So it's taken weeks of my precious life, but I've finally read this thread from beginning to end. I have some observations.
I've seen a few people speculate on why he specifically says he wants to "flatter" women, and I think it's actually very simple. Imagine you're a high school girl, probably Mormon, but even if you're not religious you've been heavily socialized to be nice to the weird kid. One day, the weird kid makes a completely unwelcome and thoroughly disturbing pass at you. How do you respond?
"Thanks... I'm flattered."
"Oh, yeah, I'd love to go to prom with you. I'm really flattered. Really. But I already have a date."
"I found the drool-soaked Valentine you left on my locker. I'm, uh, really... flattered... but my parents won't let me date."
Your average socially-inept loser would eventually work out that what they're saying is, "I want you to never ever do that again. I want you to give up, go away, and never so much as look in my direction for the rest of my life, but I'm too polite to just say that". Not Russ. He hears, "I am interested but your specific wooing method/timing isn't quite right -- try something else at a different time and I'll be yours". Everything else -- the NPC dialogue tree issues, his little narc-y brain refusing to read this as a
real rejection, his absolute and unwarranted conviction that he's a solid 9, even the efficacy of his "wooing words" -- follows neatly from this. I won't beat a dead horse here, but the whole shebang kicks off because they said the magic word; they were
flattered. It was just that circumstances (like already having a boyfriend, or being a lesbian, or just not understanding the joke he'll now have to explain) got in the way of Russ' awesome approach. Which is why his overall approach never has to change. And why the first step to winning a woman is to flatter her.
You can't be nice to this guy, especially if you use words that are often used when being nice. He's just programmed this way.
And one other thing:
On page 28, paragraph 180, Russell says, "There are thousands of pages on Greer at Kiwi Farms and it is impossible to sift through each page..."
Impossible? No. Russell just didn't want to do all the work involved in combing through the entire thread. Occasionally, someone new to the thread will rate my old posts here, and it's kind of amusing to see them work their way through the entire goddamned thread via my notifications, usually over a period of weeks. If some random internet autist can summon that kind of dedication, Russell ought to as well.
Hey! I just did this!
Fuckin' kill me.
My guess is he called/texted/emailed them stating he had charges pressed against him, but lied about the whole thing like he has been for the past couple months: he was helping his "friend" Erika with her mental health problems, she "randomly" blew up on him and said she didn't want to have contact with him anymore, he stopped but after a few months decided to reach out to her again, and that's when she went to the police. Whether or not he ever came clean about the situation to them is anyone's guess. But they've known their son his whole life, so they probably knew he wasn't telling the whole truth.
My pet theory is that they aren't terrible parents, just terribly in denial. I'm sure he got a solid dose of "you poor thing" and "you're very special" growing up, but in turn his parents got a lot of bullshit right back. At best, I think they're dimly aware that he's an awful person, but probably choose to continue telling themselves it's because he was put up for adoption and is deformed, so of course things are harder for him and since no one's perfect, he doesn't always do the right thing. On some level, I'm sure they're aware that there's more to the story than Erika randomly blowing up at poor Russ, but he's given them the plausible deniability of Erika "having issues," and combined with his being awkward and entitled (because of his disability!) they can just not think too deeply about it. It's probably easier than confronting him and having him rage at them, which I'm sure he's done a lot in his life.
His insistence of “read the book first” just shows he thinks that anyone he “explains” his side to will eventually be convinced and sympathetic to him...and then it won’t matter if it’s true or not, because they’ll agree it made the story better! Even if it’s a lie! Doesn’t matter, they’ll understand his point and agree with him.
Right. And not to go too hard for his parents here (they were the adults in the situation, after all) but imagine trying to make Little Russ eat his broccoli. Whatever's wrong with him mentally is at least partially genetic and thus probably started showing up early on in life, and the parents were predisposed to be overly sympathetic to the poor little runt to begin with. Easy to fall into that pattern of just taking his word for how things are and at least accepting his excuses on the surface level, even if his version of reality beggars belief.
I know what you both mean. There's such a thing as being blind to reality and the fucking obvious, but to continue on with the exact same behavior despite zero success and every single person you have ever known telling you are wrong is just hard to comprehend. He's somehow totally evil and totally incompetent, everything he does is either a creepy attempt to sleep with a woman or get famous, or both, or an attempt to punish a woman for not giving him sex or fame, yet he's so bad at doing all of those things that he never even gets one step in the right direction and it's very uniquely strange to watch. If he were just an idiot and not a horrible person, he'd still be trying to woo Taylor Swift instead of trying to ruin her career. If he were just as horrible but more competent, he'd realize lawsuits aren't the way to go and would try to hurt women another way. Instead he remains convinced his legal argument of "I felt led on by her being a nice person" is unshakeable genius and it's the bias legal system that's to blame, and that he has a legal right to bang hookers, and that women shouldn't be allowed to refuse his sexual advances. And when everyone he knows tries to change his mind, he shuts them all out because he's so convinced he's infallible, alienating everyone who ever cared about him in a futile quest for fame and sex. His never ending life of failure and delusion is truly hard to look away from.
He's a rare example of Lawful Evil in the wild.
Edit: I also discovered that the website for the
Mile High Neon still exists, if any newcomers want to take a gander.
