invisibility!  The social technology of Clique Busters proactively aims at the inception of a procedure that will motivate exposure of the truth and fan the flames of social and individual justice.

A good test for the identification of a clique of bullies is to persist in asking for explanation of their hostility in terms of objective reality and fairness. To insist to know what actually happened, and how and in what sense did their target ever wronged them. If the questioner is simply brushed off or scorned, then the bullies have been identified. However, by the same token, the questioning skeptic is endangered, exposed to the bullies. 

But to actually learn the whole truth, another more devious approach is indicated:
When stroked, these braggarts will spill their guts uncontrollably, of all they'd never admit under any duress. So desperate are they for Existential Validation. All that is required is feigned Sadistic approval! Indeed, questioning skeptics may even that easily restore their safety and anonymity, by simply pretending to change sides! 

Indeed, in order to avoid giving cues and contaminating the results, employ an emotionally loaded semi-coherent incomplete sentence as a projective test, just such as may be contrived to illicit response to exactly such ambiguous stimuli. Then humor the subject, feigning enthusiastic agreement to reinforce whatever answer as tumbles forth in response.

The Clique Busters Zen, the moral bottom line, is, if you came upon abuse of whatever sort, the act, preparation, or the conspiracy, might you ever hide and listen, to warn the intended victim or even to bear witness publicly and in protest? Might you ever go so far as to humor the wrong doers just to pump them for details by which to implicate themselves? And would you ever plan on doing any of this sort of thing deliberately? -Especially if you could rely upon good logistical support...

And, of course, the bullies' targets must also be contacted and interviewed, then warned about the bullies' evil plans. Not to mention anyone else involved or just witnesses bystanding.

 

Psychological warfare and covert relational hostility via organized orchestrated harassment

 

In peer pressure, hesitancy and doubt elicited along with cognitive dissonance and bystander apathy via calumny together with actual fear of reprisal, none dare be seen responding or offering comfort to a target of bullying in palpable distress, neglected for long durations. Few even look upon, make eye contact, converse with, or spares so much as a nod and a smile. However defeated and withdrawn, finally at all howsoever rising in whatever extremes protest against more overt bullying, mistreatment and abuse, may be the only means to garner attention. Sometimes the individuals social needs are at all successfully met, even against all odds, but mostly they are thwarted by unrelenting  covert relational hostility. The target of bullying never knows what to expect in such an increasingly hostile social environment. As the bullies transition through mounting stages of hostility, the target of bullying may eventually find themselves finally banned or barred outright from whichever community. Social contacts at all that remain may distance themselves, or become emotionally unavailable because of depression, illness, or even addiction problems.

 

Not long suppressed, always testing to see just how much they can get away with, the stages of hostility steadily escalate from preaggressive behavior of inroads and encroachment upon personal boundaries indifferent towards the rights of another and generation of a hostile social environment, into whatever individual or collective pattern of overt and covert hostility.

Any need whatsoever of maintaining at all plausible appearances and rationalizations will tend to rule out the more overt mimesis of bullying in favor of whatever ambient or stealth abuse secretly or at least deniably. All mature and functional attachments of social relationship under autonomy are ethical, being predicated upon trust and fulfillment of such expectations, lack or abrogation whereof creating distance, even loathing and avoidance, or else ambivalence, mistrust and dysfunction, indeed if not amoral sociopathy outright, then the shattered confidence and compensations thereto of heteronomy. Weak attachment makes for weak conscience. Thus heteronymous deviously scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility and even cult-like fair game tactics working to to undermine those attachments in society, thereby conspire with impunity by means of social exclusion, shunning and mobbing, to harm and endanger the target of exactly such serial bullying. Often protected by abuse of power curried well in advance and usually also coordinated together with a wider disinformation campaign of damaging malicious gossip, an organized campaign of harassment is organized by cliques of amoral sociopathic serial bullies, and deviously orchestrated against the target of bullying. Individual harassment episodes involving a handful of participants are carefully planned and arranged for the isolated and bewildered target of bullying to experience in a social environment thereby turned palpably hostile and frightening. Ambiguous remarks overheard and trivial momentary acts of petty hostility seem not only deniable, but easy even for the target to overlook, except for the defamation and ostracism so menacingly foreshadowed.

