Con after con, we’ve got novels,
films, plays from comedies to dramas talking about it.
Entertainment replete with stories
of con men and women
out doing and undoing the normal “guy” or “gal”.
When a con man – a sociopath – gets the best of you – your impulse s to tell someone or several someones. You have too… It’s part of recovering. Personally, I told lots of people. Most people were amazed. All people eager to listen – to a point.
Quite a few had been in relationships with sociopaths themselves but didn’t realize it. Most were sympathetic, but empathy (really feeling it) was nowhere in sight. Who can know what this madness is…?
Then there was that just didn’t get it at all. They had questions, like: How did you fall for that!?… Like it was a joke; kinda laughing or incredulous. And Didn’t you know he was a scammer?
And one of my favorites when I’d say we met and married within seven days, OooOOOohhhh, while they nod their heads. As if that makes hijacking my life in deceptive crime, okay, and clearly: My fault. – Wrong. But none the less everyone was interested in the story and that’s why there are so many such stories in our pop culture and media.
Fact or Fiction: Everyone Loves a Good Story as Long as It Isn’t Happening to Them
In addition to stories of cons in the news constantly, our entertainment is swollen with con stories. Many of them based on true stories. And yet at a real-life, personal level the one scammed can come into question and – we ourselves can hold onto doubt. We run thoughts through our minds like, Did I do something to make it happen? Here are the answers to both: Anyone can fall for a con. No one can recognize a con man and fall for the con! We did nothing to “make it happen”.
Tales from Real Life or Pure Non-Fiction: Con After Con
It’s a common thought that writers can only write about what they know, so how come so many writers are very aware of cons and yet life targets and prey have another shock and often find the real betrayal in the face of this horrific trauma at the hands of a conman?
Keep in mind, if a friend you’re confiding in isn’t empathetic they are not “bad” – just unaware – and, at this time, not right for you to tell your story to or look to as a shoulder or a rock.
Please, sweet girl or guy – move on to someone who is empathetic, sympathetic, non-judgmental and loves you, as your support person while discovering the surreal reality and resolving your losses and in restoring your gorgeous self.
Discover lightbulb moments.
Find your way back to you.
Find your way back to you.
Antisocial Psychopaths: From Killers to Con Artists
Scary stuff and some laughs involving the scariest creatures on earth. They’re here everywhere: Both Sociopaths and Psychopaths are born with the same abnormal brain landing them in the mental health category “antisocial psychopath”, ASP. The psychopath has an extra bit that overrides the rest: They love other’s pain.
And don’t be fooled this Halloween… a covert, overt, or malignant narcissist is a sociopath within our experience of them, just not in that DSM, medical manual – ’cause that thing isn’t written for us. It’s written by researchers who like to categorize things into many splinter descriptions.
It’s constantly changing. It’s for prison sentencing determinations, drug prescriptions and social services allotments. For us, we need to get to the root of their motivation and how they’re alike vs. how they’re each dissimilar for our recovery and freedom.
A Classic Comic Film Example of How a Con Artist Thinks
In the Steve Martin, Michael Caine comedy classic: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the first 13 minutes of the film reveals the utter truth about con artists. At 11 minutes and 52 seconds in, we hear the kernel of a con artist’s functioning affably, nonchalantly voiced by kind, goofy, and lovable funnyman, Steve Martin.
See Steve Martin on The David Letterman Show on YouTube
As the audience we have seen both Michael Caine and Steve Martin set up and pull off mini-scams, The two men are strangers to one another, both passengers on a train to a village in France populated by notoriously wealthy inhabitants.
Michael Caine has observed Steve Martin’s scenario scamming a woman out of an abundant meal in the dining car using a story about his sick grandmother. Finally, they meet in a private passenger car. Michael Caine hiding his own true-scamming-self feels out Steve Martin – con man to con man:
Mr. Martin, a “regular, good-hearted guy”
entering the train compartment where
Mr. Caine, a “dapper nobleman” reads a newspaper:
Mr. Martin: …Forgot I had a first-class ticket. (Opens blinds.) That bother you?
Mr. Caine: No.
Mr. Martin: (Blithely singing) “I love to love you in the night…”
Mr. Caine: I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation in the dining car. My condolences to your grandmother.
Mr. Martin: Hhuuuh? Oh! (Chuckles.) Oh Ha… Right.
