Righteous mind games, the everyday ones.

The Righteous have few methods and those methods have changed little over the centuries. The reason they don't change is that for most people, they still work as well as they always did. That is also the reason for Righteous extermination of academics etc. as soon as they get control. All they want are the malleable.

What they can't control is that the malleable give birth to the clever, so the smart ones increase and are smart enough to keep quiet until they are numerous enough to slap down the Righteous.

The Righteous are not too smart. If they were, they'd have worked out by now where they go wrong every time. I'm not going to tell them.

I've occasionally posted Righteous methods such as the bogeyman and the creeper and a few more in the past. They don't like it and are attempting to do something about it, which I have calculated for and am dealing with. It's not difficult. I'm not exactly pitting wits against Einstein here. Those are long-game methods, but individual Righteous will play short-game methods for their own amusement, and to reinforce their illusion of actually mattering in the world.

You will see these short games in supermarket and other queues, where the person behind you takes a series of small steps forward. This is to intimidate you into hurrying up. It plays on a primal fear, the slowly approaching predator, and it works very well on anyone who doesn't know about it. The best fun you can have with this is to slow down until they are right at your shoulder when it's time to pay. Then take out your credit card, put it in the reader and then turn and look them straight in the eye. At this point, they are in the position of a shoulder-surfer looking for credit card details and it is hard not to laugh out loud when that realisation dawns on them.

It's even funnier on those rare occasions when the checkout operator notices and says 'Sorry about that' at which point you make a stage-whispered remark about 'criminals always trying to get credit card details' and then leave without once looking back. You want mind games, I have a compendium of them.

One short game that comes up over and over on forums all over the internet, and which also comes up in real life, is the 'You are evil unless you do what I say' game.

It is a pathetically simple mind game but it does work, again, as long as the subject does not realise how it works.

It also does not work on the sharp-witted such as Bella Gerens.

The trolls who won't play with me any more have visited Bella in the futile hope that they might be able to exert their petty influences there. Their game is, as always, trivial attempts at mind control by this method:

You post something on a blog or forum.

The Righteous responds with 'You have not condemned what [X] said about [Y]. I therefore have to conclude that you are as evil as them'.

You have never heard of [X] and when you look it up, you will find that what they 'said' about [Y] is taken out of context and twisted, or is entirely irrelevant to your posting.

Now you have a choice. Especially if you are one of most people, and actually care what people think of you. That is normal, I am not, I recognise that.

Do you do as the Righteous commands and decry the out-of-context or irrelevant thing, or do you point out that the Righteous is just being silly? Knowing, of course, that this apparently erudite commentator will denounce you as Racist-Nazi-Bigot-Paedo if you do not do as they say?

You think their arguments are clever, and you cannot be blamed for that. In reality, they are thicker than a very thick thing covered in thickening goo and baked in the thickening oven to maximum thickness but they don't know it. They are reading from a script but you won't know that unless you hang around and watch. Who has time? I did, for a while, and now make it a hobby to spot them. Hello, Macjuk, remember me? Oh and Ray, that short story 'Newton's Cradle' was seriously crap. You don't even understand the concept of 'mind game' and you are supposed to be training teachers?. John, I was the shadow on your tent on the Tyrebagger, you know. Mind games? Amateurs.

Those three are from Yahoo forums but they are around. I see you, Righteous, and I don't need CCTV. All of them have played this game over and over. The same thing every time.

If you agree to do as they say, if you enter into contract by bowing down and following orders, you are Owned. The Righteous chalks up another pet. You are now under their control and once in, it's hard to break out. How can you leave? If you disagree with anything you will be branded Racist-Nazi-Bigot-Paedo. That is not something you want. Especially if you are new to a forum. It is very hard to respond to an accusation of 'Racist' with 'Yeah. So what?'. It's like admitting you shag badgers.

Mind games are, at root, a game. Learn how to play them and you will find they are not hard games to win. Your opponent in this thought-chess game is not Boris Spassky, it is a ZX-81 with a power supply problem. Your opponents are not thinking this stuff up on the fly.

Your opponents are not thinking at all.