For whenever possible, and in whatever social context, cliques of bullies will consistently strive to pressure and estrange all others from the target of bullying. Not only are current friends and acquaintances pressured, but all potential new connections are obstructed or misdirected under any pretexts or by whatever defamation, disruptive dirty tricks ofdeviously scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility, intimidation and intrigues of abuse of power. After all, to be effective, manipulatively intimidating malicious gossip does not need to convince, but only to cast doubt and foment hesitation, in order successfully to isolate any target of all such devious bullying.

Delusions of reference or just hyper vigilant sensitization can make even random proximate events seem to be directly related to the perceiver, as for example it may seem as if people are talking about you specifically, let alone anything so dramatic, fancifully surreal as special personal messages communicated to you personally, through the TV, radio, or other media. Over compensation may take the form of sweet reason, self doubt, denial and dismissal as disturbing misperception and strange coincidence that which later turns out otherwise, when the proverbial second shoe metaphorically drops. The real question may be: Are you paranoid enough?

Gas lighting is typically employed in order to menace, condition and sensitize the target of bullying to certain cues that can be more readily employed to elicit stressful and maddening hyper vigilance in the hapless target of bullying, to make them seem all the more haunted and  undesirable, even in moments or upon occasions when in actuality only a small number of the bullies or unwitting proxies and utter tools are at all available within the harassment perimeter of the target of bullying for the ambient or stealth abuse that is organized gang stalking, and therefore there is no way for the target thereof to know how deeply community based or not.

      Gang Stalking: Psychological Targeting in a Group Setting

•  organized gang stalking: "bullying on steroids"

•  Devious clique diva bully types and tactics populating the bullying circle, are in the use of a different kind of mean maneuvers:

       Parenting solutions for girlish deviously scheming and masterfully slippery and socially adept covert relational hostility.

•  Are You Crazy, or Are You Being Gang Stalked?  

Organized gang stalking is a particular aspect of protractedly escalating syndromes of shunning and mobbing, as by inclusion of covert pursuit and surveillance of a target even while in motion. Modes of gang stalking, multiple stalking, or group stalking, shadowing and menacing include ongoing covert relational hostility towards social isolation of the target unawares, or escalation of psychological warfare into gas lighting. The appellation predatory gang stalking obtains tautologically. Vigilante gang stalking, in petty spite or mounting hysteria, obtains given portrayal of the target as howsoever trivially or monstrously undesirable, lending the persecution thereof thereby a luster and fraudulently self justifying Existential Validation as somehow or other even noble pro-social. Indeed, cause stalking as indeed seen throughout history, obtains in so far as implicit or explicit ideology or politics ever motivates and/or rationalizes any such active hostility, often branding their targets as whatever sort of infidel or deviant.

In whatever particular locations or social context, or even as has. as alleged, been so notoriously captured on video, actually out at large in our neighborhoods on the streets and in public places, depending only, quite literally, how far the perpetrators are actually willing to go, gang stalking may often consist in covert pursuit and surveillance of a target unawares, engaging in slippery and deviously scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility and ostracism by sudden shock and intimation of all bystanders into stunned apathy via whatever threatening abuse of power (physical threat, authority, social standing, whatever), peer pressure and malicious gossip, in order all thereby to socially isolate their target, even while in motion, After all, at any moment and under any circumstances, anyone may be pressed and cowed into hesitation and silence for fear that to speak up may reflect poorly, exercise futility, bring adverse consequences or even do harm.  But then the objective of escalating harassment becoming more brazen, of shadowing and menacing psychological warfare, gas lighting and ambient or stealth abuse in a hostile social environment, is to make the target fearfully and painfully aware they are singled out, completely alone, and constantly vulnerable, via a systematic erosion of personal rights and a constant aggressive campaign in a joint effort to chip away at a targets' emotional wellbeing. -The Sadistic purpose being to control, isolate, intimidate, traumatize, depower, and ultimately destroy a defenseless isolated individual.

