Deconstruction
This is what he does, night after night, his face pale against the illuminated screen.
He browses his feeds, his forums, his games, and he searches. For criminals, he would say; for prey, you would think, if you watched the way his eyes devour the words hungrily.
He looks for the poster that needs to put in his or her place, for the person who is overstepping his bounds and thinks he’s immune to retaliation because it’s the internet. He looks for the editor of a magazine that thinks that the internet is public domain, for the thirteen year old that thinks it’s okay to harass her worst enemy by pretending to be a guy she likes.
He styles himself a as vigilante, but instead of being just Oracle, he dispenses justice as Batman. Ruthless, he figures himself to be. But fair, of course. He swears he's fair. After all, he only targets those who have done something wrong to someone else.
And once he does find that a target, that special person that's made a post that catches his eye, he starts to gather information on them. He starts to hang out in the places that they do, and creates a couple dummy accounts to interact with them in different ways. He makes friends with them, and enemies with them, and insinuates himself in their lives, and it takes weeks, months, occasionally years.
But he has time, and he weaves many webs for many victims at once.
People have five major types of relationships in their lives, five major categories which affect their happiness and how they function as human beings. The happiest people are those that have succeeded in all five; the most miserable lack fulfillment in all of these areas. What he does is attack them from all but one of those angles - he saves their self-worth for last, and he finds it's most effective to work from the outside in. Generally, he finds, the dissolution of the first four crushes the last anyway.
Which four, then? He has a small text file for each person, headings for each area in that file, information listed under each heading that he can use against them. Society, the first one reads, under which is listed information about their careers, their past jobs, and what they aspire to be and what their weaknesses and failings are. Friendships, the next heading says, and has their confessed dislikes of their friends, their irritations that could be taken so terribly and the information they would never say to a friend's face. Family is the third one, with everything he can find about the cruelties and torments suffered, with information about what led to estrangement, with arguments that have never been resolved.
And then there is Love, to be filled with everything to destroy the relationship with the one they trust the most. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's remarkably difficult, but in his time, he knows this: that two people can never become one, that there are differences that can split even two who love each other endlessly. It may be attitude, habit, religion, or past infidelity, but he knows it exists, and simply must be found.
He starts with this basic principle: all people have secrets, pieces of knowledge that would be remarkably damaging to how others view them, whether they only know them professionally or whether they have built a family together. Some people have desires that the world does not accept, others have made mistakes but buried them instead of confessing, and still others have active secrets they hope no one ever learns. Regardless of what the specific secret is, though, there aren’t too many people whose closets have no grinning skulls in them, whose floorboards do not occasionally beat.
And even those, the few, the strong, the angels - there are ways.
There are ways.
He follows his prey to their online watering holes and stalks them carefully, reading through the paper trail that every person leaves in their day to day lives, and finds out a little here and a little there. He chats them up and makes them mad, pushing their buttons and pulling their strings. And sooner or later, once he feels that he knows his target enough, he sets the trap, baits it, and when the time is right, springs it shut.
An email here, remarking on infidelities; a text there, exploiting insecurities. A few voicemails expressing opinions they would never have told their friends, a few text messages sent from anonymous numbers with the knowledge only their old enemies could have, a present from an ex- at the most inopportune of times; these are his starting salvos, his efforts to weaken the foundations.
Then, when the stress builds small incidents into big problems, when the target is feeling alone and vulnerable and wondering what suddenly went wrong in their lives, that’s when he steps it up, until jobs are lost and dishes are thrown and the cops are called, until they start retreating from everything they've held to, until they start looking desperately for a way out.
And that's when he steps in and offers a helping hand from a friendly account; that’s when he’s there to save them - from himself.
They take it, of course, knowing no better, and when they’ve confessed everything to him, well, of course, he betrays them one last time, giving their darkest secrets to the world, turning their true friends away from them, sending them crashing to despair.
Suicide, he says, is not unknown to those that he targets.
