CAUTION - SOCIOPATHS AMONG US!!

What is a sociopath? - An individual that "deceives, takes what he wants, and hurts people without any remorse. Sociopaths don't feel guilty. They don't feel sorry for what they've done. They go through life taking what they want and giving nothing back. They manipulate and deceive and convincingly lie without the slightest second thought. They leave a path of confusion and upset in their wake" - Adam Khan. See http://www.youmeworks.com/sociopaths.html

Although there is some variation in reports regarding the number of sociopaths in a given population, for the United States the figure is estimated to be at around four percent overall. Others estimate the rate at four percent of males and at one percent of females. This difference may be attributed to the fact that women have learned to place a higher value on "caring" or "interpersonal responsiveness" based on familial experiences with their mothers as role models - Martha Stout. See Martha Stout (The Sociopath Next Door).

I recently had dealings with an individual who I am certain is a sociopath. Did he humiliate a child for fun? No. Did she leave the dog out in an ice storm rather than bother to put on slippers and bring the dog indoors? No. Did he court a lonely single mother just to have access to her young children? No. Did he exchange grandma’s pain medication for a placebo when she was in the last stages of some horrible cancer so that he could sell them on the black market for a tidy profit? No.

So what did this sociopath do?

She stole fabric in a message board quilting swap. Seriously. Hard to believe but it happened.

In the swap in question, 20 ladies sent each other fabric. They made blocks using that fabric (adding in more fabric of their own). Then, they sent back the completed block to the person who sent the fabric. The end result SHOULD have been that they had 19 blocks made by their fellow swappers to put together for some quilting project. The rules were that when you mailed a finished block, you posted that information on the message board (i.e., you write something like, "I just mailed a block to Lardassquilter, this morning."). When you received a certain block, you posted that on the message board (i.e., something like, "I just received the prettiest block from skinnyminnie"), frequently accompanied by a photograph. At that point, we all get to ooh and aww over it. It’s fun.



The swap took an evil turn.

Madam Sociopath took the fabric sent to her but she didn’t use it to make blocks for her fellow swappers. Can you believe it? Not only that, but she would post from time to time that she had completed certain blocks and that they were going in the mail, generally in the next day or so. These completed blocks never seemed to arrive but the hostess’ record keeping showed that she was in compliance. Oh yes, it was dastardly. It was deliberate. Evil, evil. We're talking our stash, here.




All part of her ploy to steal more blocks, in my opinion.

While all this was going on, the swappers were going about their merry way spending time and THEIR STASH to make beautiful blocks for her. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth as she accepted the blocks and thanked the suckers, er swappers, for their efforts. While all this was going on, Madam Sociopath even continued to participate in other swaps. Even after some of her fellow swappers began wondering what was going on, she went to the annual meeting where all the message board ladies meet and put names to faces (this year it was in Houston). I suspect half of them go out and get drunk but I’ve never been so am not sure. All I know is that I would not go drinking with Madam Sociopath, nor would I ask her to hold my purse.

As time passed, some of the swappers began putting it together. Some of us initially felt like we might be unreasonable to expect her to do what we expected of ourselves. We were embarrassed to complain. We didn’t want to be negative. We really wanted to believe that the blocks she’d made for us, or the fabric we sent her, would magically appear in our mailbox and all would be forgiven. We completely gave her the benefit of the doubt.

As more time passed, it became obvious to some of us that she had simply taken our fabric and the blocks we made her and had no intention of responding in kind. Eventually some swappers complained, out loud/in print. They were swiftly chastised by other message boarders who, apparently had more faith in human nature or had never been taken by a con. Those good hearted souls leaped to Madam Sociopath’s defense and offered excuses such as: She may be ill! She probably has family problems! She would never deliberately cheat her fellow swappers! She’s NICE!! At that point, the cheated swappers were being treated like THEY weren’t nice people while Madam Sociopath was given the benefit of the doubt. Posts that complained of her behavior (generally not naming names) were promptly deleted by adminstration. By request? Who knows, for sure.

She had to be laughing.



Even Madam Sociopath hadn’t offered any excuses – she didn’t have to! The public censure kept us all quiet for awhile.

More time passed. It became increasingly clear that this was not a situation where a swapper got in over her head, her husband had a heart attack or her mother broke her hip. No. When confronted by confused, then frustrated, then hurt, then angry fellow swappers, she just ignored them. She also kept accepting blocks from fellow swappers. Even after it became clear that she was stealing blocks, several ethical ladies continued to make blocks for her, using their own time and their own fabric – and they completed them on time AND they were nice blocks. Now THOSE are nice people.

I suspect, in part, some of them wanted to shame her into compliance but Madam Sociopath is not susceptible to shame.



I personally sent e-mails asking her to simply return my fabric and we’d call it good but she ignored me. I know other people did the same thing with the same result. The deadline passed months ago and even the hostess called upon her to return the fabric. She ignored her, too.

She still sometimes posts on the message board.

SOCIOPATH!!!

photos - some of the lovely blocks made for Madam[n] Sociopath by her trusting cyber sisters