Often few outside the ring of bullying perpetrators and their collaborators may even know about the complex abuse and unmerited attention being inflicted upon the targeted individual. Devious surreptitious bullies make sure that by mounting paranoid sensation and finally smug brazen exhibition, the target ends up left without any doubt, knowing full well that they are being watched and harassed, But the target is left with little or no evidence to share with others. Gang stalking is threatening behavior. Many people can be lied to about the target or even coerced into helping to hurt and harm a target psychologically, leavening the target in a poor position ever to trust and reach out to others.

A most alarming sign of rising Fascism, is when Federal law enforcement in the most misguidedly Inductivist search for suspicious activity, reaches out to professional security or even just private citizens, for angry inept assistance in surveillance that becomes foreboding and harassing. Gang stalking has also been known to be locally community based, even with police involvement.  

• Areas to Consider When Researching Gang Stalking   

"Savvy law enforcement types realized that under the community policing rubric, cops, community groups, local companies, private foundations, citizen informants and federal agencies could form alliances without causing public outcry."

Covert Action Quarterly, summer 1997.

But all too pandemicly, organized predatory gang stalking, the new hate crime, is believed to be often just the work of often bored unemployed thugly vigilante cop wannabes. Untrained and poorly educated rent-a-cops, even ever lurking and stalking room temperature IQ hotel security can be such utter tools and make themselves such eager proxies to the serial bullying of ambient or stealth abusers. Even the lowest level of security work, in sheer delusional hubris, is manifest in the machinations of deranged serial bullies doing volunteer security at conventions and events, so often throwing their weight around in chronically shadowing and menacing surveillance and harassment of vulnerable and opportune targets of bullying who have obviously done no wrong. But group stalking is hardly limited to security work. Just for example, any amoral violent sociopath can call upon their equally amoral sociopathic buddies and cronies for menacing surveillance in order to keep tabs upon and intimidate a terrified battered spouse. And any bullies can slink about and follow their target around the school yard, whispering malicious gossip and exerting exclusionary peer pressure right there behind their hapless target's back. Soon the abuse escalates. Hypocritical self-serving bullies after all, come from all walks of life and most are everyday normal looking people maintaining a respectable public image and in order by means of whatever malicious gossip, backbiting, gross slander or petty victim blaming especially for consumption within their most immediate circles, to occupy a somehow or other implicitly even bush league vigilante-like pro-social Existentially Validating moral high ground even whilst engaged in ambient or stealth abuse and debilitating psychological warfare against their targets with complete impunity and unbeknownst to or poorly understood by the general public at large. The awkward stigma and suffering of outcast state, social isolation, unpopularity, even involuntary celibacy, is typically most roundly mocked and virulently reviled by the very serial Relational Bullies and relentless character assassins who so often deliberately cause or exacerbate the problem in the first place with such utter impunity. Of course serial bullies will typically only resent the target of bullying the more should nevertheless they ever succeed, romantically or otherwise, than when they only fail.

David Lawson's landmark Investigation Into Organized Stalking  is evaluated by Stop Organized Stalking - Information, a reasonable seeming effort at sensemaking in overview of the continuum of serial bullying into outright multi-stalking.

 

The madness of reality interplaying with the rationales of delusion

Sifting out the germ of truth from amid the chaff of the unlikely and far fetched

The range of abuse and exploitation herein discoursed upon are perpetual and ubiquitous. And evidence thereof must remain Empirical. Therefore flagrant denial of ever having witnessed or heard tell, likewise remains possible, however unlikely. That is why this document strives so to render a certain range of often ridiculed and seemingly extreme claims plausible and as tawdry common place as they actually are. It's not a matter of whether one is paranoid, but whether one is paranoid enough! For sweet reason is so oft ending in shock and disappointment. The world is full of bad people because there may even be far fewer truly bad people than at all benign, yet the power and evil of even so few utterly bad people expands to fill our lives, doing harm and demanding accommodation to so continue!

Is gang stalking then a real phenomena? In answer by way of illustrative analogy: King Arthur may be mythical and yet England endures. Likewise. conspiracism is delusional, but gang stalking as a mode of bullying and even criminal harassment, often under any outrageous pretext vigilante rationalization, is very real indeed. -Just not organized on the improbable scale and authority claimed, nay veritably demanded, by crank conspiracy theorists. Does it need to be before we respond seriously?

