I’ve been slandered and harassed several times, and I’ve not known anything positive to come from it. However, it may be of benefit to someone if I describe the methods employed against me so that they may be able to recognize it.
In this case, the slander was carried out in a place of business, among coworkers. The slanderer was socially skilled and able to tell a lot of little stories about himself to form a short term social connection. There is nothing wrong with that in and of itself, of course, such brief communications are a stimulating and positive experience for the listener. In this post Covid era, they say that general loneliness is very high so it would be reasonable to conclude that people are even more starved for these types of social interactions.
The problem is that the slanderer turned those brief interactions into a delivery weapon for slanderous messages. The slanderer would get his target listening and entertained with a little story about himself, and then he would punctuate the exchange with a false and damaging story about me, or a call back to such a story. This is particularly evil because the initial positive social interaction stimulates the release of pleasure chemicals in the slanderer’s target’s brain, and those chemicals linger during the delivery of the slanderous message. This has the effect of making the slander feel less objectionable or even pleasurable to the target.
Here’s a fictitious example to illustrate the method:
Slanderer: Hey Bob.
Bob: What’s up?
Slanderer: I went to the fair this weekend, and I saw “Band Name.”
Bob: Oh yeah, I heard they were going to be there, but I had other plans.
Slanderer: They were good, but the parking was a nightmare. They had people directing traffic right from the freeway exit. They directed me down like eight blocks, somehow always having me make left turns. We had to walk half a mile to get in.
Bob: That sounds like “Venue,” alright.
Slanderer: Still, it was nice to be away from that idiot Jimbo. You know, he doesn’t even know how to write properly? That son of a bitch crosses his sevens.
I hope this helps people to recognize when they are being manipulated, so that they can recognize and avoid people that seek to corrupt them.
