When I first became aware of him on LiveJournal, I thought he was clever for his age. He'd end each post with a different drawing of an awkward tiny Dylan, trying to approach an enormous guy at the gym whom he idolized. He'd always describe himself in diminutive language, as a "little half-Dutch, half-Filipino" guy who just wanted to be noticed by the targets of his adoration. The targets were usually beefy blond/redhead guys who, prophetically, looked a lot like Jack.
Over time, he discovered weightlifting, and his posts became more vain. He started to develop a new identity. His naive charm turned to arrogance, as his self-esteem and sexual currency increased. It became tedious to read because the two sides of his personality didn't mesh well. Humble little guy, emboldened big guy. Yet Dylan showed he could use that to his advantage by manipulating the reader with techniques that are pretty common today. Start with intelligence, humor... and progress to sex, oversharing... and when all else fails, try pathetic victimhood. The goal of everything is attention, and he gets it.
I can think of a few tipping points that made me 1) think something was really wrong with him, and 2) really begin to hate him, despite not actually knowing him.
- Pathological lying. He would make a statement that would contradict something he wrote previously. It would force you to go back and search for it, just to see if you were crazy. And no, he really wrote it.
- Narcissism. Never before had I seen it on this level. We're all used to it by now, but in my day, displaying a small fraction of this amount would make you universally hated. His obsession with himself reached previously unseen depths. I started to think this was the new normal, and maybe I was just not aging well. Now I know... both of those statements are true.
Then at some point, LiveJournal ceased to be a thing. I saw him around town, often at the gym. He seemed like a typical brainless aspiring muscle queen. I thought about my first impressions of him and how he seemed to have potential. Smart enough to do something good with his life, I thought, but now he's a vapid little bitch bent on adoration.
At some point, I noticed the slave stuff. I guess he decided he was a member of the BDSM thing. (FWIW, is it me or is he missing a few letters in that acronym?) I saw him in public with guys wearing chains. I thought, who the fuck would look at that guy and take him seriously? He's so goofy.
His extroversion increased to levels even SF wasn't used to. Dylan would parade his "pups" around town in their get-ups, including to the gym. The gym, um, performances were painful. The "queefs" (as they became known) would file in, put on wrestling singlets, with no underwear and sporting cockrings, and proceed to line up after their master. Like little ducks, they'd follow him to a piece of equipment, watch him do some minimal exercises, and then follow him somewhere else. They'd be out of there in half an hour. Even at a gym where bad fashion, barely-covered genitalia, and gay thirst are normal, they were a train wreck.
The rest is over-documented. However, I have always been intrigued with this person, because - more than simple gossiping and hating - he represents some cultural phenomena that I've struggled to understand.
For instance, the popularity. Why do people like him? A few possible answers:
- Attractive (to some), charismatic, big dick. That's all you need to be popular in the gay scene. You can be a total creep (he is) and there's always someone else ready to give you a pass for bad behavior, with an "awwww he's nice" or "but he's hot" excuse. Lots of people know how to exploit this.
- The Kardashian effect. We've suffered through endless reality TV spectacles, but this is the closest parallel to the N&B thing that I can think of. I have thought often that Dylan should be parlaying his shenanigans into a TV deal, but not now, because ooops, you murdered your partner.
- Gay masculinity is fraught with problems. Gay men are brought up in society to think of themselves as less-than-male. (FWIW this affects all men, but gay men have their own struggle.) If one reaches an urban center and can find a community, there can be a circle of people who will guide you into something that might make you feel more valuable as a man. I believe this is what leather bars, bear culture, gay sports, etc. can provide to men, and that's not a criticism.
What Dylan figured out is that becoming the image of masculinity is actually not that hard. If you work out enough, eat good food, take "supplements", and dress the part, you too can project an image of masculine confidence. This he did, and he figured out how to sell this image to others who were struggling. He offered a path to masculine identity to some people who really wanted it, and you know what happened next. He knows exactly what buttons to push to mold these lumps of clay into his basic gay likeness.
(I know some of you might argue that a pink thong does not a masculine man make, but it's all relative.)
- We are in the age of pathological narcissists, with the orange man in the white house doing what Dylan does, only on a larger scale. The similarities, at times, are pretty shocking. I'm guessing it will bring both of them to failure, in a matter of time.
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