No one denies the reality of individual stalking, indeed, serial stalking, repeatedly and persistently, and not just upon single unrepeated occasions. No one denies that occasionally as might arise, groups of people ever follow others in a manner howsoever secretive, stealthy and/or menacingly hostile. Can it truly be beyond credence that such group or collective activity as likewise to follow others in any howsoever secretive, stealthy and/or menacingly hostile manner, but to do it together with others, might ever be ongoing much as with serial stalking by lone individuals? Only specific cases and extreme claims regarding the phenomena of group or multiple stalking may at all seriously invite skeptical scrutiny. Blanket denial, implicit or explicit, is just puerile and deserves no serious consideration!

The leading cause for feelings of persecution remains actual persecution. The hounded and harried, the shunned and outcast, often progressively do actually begin to seem haunted and disreputable. To begin with there is such widespread denial regarding bullying generally. People will tend to believe you if you tell them you've been assaulted and robbed in the street, but often become the more credulous regarding accounts of mean spirited and devious harassment. It doesn't help credibility of the victimized either, when the symptoms of nervous distress from severe and protractedly escalating of syndromes of shunning and mobbing, let alone more brazen and overt harassment, even actual death threats, may even begin to terrifyingly but misleadingly mimic those of poison.

Indeed, the very real paranoid experience of sensitization from devious and crazy-making serial bullying, is an effect of protracted psychological warfare unto hyper vigilance, from being conditioned to alarm from any trivial sign or stimuli such that might also happen entirely at random and with no real significance. Sensitization accrues nagging self doubt because of false alarms on the one hand, or overcompensation and disbelief of an intuition over anything innocent seeming that later turns out to be even possibly of real covert harassment and danger after all on the other.

For another matter, no one likes to be messed with in their own home. Harassing and threatening crank phone calls are best dealt with by using any simple answering machine to screen calls. Another common complaint is of ones personal possessions being moved about in one's absence. Personally, I found just such circumstances, especially pilfering and open or unlocked doors and windows, all vastly improved, once the property manager finally replaced problem tenants and unreliable help. Up until then, everyone tried to invalidate me by blaming my own untidy housekeeping and absent mindedness. But I was all the more conditioned into untidiness, because that became the only way to hide and protect my possessions. Alas, along with neighbor bullying, various and far worse exploitation within ones own living situation, are hardly uncommon.

Moreover, there are also those who report even in all candor, and with none of the angry accusatory intellectual dishonesty typical of conspiracism, the unlikely seeming and unsettling paranoid experience of palpable hostility from entirely different gang stalkers, following them around everywhere they go, even in traveling between different cities and continents! Is all of this then anything more that delusional metaphor for extreme alienation, or have they just become hyper vigilant and sensitized, indeed perhaps even so palpably nervous that they make even random strangers likewise at all perceptibly a little nervous in turn?

People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down

When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name

When you're strange

 

— 'People are Strange' Jim Morrison, The Doors

Baffled suffers may even be given credit for sincerely wanting to know what's actually going on. Nevertheless, it is not even clear if such astonishing accounts are rationalizingly suggestive of conspiracism or else vaguely and antirationally of some or other even quasi-mystical synchronicity or the supernatural even simply to blame it all on demons! In any case, the most manifestly unlikely accounts and scenarios are often exploited in order to undermine the credibility even of far more real, legitimate and obviously serious concerns.

If such accounts of mysterious palpable hostility and sly pursuit from different complete strangers, even in international travel, are taken to represent the most conceivably extreme claim on the one end, then the other extreme would be utter denial that anyone ever stalks and harasses anyone else in any way whatsoever, let alone in any sort of collaboration at all, or constantly against the same persons. And no one wants to actually come out and take the latter position, much as some scoundrels and cowards might even imply it. And so it follows, reasonably, that the truth lies anywhere in-between. The only insight that bullying awareness might offer, is that persecution by class is only one among so many common motivation for bullying in any of its tactics and manifestations. Therefore, no, one needn't be perceived as Untouchable or Deviant, let alone howsoever dangerous or deserving, in order ever to pick up an unwontedly malignant tail! It's just intimidation and ostracism. Indeed, of course, all typically hypocritical wannabe vigilante tough talk notwithstanding, anyone truly frightening and dangerous will never find themselves so provoked. 