Mr. Caine: Didn’t you say she was taken ill?
Mr. Martin: I tell ’em what they wanna hear if it gets me what I want.
Mr. Caine: Rather a shabby trick isn’t it?
Mr. Martin: I can tell you’ve got a lot to learn about women.
Mr. Caine: Yes, I’m afraid I am a bit naive when it comes to the weaker sex.
End Scene. – And Con Man 101 Class.
But what the thing is here… Both of them, both characters in Dirty Rotten Scoundrel’s played by Steve Martin and Michale Caine are con men. And they team up, and con one another and a woman comes into the picture and she’s con artist too… and
For fun: Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman,
Alan Arkin, directed by Zach Braff,
cast members of a bank robber caper movie, “Going In Style”,
interviewed by The Guardian
Films and Novels
Films: Con Artists… People Who Aren’t Who They Say They Are and Can and Do Kill, but Killing Isn’t their Main Jam
- Paper Moon, Starring Ryan O’Neal and Oscar winner, nine-year-old, Tatum O’Neal
- The Grifters, starring Annette Bening, John Cusack
- Academy Award-winning, The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio
- The Sting, starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, 70’s magic
- For Julia Roberts fans, there’s the 80’s thriller, Sleeping with the Enemy
- Catch Me if You Can, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks
- The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring Matt Damon, and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman
- Big Eyes, starring Amy Adams
- Black Mass, about Whitey Bulger, played by Johnny Depp
- Fracture, with the gorgeous Ryan Gosling, in an incredible performance, and the ever-perfect-psychopath, Sir Anthony Hopkins
Episodic Television Chock Full of Sociopaths
- Dirty John, the first season is based on a real-life situation in Newport California
- Succession
- Sneaky Pete, with Giovanni Ribisi
- Game of Thrones, King Joffrey
- The character Smurf, played by Ellen Barkin in Animal Kingdom
- Peaky Blinders, though they tone it down, show them “loving” and you love them all.
Films and TV with the Psychopath Bent
- Joker, Joaquin Pheonix, playing the most current psychopath
- American Psycho, starring Christian Bale, on the psychopath end of Antisocial Psychopath
- The Silence of the Lambs, a classic, of the Chianti and fave beans and Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster
- Mindhunter
- Dexter, though in real life Dexter would not genuinely love anyone
Norman Bates, from Bates Motel, is often confused with a psychopath… He isn’t. He’s schizophrenic and psychotic.
Documentaries Showing the Effect and Ruin of Sociopaths
- FYRE, The Biggest Party That Never Happened, Netflix: an amazing non-romance scam that shows us everything we went through objectively
- Gringo, The Dangerous Life of John McAfee, on Netflix: about security software developer and gazillionaire, John McAfee
- Leaving Neverland
- Surviving R Kelly, Netflix: this one is definitely haunting, I thought of it for three days after; view with caution and the stop button handy
- Holy Hell, on Netflix: still out and bout functioning as a predator, another self-appointed guru, and spiritual leader; only Andreas (or whatever name he’s using today) can show you God
- Wild, Wild Country, on Netflix: Bhagwan Shri Ragneesh who now days goes by Osha. Yah, I grew up in Oregon, these orange garbed followers were everywhere
- Bikram, on Netflix: a Beverly Hills-based “hot” yoga instructor and self-appointed guru, prosecuted for sexual harassment and rape
Know any great videos or books?
Books Centered on Sociopath Characters
- Tess of the D’Ubervilles, written by Thomas Hardy
- East of Eden, written by John Steinbeck
- The Lodger, written by Marie Belloc Lowndes – This one’s a psychopath
- Match Stick Men, written by Eric Garcia also a film with Nick Cage
- Catch Me if You Can, written by Frank W. Abagnale
- The Talented Mr. Ripley, written by Patricia Highsmith
Watching These Can Be Upsetting or Informative
As you can and want to, watch anything that helps you sort through the crazy and come to terms that these kinds of people exist. That they’re like this and will be for the foreseeable future. They aren’t here for the same reason we are.
Once we get into accepting and profoundly understanding their quite simplistic motivation that is unrelated to our interpretations most often… We can be free. When we know what they are and recognize them we’ll not fall into their hypnotic vortex. We won’t be lunch. The predator moves on to other things. – We win.
Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!
Time to Thrive!
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