Quote from Transitioned on January 20, 2024, 12:57 am

 

If he has his own in group who are the majority he might form his own WA group and try and cut you out.

At that point probably doesn't matter for you the group is done why would you want to be part of social group with a toxic leader.

It might not be successful people just drop off because they're unhappy with too much drama  of course this more likely with all guys.

My reading of this guy is he is a sniper and a parasite so I don't think he'll do anything so proactive he doesn't really want to be a leader he just wants to get a free ride and take pot shots at the leader

 

Quote from John Freeman on January 20, 2024, 8:31 am

Hello Transitioned,

thank you very much for your answer!

Quote from Transitioned on January 20, 2024, 12:57 am

If he has his own in group who are the majority he might form his own WA group and try and cut you out.

Right.

At that point probably doesn't matter for you the group is done why would you want to be part of social group with a toxic leader.

Yep.

It might not be successful people just drop off because they're unhappy with too much drama  of course this more likely with all guys.

Aha.

My reading of this guy is he is a sniper and a parasite so I don't think he'll do anything so proactive he doesn't really want to be a leader he just wants to get a free ride and take pot shots at the leader

He's the hyena. Not weak not strong. Attack you from the side and uses the group's laughter as a weapon. And coming after the lion (2 years ago there was a girl dancing with me attracted to me, was not interested, after I left he saw she was horny so proceeded and kissed her. Then he looked like the guy who was more attractive/better with girls than me). I think you're on it. Yes he had been off work total for about 1-2 years in his 5 years in CH (Switzerland). What did he do? Playing Petanque, getting drunk, smoking pot, etc. Not looking for a job that's for sure. I used one of my contacts to get him a job. Never called him. A friend used his contacts at work to find him a job. Never called the person. So he's like the duke in "the big Lebowski", minimal effort but maximum hedonism. So yeah parasite in a way.

Sniper: yep again. That's the social climbing part.

So talking about strategy, I think you found his social strategy. Cheap shots at people "higher" than him (don't really see me as higher than him), laughter as a weapon, scraping the bottom of the barrel because it's less effort.

Thanks to you I understand better his psychological profile.

Thanks to you all now it's clear to me who this person is and how to deal with him. He's charming and quite positive so he can hide all this behind the positive traits. Smart. I think from now on I'll post successes with my interaction with him rather than challenges. My mind is now calibrated on how to deal with him. He's actually lower quality than I thought. So now I'll know not to treat him as such.

How does the eagle beat the hyena? Flying higher as always.

Thank you!

Quote from John Freeman on January 20, 2024, 10:19 am

As an addendum to my answer to you Lucio. So yes it's a social/leadership capital issue.

My mistake was to think that by providing value (food, fun, etc.) I would gain secure leadership.

Wrong. And that's why it's not working.

It's all about relationships. It was in front of my eyes the whole time.

Quote from John Freeman on January 22, 2024, 1:22 pm

Hello TPM community,

today my psychologist gave me a few advices after I showed him the messages:

• He's manipulating me into "trans-acting" that means that me wanting to kick him out of the group is a manipulation. If I do it then I'll appear thin-skinned and they're going to side with him.
• Be careful of my image inside the group: as in "status" as we say here. That is that if I deal with him publicly he can backtrack and say that I'm being paranoid/thin-skinned. Since people don't know the history or the context I appear in the group as over-reactive so thin-skinned.

So I think that now everything is clear after enough observations: we have a bona fide manipulator.

So I'll speak about him next time I have a session and he'll break down his character. He's a master at it. It's quite admirable. He's scary good in psychology.

The strategy he proposes:

1. Set my boundaries with him on the phone
2. Once this confrontation has been done, I set a precedent. Now I can refer to it publicly.
3. If I happen to do anything after that (boundary-setting publicly, kicking him out of the group) I can say: "yeah I talked with him about it and he continued. So I got enough of it. You guys are free to do a group with him of course."

Another part of the strategy that I intend to use is that no matter what direction this takes, I'm going to fade him away. I am working hard to clean my social and work life from these people. The problem is that then people think that I see them everywhere. Well, it could be the case. However, I think it's more likely that there are more people like that than we imagine (Lucio hinting about manipulation as being a normal/common behaviour, so people on the extreme of it might only be a subset of the general population). And if the number of 10% of population with personality disorders (from literature) is accurate, that means it's a ton of people. Again, I'm open to being wrong on that topic and seeing evil where there is not. However, I think it's pretty clear that I've given JB many times the benefit of the doubt over 3 years of friendship. So not sure I'm jumping to conclusions.

As a joke, he asked me when wishing me a happy new year what I wanted for this year and I said: "fewer manipulators!" :D

He said that unfortunately this power is beyond us (joking back).