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Just as more recently with the ongoing denial that single lone maladjusted serial stalkers might ever even conceivably flock together and gang up to collaboratively practice multi-stalking, the standard modes of obfuscation in truth suppression of the reality of bullying to begin with, have been the myth of the lone maladjusted physical bully likewise in denial of the very concept of bullying as a social phenomena with the insistence that cliques only present a problem for pathetic approval seekers desperate to gain entry thereto in high school. And these blithe and blatant lies went unchallenged because of the humiliation and denial never daring admit to being or ever having been unpopular and bullied. But the closeted shame and stigma for targets of bullying has abated, and the truth is out. Likewise the sly and malignant covert relational hostility and gas lighting psychological warfare of shunning and mobbing even of a hapless and unsuspecting target while at all on the move, orchestrated harassment that is accomplished via the destructive social reality of howsoever community based or infesting and even well organized multi-stalking, is steadily coming to light no less.

And yet there remain two principle kneejerks of abusive flaming and denial in truth suppression online regarding organized gang stalking specifically: The first is denunciation of the very topic of organized gang stalking as even implicitly intrinsically paranoid crank conspiracy theory, and the second is the very opposite, virulent Ad Hominem against any attempt whatsoever to discuss the very real and disturbing sociological phenomena of organized gang stalking, community mobbing or cause stalking among other related modes of bullying, except in context of fantastical Tabloid Weird machinations of super secret conspiracy and shadow government.

• Gang Stalking: Reality or Delusions?

Exactly such fantastical denial regarding organized gang stalking that employs paranoid crank conspiracy theory, operates by the following mechanisms: Much as pseudoscientific cranks deny that the Pyramids, for example, could ever have been constructed without the technology of ancient extraterrestrial astronauts, likewise the conspiracy theorists adamantly deny that gang stalking is possible without super secret exotic technology under direct supervision from vast powers, cabals and shadow government, even though in reality, it's not actually all that complicated or resource intensive: To repeat the previous examples, any amoral violent sociopath can call upon their equally amoral sociopathic buddies and cronies for menacing surveillance in order to keep tabs upon and intimidate a terrified battered spouse, and any bullies can slink about and follow their target around the school yard, whispering malicious gossip and exerting exclusionary peer pressure right there behind their hapless target's back. Soon the abuse escalates. And exactly such extremely damaging covert relational hostility propagates unchecked throughout every walk of life. Nor is it much of a secret how the powerful and influential can and do incite all manner even at very least, of the most far reaching and intensive organized orchestrated harassment against whistleblowers, dissidents and others. Leave us not forget, also, extortion and terror or organized crime, McCarthyist blacklisting and cult harassment. So exactly what is there left to deny? 

Another vexing practice typically damaging to the credibility of complaints against far more serious and dangerous harassment, is dissemination of all manner of bogus misleading information and pseudoscience, including, also, obsession upon, as reported, all manner of the most dumfounding incidental and ordinary observation and sightings, along with the most juvenile and trivial street theatre, even such that might almost be the artistry of perfectly well meaning flash mobs, perhaps were it not (as reported) for the chronic repetition!

But the delusional conspiracy theory accomplishes two things for the believer: Whereas constant harassment and social isolation understandably bring about feelings of helpless inadequacy, and the already mentally unbalanced are prime vulnerable targets of bullying, the imaginary drama of enmity with vast unseen powers not only matches the vague and helpless sensation of persecution looming so large from quarters unknown and unseen, but at the same time promotes a grandiose sense of personal significance in compensation for the insignificance of helpless abuse unknown and without recourse. Indeed, precisely by conjuring such an overwhelming and intangible enemy, conspiracy theory promotes passive inaction and relieves the distress of daunting and frustrated responsibility to active resistance, but only deepening anxiety, depression, and either increasing insular hostility and denial or else frank and adamant expression of helpless despair, in the long run.

Indeed, the sole approved counter offensive strategy of the delusional believers, is consciousness raising by flooding online forums; in other words: Endless co-validation and proselytizing. They refuse to organize for purposes of investigation or mounting resistance, for fear of infiltration by perpetrators! Indeed, apparently some are being bilked by confidence tricksters, Typically, the conspiracists also shun any very suggestion of acquiring, either by recruitment, education or experience, the skill sets for human tights advocacy and lobbying. And  of course the conspiracists blame the pervasive global conspiracy for their ineffectuality, never their own inadequacy, insularity, learned helplessness, paranoia and decidedly limited repertoire.

