…Clueless

I know I’m being a bit harsh here, but the previous post just nudged me on to write some more. Who is a wannabe? Wikipedia tells me that:

A Wannabe (pronounced “Won-ah-bee”) is a person who imitates or emulates another

You ask me, how is that a crime? People emulate others and that is how one’s personality evolves, right? WRONG! People learn from others and incorporate what they see fit into their own personality and lifestyle. They add a touch of their own to what they acquire from others. Even though, it is far from being original, it is what is acceptable.

Wannabes on the other hand have the sheep mentality. They follow and copy someone, or a trend blindly. Usually wannabes are harmless but as their copycat ways continue, they can take a turn for the worse and might try to beat the original trendsetter at any cost.

Symptoms of a wannabe :

1. During the initial phase, they are basically just nobody’s with no standing in the crowd.
2. They have a strong desire to learn from you and adopt.
   You got yourself a new pair of jeans and an hour later you see the wannabe with the same pair.
3. They have a special place in their brain to store whatever you say and seem to remember things long forgotten.
4. They are usually good listeners.
   They listen to you and your stories with such deep concentration that you get pumped to spit out more and more and more!
5. They are clever at making stories.
   Clever is an understatement here. The stories that you narrated in the previous stage will now come back to haunt you. You suddenly realise that whatever you told them, is now being rebranded and narrated to others as if it had happened to the wannabe himself. So, your plan of telling your friends that real life horror story of yours at the next get together goes down the drain.
6. They are jealous.
   The sooner you realise this, the better. Wannabes are jealous. They are jealous of where you stand amongst your peers, of what you have achieved and what you are.
7. They start teaching you.
   This comes a bit late but you are sure to arrive at this stage at one point of time or the other. The wannabe still considers you the guru but will now often cut your words to correct you. They’ll try to act all cool in front of others and will now narrate stories to you in a bid to show the rest of the crowd that they are now incharge.
8. They become your clones.
   Sadly, after the 7th stage, this is inevitable. You begin to see more and more of yourself in the wannabe. The way the wannabe talks to his sense of style. Everything seems to be a direct xerox copy of your own life. You want to stop this and take situation under your control but you fail.

Once they reach the 8th stage, it is usually impossible to reverse the trend. The wannabe is now armed and dangerous so you must proceed with utmost caution. The best way is to let the wannabe be until he tries to harm you in any way. That’s what I had done. But if the wannabe crosses that fine line and tries to act over smart, then don’t just stand there. That is the time when you must turn nasty yourself and prepare to eliminate the monster that you had yourself help create.

Slowly, bring out the truth in front of the others. Since the wannabe is usually a jealous retard who is heavily complexed, you do not have to try too hard. When the wannabe is confronted with the truth, he will always be defensive or will outrightly deny what you’re saying. The former is what usually holds true in my experience. The trick is to push the wannabe on the backfoot without making it too apparent to the rest of the world. You do not want everybody else to be thinking of you in the same way as you think of the wannabe.

You will begin to see the wannabe expose himself to others. You must strike hard and you must strike when it is abso-fucking-lutely hot! The moment you see him expose his true wannabe self, fire another round of fresh facts at him. Make him come face-to-face with the fact that he is a wannabe. Make sure that you prolong this process over a period of a few weeks or even months so that the world gets ample time to see the true colours. But keep in mind that people are selfish and bitchy. They will always try to take advantage of this animosity between you and the wannabe. The only rule to follow is that you have no friends here. You must only state the facts. No fiction allowed here or that might get you into trouble. State only those facts which you can easily counter in case the wannabe decides to confront you.

If you are smart and cautious enough, you can easily kill the wannabe. They have low self esteem and know whatever they have is acquired. Since they do not have originality they are perplexed by the situation and usually falter. So, just take it slow. Be careful that you do not become the villian. Paint your picture in such a way that it is the wannabe who is ridiculed.

And the most important point that you must remember. You do not have to destroy the wannabe yourself. You have to trigger his death. He will kill himself and will decay into oblivion. Be the trigger and not the bullet. Do not be at the forefront. Instead, guide the wannabe downhill from behind.

This post is dedicated to you “S“. Had you not rubbed me the wrong way, we would still have been friends. Your actions forced me to take concrete steps.

And all of you who actually read through this rubbish, everything written above is tried, tested and experienced. All thanks to S.

I won’t be teaching you something new or radical. It is just an explanation of what I did to stay happy when I was surrounded by strangers. Strangers here does not just refer to unknown people but also people with absurd thought processes which you cannot seem to relate to no matter how hard you may try.

Around a week back, my feed reader alerted me of a new comment on my blog. The comment was from a reader karen on a very old post on this blog :

how is collegge life now and you? im a collegge student for almost two years now, and i seem to have a problem where im not happy with my friends, but i try to stay happy and sometimes faking it to other people and just dont want to show that im upset you know.

As I sat there reading those few lines, I could completely empathize with the person. Around 2 years back, when I entered college, I was face-to-face with a very similar situation. Even though my college is jus 16KMS from my house, it used to feel as if I was on another planet altogether. I tried to befriend different people, spent time with them and judged them. But the more I stayed with them, the more I felt suffocated. I felt lonely - all alone in the middle of nowhere. The only time I felt happy was when I skipped college (my attendance must have been below 40%). The atmosphere in college was pathetic. It did not seem like a place to study and it sure was no place to enjoy or freak out. I always knew that films showed the half truth but my college life was far from what I had imagined. Looking at my sisters getting nostalgic when talking about their own college days, I felt even more depressed.

Then this realisation dawned upon me. There was no point in cribbing. There was no point in just brooding over the fact that I could not find even a single person who was like-minded. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! Or atleast pretend that you have. That is what I did. I let them be. I opened up my head to their thoughts. These thoughts and views really did not matter to me. My brain was on auto-pilot. It filtered out what it thought was a bit sensible and discarded the rest. This way, I had no load to carry. I had nothing to worry about. I was completely detached.

I did not need friends. I did not want friends. I already had loads of ‘em. I wanted company. I wanted to hear somebody blabber something for those 8 hours I was in college. It broke the monotony, it provided me relief and best of all I had no problems with the people that surrounded me. I realized that there was no point trying to fight a losing battle. There was no point trying to find that one needle in this haystack. Just pretend that you always had it. Or you didn’t need it at all!!

I followed this philosophy. I went to college, passed my time, had pure fun without worrying about anything else. Even though sometimes I did not really relish it, my brain just discarded that thought. I quit worrying and cribbing. I stopped thinking about my past and where I was currently. I stopped comparing. I stopped keeping a count of my gains and losses. I just let them be. This way, I welcomed everybody with open arms and by the time I knew it, I had an army of people to keep me company. I shed the prejudice that I had and in the process I gained relief. I gained company. I gained mental peace. I gained satisfaction. I gained friends (yup, friends and not just company). I gained happiness.

Now, I’m actually happy when I go to college. Had I not taken that step to welcome everybody, I’d still be cribbing and ranting here on this blog. But now the situation is different. Now, I’m not seeking company. Rather I’m enjoying the time that I spend in college.

The only way to overcome difficult situations, the only way to feel wanted when you’re alone, the only way to stay happy when you’re not, the only way to feel at home when you’re in the middle of nowhere, is to just change the way you think.

So, during my exams, when I really didn’t want to study, I hopped on over to wikimapia. I located my house and my college. The images are pretty dated. I guess the next update would set things straight because lots of things are currently missing.

• My house
• My College

Kinda freaks me out you know. Anybody, anywhere can just log on to the Internet and spy on anyone. Crazy.