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Notes -
There's a revolving set of games that suspects play in these videos, and I think the commonalities are too strong to be explained by anything other than some common structure of the mind. Some day I will map it all out to my satisfaction.
The core activity seems to be gunking up the process and grinding it to a halt through endless talk (which is the main reason why I'm reading this book), but it comes with several variants and corollaries. Importantly, the suspect is almost always "doing nothing," and there is a passivity to the way they describe themselves (Theodore Dalrymple describes this as "the knife went in," ie. never mentioning who was holding the knife) that seems to me to go beyond the desire to avoid responsibility and reach the level of a pattern of thinking. The suspects always want to be treated as normal, and they are obsessed with visible proof, to the point where if there is no visible proof that can be produced at demand, it didn't happen.
I suspect that these (there are other things I've noticed) explain the behaviour you describe. The argument being made isn't "others [allegedly like you] do something similar, so what is the big deal," rather, the argument being made is "I'm doing nothing, and anyways I'm a normal person, so obviously others must be doing something just like that or worse–look, there's the proof!" Of course, the proof is manufactured if it cannot be found.
I understand the pattern. These people hope you’re as credulous and stupid to fall for their antics as they likely are, which turned them into criminals. “There’s always a bigger fish to fry,” is a simple logic. I say, “Cool. After we flush your ass down the toilet first, I’ll be sure to move onto the next turd.” Or handcuff the guy in your custody to the bench and then go after the next guy.
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