But worst of all, often discriminatory and scapegoating paranoid crank conspiracy theory no matter how fantastical, has also always served as a handy propaganda platform for hate speech, scapegoating and victim blaming such as even to inspire organized gang stalking, cause stalking and vigilante stalking, in the first place, if not pogrom and mayhem outright. Is it a coincidence, then, that the lunatic fringe likely most active in vigilante cause stalking, also works so hard to encourage the association of the very concept of organized gang stalking so indelibly with the entire panoply of hard to swallow unwieldy grandiose crank conspiracy theory? Is it entirely unintentional how the former thereby so discredits the latter? Are just such outrageous claims actually "poison pills" of manufactured propaganda from would be insurgents, scheming to divide and conquer the masses over absurd contentions, so that we won't unite in confronting actual dangers? As Glen Beck likes to say: I'm just raising questions... !

Overt rudeness and nastiness, even more subtle hostile social environment, are all indeed the very least of the extent of serial bullying. In mobbing as observed in animal communities, conspiratorial deliberate planning thereof must be deemed impossible. And similar behavior is observed in human society as well. But in human society there can also be deliberation. That's hardly uncommon. Indeed, the awkward stigma and suffering of outcast state, social isolation, unpopularity, even involuntary celibacy, is typically most roundly mocked and virulently reviled by the very serial Relational Bullies and relentless character assassins who so often deliberately cause or exacerbate the problem in the first place with such utter impunity. Of course serial bullies will typically only resent the target of bullying the more should nevertheless they ever succeed, romantically or otherwise, than when they only fail. Still, perhaps to assert that there is planning and conspiracy may ever remain explanatorily unnecessary, and to whatever extent, serial bullying in society might nevertheless be apprehended as a memetic propagation of habitual spontaneous and unthinking cruelty, yet still highly organized. Indeed, even preparatory activity might be described, if not adequately explained, Behaviorally, rather than Cognitively. But therefore, actual additional scheming by any standard, only thrives and abounds. It remains an absurd denial to insist that bullies do not forge relationships, organize and cooperate in serial bullying. Indeed, for that matter, bullying is often institutional, bringing to bear the authority thereof in abuse of power.  

Organized gang stalking remains, after all, a pervasive behavior socially, a mode of bullying and abuse of power relationships that is so often one way or another community based and historically a notorious feature of rising fascism. And along with secretive corruption, all manner of physical and psychological violence routinely figures into extortion by organized crime. In truth, however, conspiracy begins close to home. Bullies and thugs cooperate and network most readily and capably in isolating and victimizing targeted individuals. They don't need any sort of a formal syndicate.

A conspiracy theory is any explanation of any particular outcome or circumstances as resultant from some or other concealed and clandestine plot by a secret group or alliance rather than any individual or isolated event despite all transpired superficial appearances. Indeed people in power have been all too frequently been discovered to do evil out from the public view. But the term: conspiracy theory designates a paranoid world view endeavoring to explain the bulk of known history and current events by a narrative of the unknown and unlikely, of vast secret pervasive shadowy conspiracy behind the scenes. But in reality, the difficulty of keeping a conspiracy actually secret increases exponentially with each additional member.

Crank conspiracy theorists are often first degree pipedreaming do-nothings and a force for inaction at best, angrily dismissing the importance of all other problems except for those that they link to whatever mythical pervasive conspiracy, demonizing all rational skepticism and adamantly rejecting any action  agenda beyond lambasting unbelievers and preaching to the choir. Or else at worst, crackpot paranoid conspiracy theorists are dangerous hate criminals and propagandists. For the histories of persecution and conspiracism remain inextricable.What is even meant by the very term: conspiracy theory? And as an article of Critical Preference, how exactly are crackpot conspiracy theories so bereft of all credibility? The Epistemological and Methodological question is of the demarcation of extraordinary claims demanding progressively stronger and more extraordinary scientific and journalistic evidentiary support, let alone hypotheses that are outright untestable, unfalsifiable in very principle.