And then he walks away, to find another target, to look for someone else to destroy, all in the name of justice.
He browses his feeds, his forums, his games, and he searches. For criminals, he would say; for prey, you would think, if you watched the way his eyes devour the words hungrily.
He looks for the poster that needs to put in his or her place, for the person who is overstepping his bounds and thinks he’s immune to retaliation because it’s the internet. He looks for the editor of a magazine that thinks that the internet is public domain, for the thirteen year old that thinks it’s okay to harass her worst enemy by pretending to be a guy she likes.
He styles himself a as vigilante, but instead of being just Oracle, he dispenses justice as Batman. Ruthless, he figures himself to be. But fair, of course. He swears he's fair. After all, he only targets those who have done something wrong to someone else.
And once he does find that a target, that special person that's made a post that catches his eye, he starts to gather information on them. He starts to hang out in the places that they do, and creates a couple dummy accounts to interact with them in different ways. He makes friends with them, and enemies with them, and insinuates himself in their lives, and it takes weeks, months, occasionally years.
But he has time, and he weaves many webs for many victims at once.
People have five major types of relationships in their lives, five major categories which affect their happiness and how they function as human beings. The happiest people are those that have succeeded in all five; the most miserable lack fulfillment in all of these areas. What he does is attack them from all but one of those angles - he saves their self-worth for last, and he finds it's most effective to work from the outside in. Generally, he finds, the dissolution of the first four crushes the last anyway.
Which four, then? He has a small text file for each person, headings for each area in that file, information listed under each heading that he can use against them. Society, the first one reads, under which is listed information about their careers, their past jobs, and what they aspire to be and what their weaknesses and failings are. Friendships, the next heading says, and has their confessed dislikes of their friends, their irritations that could be taken so terribly and the information they would never say to a friend's face. Family is the third one, with everything he can find about the cruelties and torments suffered, with information about what led to estrangement, with arguments that have never been resolved.
And then there is Love, to be filled with everything to destroy the relationship with the one they trust the most. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's remarkably difficult, but in his time, he knows this: that two people can never become one, that there are differences that can split even two who love each other endlessly. It may be attitude, habit, religion, or past infidelity, but he knows it exists, and simply must be found.
He starts with this basic principle: all people have secrets, pieces of knowledge that would be remarkably damaging to how others view them, whether they only know them professionally or whether they have built a family together. Some people have desires that the world does not accept, others have made mistakes but buried them instead of confessing, and still others have active secrets they hope no one ever learns. Regardless of what the specific secret is, though, there aren’t too many people whose closets have no grinning skulls in them, whose floorboards do not occasionally beat.
And even those, the few, the strong, the angels - there are ways.
There are ways.
He follows his prey to their online watering holes and stalks them carefully, reading through the paper trail that every person leaves in their day to day lives, and finds out a little here and a little there. He chats them up and makes them mad, pushing their buttons and pulling their strings. And sooner or later, once he feels that he knows his target enough, he sets the trap, baits it, and when the time is right, springs it shut.
An email here, remarking on infidelities; a text there, exploiting insecurities. A few voicemails expressing opinions they would never have told their friends, a few text messages sent from anonymous numbers with the knowledge only their old enemies could have, a present from an ex- at the most inopportune of times; these are his starting salvos, his efforts to weaken the foundations.
Then, when the stress builds small incidents into big problems, when the target is feeling alone and vulnerable and wondering what suddenly went wrong in their lives, that’s when he steps it up, until jobs are lost and dishes are thrown and the cops are called, until they start retreating from everything they've held to, until they start looking desperately for a way out.
And that's when he steps in and offers a helping hand from a friendly account; that’s when he’s there to save them - from himself.
They take it, of course, knowing no better, and when they’ve confessed everything to him, well, of course, he betrays them one last time, giving their darkest secrets to the world, turning their true friends away from them, sending them crashing to despair.
Suicide, he says, is not unknown to those that he targets.
And then he walks away, to find another target, to look for someone else to destroy, all in the name of justice.