The Problem of the Criterion

[stalkinghyena]

And how is sartorial sense on the Other Side?

Meh...about what you'd expect. Sometimes its just Gramma.

I feel like even going to the trouble of disproving it is a waste of attention

It's easy to see how futile it is. I think of that part in the original Exorcist where the old priest told the younger one not to talk to the demon. Still. I have encountered folks who make the dumbest claims and yet they have an insidious power of getting under the skin anyway. It works much better in person because of the natural sympathy which binds people together - the general instinctive assumption of congeniality. Relative online anonymity makes it easier to blow off, but in either case, if that person somehow has lots of friends... well, usually they don't...

I recall a documentary series on a woman named Sherry Shriner* - how she could claim to be a prophet of God and a warrior against Reptilian aliens (&etc) and gathered quite the following. Lots of claims of miracles and cosmic warfare, with her at the center. Doubt her, question her, ask her to prove anything and she would turn her army of cult followers against you with a three hour tirade of hypnotic garbage. That seems to be the apex of the unverified, but I think a certain kind of voice is needed - raspy, droning, determined, confident. This voice resulted in two "suicides" as far as I know. One was legally dubious - a man "forced" his girlfriend to shoot him in the head with his Glock, and this after Shriner destroyed him and his girlfriend online because the latter had praised "steak tartare". Only a Reptilian would eat raw flesh. The other was a teenage girl who Shriner called an "angel in the flesh" - the girl, under Shriner's grooming, reasoned she had to get orders from God so she killed herself, believing she would be resurrected, bearing a message.

So, cuddly demons. Helicopters. "You have no idea of the things I have seen", &etc. Practice makes perfect - brainiac psychic mycelium looking to root in other cerebrums. Narcissism is just a ruse, it's really about the perpetuation of hypnosis. Really, I could ask for proof but I wonder if it is just better to burn the fucking witch so they can reincarnate and start over again. Maybe that happens to everybody in their progressive journey to meta-cosmic maturity. I suppose then I should look forward to the "first stage of enlightenment" - then I can say I don't need to prove anything because "I saw it with my own eyes."

*Second post I have mentioned her - shame on me!

 

[Tiana Silvermoon]

but I'm not going to the effort of "unmasking" you or investigating you

I might genuinely wonder if you do what you claim you do and at first try to talk seriously, not to unmask, but in attempt to understand where you're coming from and judging by that either to take you seriously, mock or ignore.
Also I don't think it's good for braggers themselves to think they will be accepted with all of their BS, they might want to find a place to roleplay instead And for that the community has to show them they're not welcome.

 

[Xenophon]

I might genuinely wonder if you do what you claim you do and at first try to talk seriously, not to unmask, but in attempt to understand where you're coming from and judging by that either to take you seriously, mock or ignore.
Also I don't think it's good for braggers themselves to think they will be accepted with all of their BS, they might want to find a place to roleplay instead And for that the community has to show them they're not welcome.

Actually, given the great difficulty of producing any evidence in an anonymous online forum, I guess my talk about such falls somewhere between hollow and quixotic. At bottom, about all I could have been trying to do was shame braggarts into vetting their own claims. That tactic will tend to make the marginal mages too shy and leave the self-deluded LARPERS pretty much where they were to start with: center stage.