When indeed, if three felons cooperate in robbing a gas station, don't we assume that they planned it together, in other words: that they conspired? Or must we suppose that they all converged simultaneously, masked and guns in hand, by sheer coincidence, and only then spontaneously decided that they might as well collaborate? Of course not. Indeed, by contrast with all such common sense of the common place, an important feature of crank conspiracy theory proper, remains any far greater nigh religious leap of faith in explanation of the known in terms of the unknown or at least more uncommon or ever grander and more unlikely. Crackpot paranoid conspiracy theories strain credibility and credulity in their tendencies to posit impractically pervasive and deep secrecy together with consummate competence in the exercise of power, seizing the reigns of destiny from deep within the shadows behind the backdrop whereupon the spectacle of our empty lives is staged for us. 

Whereas in truth, the actual corruption of tacit conspiracy so powerfully motivated by vested interest which is so difficult to curtail, ultimately only follows the path of least resistance. It is said that two can keep a secret if one of them is dead. So, how many are supposed to be involved in vast secret pervasive conspiracies? When has the government ever really been slick enough to orchestrate much of anything very well? And what need of such convoluted secrecy, when, brazen and unaccountable, with complete impunity, the powerful and privileged are always peeing on our collective leg and telling us it's raining?

Although, sometimes it is the dilettante bored and powerful themselves who dabble in playing out crackpot conspiracy theory fantasy, indeed, as with the notorious Skull and Bones Society, gaudy privileged frat boy rituals of exclusivity and conspiracy may even serve only to glamorize precisely such tawdry reality of the interchangeably spineless and effete, behind a far more cool and thrillingly naughty and arcane fantasy. But surely, if such as the Skull and Bones Society never existed, nothing would really be any different. For that matter, if the notoriously elite and secretive Bilderberg conference where canceled one year, humdrum business as usual would simply continue via email. Competent management at all sustains our world. Real leadership is even more scarce.

By the same token, exploitation and abuse as an open secret in any given culture, is another matter entirely than outlandish conspiracy theory. Examples include discrimination which may indeed manifest as bullying targeted against some class of individuals, organized crime and, yes: defamation and bullying also including along with deviously scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility, isolation, ostracism, protractedly escalating of syndromes of shunning and mobbing, ambient or stealth abuse, such measures of harassment typical of vigilantism as organized gang stalking among modes of bullying, actually not all that complicated. For that matter, vigilantism itself is little secret either any more than, smug and disingenuous denials aside, bullying most generally. -All most unlike the explanatorily inelegant and inevident mythic tendrils of deep Byzantine conspiracies, nigh unmanageable and quite unnecessary for the powerful and brazen. Purportedly omnipresent and omniscient electronic surveillance is scarcely necessary for mounting hyper vigilant sensitization to even the most petty psychological warfare in its mysterious intermittence, simply to feel that way.
 
Although, of course, governmental and corporate powers and even intelligence agencies have certainly been known to involve themselves in the instigation and even orchestrating of all manner of harassment and far worse, against whistleblowers and dissidents among others. Indeed,  Such orchestrated harassment as community based organized gang stalking, has a long history as a tool of political oppression whenever society swings towards Totalitarianism. The cult harassment and fair game tactics most notorious of The Church of Scientology also near mention. And But would any such harassment and defamation tactics be so damn easy and convenient in application criminal and sociopolitical oppression, if bullying weren't so rampantly out of control in veritably every sphere of life to begin with? Perhaps for a safer and saner world, autonomy and civility must begin closer to home. Perhaps the first evil powers that must be routed out, are merely the most insignificant petty abusers of power conferring impunity upon bullying. When we no longer so heteronymously tolerate their ilk, then perhaps we might also then break the habit of enduring any greater and deadlier tyranny and folly of public life, commerce and even of the criminal underworld as well.

Exploitative emotional abuse is often observed and understood in the context of interpersonal relationships and life within society. But under whatever pretext, the criminally malignant and predatory manipulation and coercion that is bullying, thrusts exploitative emotional abuse upon others against their will entirely, even outside any bounds of ongoing relationship. Bullying is Sadistic enmity and intrinsically rapine, whether by over violence or by whatever various other means and tactics of sly intrusion, an entirely unwanted involuntary relationship on the part of the target of bullying and destructive thereto. Although, exploitative abusive relationships and social orders are also typically part of the whole picture. Bullying sends the message to accommodate abuse and exploitation, or else come under bullying attack completely.