Quote from John Freeman on January 24, 2024, 1:38 am

Hello Ali,

thanks for your answer. I'll answer here as proposed:

John: If you're looking for an excellent cheap hairdresser (44 haircut +  beard + shampoo) and very available. I can recommend one to you (building up the barber and then separating that you can recommend him this way feels like dangling the carrot of this great barber in front of others).

Alright, now I can see how it was perceived. Thanks.

And yes all that (this unneeded emphasis feels like credit inflating).

Ok. Did not view it this way. Probably, naively I did not look at it in the social exchange way. My mistake. My intention was to connect people I liked with a barber I liked. The tone came from my enthusiasm after the haircut and the experience. But yeah in the social exchange theory I agree it's credit inflating.

Without talking about the exchange (pointing out that you’re not going talk about getting anything in return only makes it come across like you’re probably thinking about getting something in return. And after building up the barber so much, it comes across more like social exchange talk bean counting).

Probably a misunderstanding here. So when I'm talking about the exchange, it's a literal translation from french ("échange") as in connection. So I meant the human exchange I had with this person. Not the social exchange. I meant I had a good conversation with him. Here "Without talking about the exchange" I mean "Without talking about the conversation (I had with him that I enjoyed)": in parenthesis the words that were implied.

Hence this message. And a coffee! 🙂 (the final move: you don’t share the barber, so now you’re forcing people to have to come to you to get access which further entrenches the notion you were just out to social scalp)

Alright, I see. Ok. So in the past, I was giving free (and unrequested) advice, info, etc. So I was not getting my share of the social exchange. Also I was wasting it because I was giving tips and advice to people who were not valuing them. So now I'm being more selective. The way I did it with a group is to mean: "I enjoyed this if any of you are interested you can ask me". I think the right way to do it would have been to say:

Just discovered a great barber, if any of you is looking for one I can send the recommendation in private in order not to bother people not interested.

That was one of my intentions, the other was not to give something valuable without the person requesting it.

So yeah it ended up fishing for social credit. Not my intention.

So I went all wrong about it. It's funny because today I thought about analyzing this through the lens of "what did I do wrong here?" or "what was my responsibility here?". So here we are.

So basically, I think I'm better off not giving unrequested advice nor tips. I thought I was a good friend doing it. Turns out I was wrong. I tried to give unrequested advice to selected people (people who are interested) and not have the person debt cancel (you told it to me without me asking you so I owe you nothing).

So the root cause in this case was unrequested tip.

It's a tricky one though as in the group sometimes friends post unrequested jokes or invitations. So I'll have to think more about this to find a more socially intelligent way to share the good tips I found. From this experience, it seems the WA group is not the best option.

At that point, after all those power moves, one could say it’s more fair for someone to comment with a joke since it helps alleviate some of the awkwardness of a person trying to social climb on the entire group. (It helps keep the group chat moving.)

Yeah it's fair. Now that I'm aware of it I can see it.

Also, putting Lucio’s name in there with that post feels like recruiting him to your side in that “not-so-cool” behavior.

Yeah I can see that now. In my mind, I'm quoting people to give them due credit. Alright, I was already careful with putting people's name in what context. It seems I've still got work to do.

So, we still see some (unwitting) power moves.

Indeed. Working on it, thanks.

Thank you very much Ali!

edit: multiple edits

Quote from John Freeman on January 26, 2024, 5:00 am

I called JB yesterday and as soon as he picked up the phone he apologized profusely spontaneously:

• For not having returned my phone call the first time. He said he's bad at that (returning calls).
• After re-reading his message, he realized that he was making fun of me. He said at first he did not understand what was happening and that after re-reading it he saw it differently. That it was not his intention.
• Admitted he used the reference to Huggy Bear ("Huggy les bons tuyaux" in French or "Huggy the good tips") a black character who's like the a foil ("faire-valoir" in Fr) in "Starsky and Hutch" to the 2 white police officers. He apologized for that.
• Said at no point in time he wanted to threaten the relationship ("never thought it was going to be over on his side")

I said it was all good: that it happens, that all that mattered to me was that his intentions were sincere and that we kept an open and frank communication.

He proposed me to organize our next board game since he had more time than me. I said it was fine as it did not take much time.

So after his apology with one another, I think his move in the WA group was uncalled for. I'm proud for setting boundaries with him. It worked: he respected them. And now we built more trust with one another and can move forward. That is my perspective.

Off-topic

BTW, if anybody has a better way to share tips in a group on WA/to a friend I'm all ears (maybe in another thread as it seems it would be off-topic).

/Off-topic

Quote from John Freeman on January 26, 2024, 5:32 am

Correction: So after his apology, I think…