I strongly feel that it is important to not give manipulators the attention they demand. Giving attention to them only gives them more power.

A living person only has so much time on this planet. Why spend our limited energy on a hate filled individual who we will never likely make eye contact with.

Personally, the less time I spend thinking about manipulators, the easier it is to push myself to engage with my community. Even if it’s painfully what my mind and body don’t want to do.

Manipulators hate people with the ability to be independent and that’s just enough motivation for me to keep going.

I’m not a fan of labels because I can never keep up with the constant changing of meaning or the new labels that keep appearing.

Instead I focus on peoples actions to figure out how I am to handle them. The most common behaviour I see in people who act more in their own self interest is manipulation. They want to control as much as possible. That includes the situation and the people around them.

The simplest thing to do is observe. Watch what they do. Watch how they interact with people around them. I often ask myself a bunch of questions about that behaviour. Do the words they say match what they do? Where is the attention coming from and where is it going? What tools do they use to bring attention to themselves? Is there a power imbalance between them and someone else? What tools do they use to control that power imbalance? Who is gaining something and who is losing something in those interactions? Why do they care so much about something that seems insignificant?

That’s not a complete list or anything. People are creative in good and bad ways so it’s more of a developed skill which takes time to grow. You may find other observations or questions to help you filter out manipulative people.

As a quiet person who has spent more time observing than talking, I’ve always been a target for manipulators. They seem to think my quietness is submission. I’ve dealt with far too many manipulators so much of what I said comes from those experiences.

I often deal with manipulative people by either acting dumb or figuring out the tools they are using or willing to use on me and deny them the chance to use those tools on me any further.

From my limited experiences, I found that explaining peoples actions in simple and easy to understand words is far more damaging to people who are generally awful or manipulative.

Using insults or the latest trending buzz words against these people are not effective because those are the tools they themselves constantly use.

Once you start explaining their actions to them in words that everyone can understand, they become extremely uncomfortable as they try to change topics or defend their actions. But never let them change the topic. Keep reminding them of their actions in words that everyone understands.

Keep it short. Keep it simple. Keep it about their actions and not their words. Make sure as many people can understand why their actions are awful. This means yourself, the awful people and everyone around us.

It’s entertainment on it’s own watching awful people getting awkward by reality being swung back into their face.

I saw three garter snakes on my last hike a few days ago. They look so soft but they are content watching me watching them. They are so cute.

I once saw someone in the irc channel jokingly refer to Alpine as Alpine linux pine. Now when I goto the website, all my mind reads is Alpine Linux Pine Linux…

I had a former coworker come pick me up one day after work to go for sushi and catch up. I just got home from work and needed a shower.

Tried to get him to wait outside because it was a beautiful day. Nah, he wanted to chill in my room. First thing he did was call my room a jail cell…

I’ve upgraded since then. Now I have a bunch of pothos plants and a depressed chilli pepper plant I keep watering because this creepy, demonic little puking worm lives in there. Only seen it a few times but it’s there. I throw bits of food in the pot to keep it happy :)

I’m a guy. Over the past couple years I’ve become quite close with two women online who are both younger than me. One is 15 years younger than me while the other is 6 years younger.

I actually met the younger one through a former male work friend who met her first through a Minecraft server he used to host. He bought her a game that was on sale and the 3 of us played together. After my work friend went to bed, she and I talked a bit afterwords.

It was quite clear to me that she liked getting to know people and I entertained her conversation. At some point in the conversation, she casually brought up her current mental health state and it was at that point I knew she was someone I wanted to continue talking with.

At that time, I was struggling hard with my own mental health and my attempts at finding a support group that suited me wasn’t working. In that short time, she proved to be brutally self aware, honest and empathetic. She treated me as a person and allowed me to express myself honestly without judgement. At the time, I was working in the trades surrounded by men and I was only treated with judgement as a failure as a man. Even my close relationships with other women at the time was the same, I was a failure of a man.

Having this one person in the world treat me like a person meant so much to me. She allowed me to talk without judgement, allowed me to approach my problems my own way without judgement or unsolicited advice, and allowed me to be me without criticism or judgement. These are all things I craved at the time so returned all these actions to her as well. I learned a lot about mental health through her and and how she spoke of her friends.

Over the next year, we sort of became our own mental health support group and made ourselves available to each other because we wanted to and as a result became close friends.

A year later she approached me with a situation that made me incredibly angry and upset me for a couple weeks. She revealed to me that my work friend had been trying to sext with her and was making her feel uncomfortable. A man who was 15 years older than her, who met her when she was approximately 13 years old when she joined that minecraft server who she used to think of him as a mentor. A man who is married and has two adorable little girls himself in an amazing house with a huge chunk of property. I confronted him and then stopped talking to him. He sickens me. While she may have been of legal age at the time he tried to sext with her, he absolutely destroyed any trust she had in him. I have good reason to believe he’s made attempts with other women behind his amazing wife’s back and I can no longer stand to look or talk to him.

Even with all that her and I had been through, it still felt super strange to me being close friends with someone 15 years younger than me. But she provided me with fresh takes on mental health and I was able to provide a perspective based on experience that can only be understood through that additional 15 years of being alive.

I did go and meet her in her home country. As a thank you to her, I bought us matching tattoos. We were able to talk face to face and it was a very comfortable and easy going experience. By the end of my trip, I told her that she is my new sister (my actual sister barely remembers I exist) and she was quite happy with that.

The feeling of strangeness from this particular relationship has faded significantly now but still sort of lingers in the back of my mind. I think that’s more of result of the north American mindset. There is a lack of intergenerational community in modern north American life that negatively affects how people treat and view relationships with older/younger people. Learning goes both ways and I absolutely value the perspectives and views coming from younger people.

In a more just world, intergenerational relationships would be normal and boring. In it’s current form (from a north American perspective) it’s open to abuse through a power imbalance and that seems to inadvertently bring up feelings of guilt or shame in those who stumble across such relations.

For me, letting time pass and allowing those feelings of guilt and shame to dissipate leaving a normal, boring and safe friendship with someone who is younger than me.

Unfortunately, I’m still cautious talking about her to other people who I feel are judgemental. Especially men. The overwhelming majority of men in my life would assume our relationship is sexual. It’s easier to simply not talk about her so I can avoid fending off those gross accusations. Fortunately, my other friend who is 6 years younger is super understanding and awesome. I can talk about my younger friend with her and not feel uncomfortable about it. In that sense, I feel quite lucky to know both these people.