Befriending targets of bullying:

Social "Proof" (informational social influence) and Code Pink tactics countering dangerous bystander apathy

• Be More Than an apathetic bystander

The trust of the target of bullying must be well and fully earned by unconditional opposition to bullying, before any even however most minimal added restraint or cooperation be requested from the target of bullying, and even then, most humbly and apologetically, under the circumstances of bullying which, after all, ought make responsible authorities blush. -and in so blushing, so to speak, and as publicly as possible, thereby already engender public disgrace for the bullies.

Technically, since proof is of validity, of internal consistency of logical prepositions so that they do not contradict themselves to begin with, and never of truth which is correspondence to reality, being: an Empirical question, informational social influence ought to be called not: social "proof", but: social corroboration. Indeed, informational social influence, like corroboration, being: support by whatever kind of evidence, information or even authority, even thereby increasing at least perceived certainty, is continually additive, yet never conclusive and permanent, let alone absolute proof, and indeed subject if not to any such thing as disproof, then to refutation, being: to demonstrate the falsehood or unavailability of an hypothesis, or for social "disproof"/refutation, the fairly conclusive unvailability of one's social life!

In the movie 'Ladyhawke', the curse will only be lifted when that jilted and jealous malignant cockblocker the Bishop of Aquila is thwarted and crushed by the very sight of the harried outlaw fugitive Etienne and his beloved Isabeau finally reunited with the help of their friend, the initially somewhat mousy but redoubtable Philippe. This is metaphor signifying how deviously scheming and masterfully socially adept covert relational hostility and social exclusion effectively manufactures poisonous social "disproof" if you will, in palpable denunciation of the target's luzer status of undesirability, and serving also as an effective obstacle, indeed much like unto some sort of curse, the best Transactional Antithesis being any social "proof" to the contrary, that may still howsoever nevertheless be attained in rising resistance to oppressive coercion and manipulation. For one is all too frequently judged by ones popularity and the company one keeps. For the awkward stigma and suffering of outcast state, social isolation, unpopularity, even involuntary celibacy, is typically most roundly mocked and virulently reviled by the very serial Relational Bullies and relentless character assassins who so often deliberately cause or exacerbate the problem in the first place with such utter impunity. Moreover, serial bullies will typically only resent the target of bullying the more should nevertheless they ever succeed, romantically or otherwise, than when they only fail.

Indeed, meekly and most publicly apologizing to targets of bullying, in the most effusively wretched mortification of embarrassment at the most flagrant bullying, may even be far more devastating thereto even than actually scolding the bullies however scathingly, soundly and publically, certainly instead of actually accommodation or victim blaming and scapegoating. And as a matter of optimal casting for maximal devastation and humiliation of bullies and their vicious cliques, the apologetic spokespersons might be any sort of authority figures and minor celebrities, figures of pathos such as the elderly and infirm, or however passably attractive women. It is imperative to monitor the operations of bullies, manta in rapid response, maintain covert videography, document and publicize their disgrace in countergossip, continually, even setting up the bullies for humiliating exposure via the orchestration of sting operations. 

In the words of Abba Eban: “Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals”. Consensus functions as social "proof", even in support of any direction taken, even howsoever arbitrary and even unsound. Indeed, for prime example, testimonials, even wielded as peer pressure, are anecdotal evidence and therefore in actuality among the most worthless and completely unreliable known to science.

"In general, most men fail to meet women [because] they travel in packs but go on the hunt solo" or, to employ the Naturalists jargon, they function, and badly, as "sneaky rutters", according to 'CubanJoe's Rules of Engagement', apparently a more condensed version of 'The Pickup Mission'. Indeed, not unlike the first shills rising to their feet from the audience of a faith healer to help get the proverbial ball metaphorically rolling, rent-a-friends, wingmen and yes: wingwomen, are all available for hire, in order to provide social "proof" and to make introductions: "making you look attractive fun mysterious interesting and scarce (just what Women look for in a real man)."