Valentine's Day Massacre - The Death of INCOMM

[Royal Prince Xenu]

No, they grind them up then melt them down. Much faster

They don't even do that. There is a commercial machine out there that, for the environmentally irresponsible, can destroy a hard drive in under 3 seconds. The platters are rendered so tortured and twisted that they'll never be read again, and modern drives require that the controller board actually be "married" with the platters--damage to one or the other renders the drive unreadable.

[Type4_PTS]

I'm bumping this for the newbies and lurker's on the board now.

[EP - Ethics Particle]

I'm bumping this for the newbies and lurker's on the board now.

And again!

[Auditor's Toad]

This thread deserves a bump.

[Chuck Carmichael]

I was almost caught in this massacre, having left INCOMM just a couple months prior. I swore I would never end up on the RPF, thankfully my timing was spot on.

[OhMG]

It still to this day boggles my mind how anyone would put up being treated that way.

[TG1]

Have you seen this yet?
http://www.lermanet.com/dangarvin/

Within the story, it links to a copy of the internal document that was posted to ARS that sparked this whole thing off...

That is an AMAZING link!

There, Dan Garvin tells the story with even greater detail as someone who went through it -- not to mention, it includes the fascinating story of "Miss Bloodybutt" and -AB- who posted the story to ars.

BTW, if you don't know who "Miss Bloodybutt" by now, you really should hear that fuller story. It's one of those "truth is stranger than fiction" stories.

TG1

[FreeBeing]

It still to this day boggles my mind how anyone would put up being treated that way.

It's called indoctrination and mind control based on manipulation. Narcissists sociopaths psychopaths all, have no compassion and empathy and will ruthlessly dominate the unwary with emotional abuse, physical beatings, rape, murder, scams, lies and deception, cults, in this case hubbard and his scientology. Ever wonder why a woman will tolerate years of emotional abuse, physical beatings, and/or rape or a man will tolerate years of abuse in an intimate relationship? Same concept. They believe they are trapped or don't understand they are trapped. Scientology is a heinous system masked as spiritual yet is the opposite of any spirituality, much like an abuser saying they love you while destroying you.

[OhMG]

It's called indoctrination and mind control based on manipulation. Narcissists sociopaths psychopaths all, have no compassion and empathy and will ruthlessly dominate the unwary with emotional abuse, physical beatings, rape, murder, scams, lies and deception, cults, in this case hubbard and his scientology. Ever wonder why a woman will tolerate years of emotional abuse, physical beatings, and/or rape or a man will tolerate years of abuse in an intimate relationship? Same concept. They believe they are trapped or don't understand they are trapped. Scientology is a heinous system masked as spiritual yet is the opposite of any spirituality, much like an abuser saying they love you while destroying you.

I just think they need to grow a backbone.

[FreeBeing]

I just think they need to grow a backbone.

Do some research, you may be surprised what you can learn.

Compassion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion
"Compassion is the understanding or empathy for the suffering of others and helping them to come out from the suffering.

Compassion is often regarded as emotional in nature, and there is an aspect of compassion which regards a quantitative dimension, such that individual's compassion is often given a property of "depth," "vigour," or "passion." The etymology of "compassion" is Latin, meaning "co-suffering." More involved than simple empathy, compassion commonly gives rise to an active desire to alleviate another's suffering. It is often, though not inevitably, the key component in what manifests in the social context as altruism. In ethical terms, the various expressions down the ages of the so-called Golden Rule often embodies by implication the principle of compassion: Do to others what you would have them do to you."

Sociopath
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sociopath
so·ci·o·path
[soh-see-uh-path, soh-shee-]
noun Psychiatry.
a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.

Narcissism
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/narcissism
nar·cis·sism
[nahr-suh-siz-em]
noun
1. Inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity. Synonyms: self-centeredness, smugness, egocentrism.
2. Psychoanalysis. erotic gratification derived from admiration of one's own physical or mental attributes, being a normal condition at the infantile level of personality development.

Psychopath
http://dictionary.reference.com/brow...hopath?&path=/
psy·cho·path
[sahy-kuh-path]
noun
A person with a psychopathic personality, which manifests as amoral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn from experience, etc.

Traumatic Bonding
http://victimsofpsychopaths.wordpres...matic-bonding/
"Traumatic bonding is “strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.” (Dutton & Painter, 1981). Several conditions have been identified that must be present for a traumatic bond to occur.

–(1). There must be an imbalance of power, with one person more in control of key aspects of the relationship, such as setting themselves up as the “authority” through such things as controlling the finances, or making most of the relationship decisions, or using threats and intimidations, so the relationship has become lopsided.

–(2). The abusive behavior is sporadic in nature. It is characterized by intermittent reinforcement, which means there is the alternating of highly intense positives (such as intense kindness or affection) and the negatives of the abusive behavior.

–(3). The victim engages in denial of the abuse for emotional self- protection. In severe abuse (this can be psychological or physical), one form of psychological protection strategy is dissociation, where the victim experiences the abuse as if it is not happening to them, but as if they are outside their body watching the scene unfold (like watching a movie). Dissociative states allow the victim to compartmentalize the abusive aspects of the relationship in order to focus on the positive aspects.

The use of denial and distancing oneself from the abuse are forms of what is called cognitive dissonance. In abusive relationships this means that what is happening to the victim is so horrible, so far removed from their thoughts and expectations of the world, that it is “dissonant” or “out of tune” or “at odds” with their pre-existing expectations and reality. Since the victim feels powerless to change the situation, they rely on emotional strategies to try to make it less dissonant, to try to somehow make it fit. To cope with the contradicting behaviors of the abuser, and to survive the abuse, the person literally has to change how they perceive reality. Studies also show a person is more loyal and committed to a person or situation that is difficult, uncomfortable, or even humiliating, and the more the victim has invested in the relationship, the more they need to justify their position. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful “self-preservation” mechanism which can completely distort and override the truth, with the victim developing a tolerance for the abuse and “normalizing” the abusers behavior, despite evidence to the contrary.

–(4). The victim masks that the abuse is happening, may not have admitted it to anyone, not even themselves.

Trauma bonding makes it easier for a victim to survive within the relationship, but it severely undermines the victims self-structures, undermining their ability to accurately evaluate danger, and impairs their ability to perceive of alternatives to the situation.

Once a trauma bond is established it becomes extremely difficult for the victim to break free of the relationship. The way humans respond to trauma is thought to have a biological basis and reactions to trauma was first described a century ago, with the term “railroad spine” being used. Another term used has been “shell shocked”.

Victims overwhelmed with terror suffer from an overload of their system, and to be able to function they must distort reality. They often shut down emotionally, and sometimes later describe themselves as having felt “robotic”, intellectually knowing what happened, but feeling frozen or numb and unable to take action. A victim must feel safe and out of “survival mode” before they will be able to make cognitive changes.

Many victims feel the compulsion to tell and retell the events of the trauma in an attempt to come to terms with what happened to them and to try to integrate it, reaching out to others for contact, safety, and stability. Other victims react in an opposite manner, withdrawing into a shell of self-imposed isolation. The trauma bond can persist even after the victim leaves the relationship, with it sometimes taking months, or even years, for them to completely break the bond."

Cognitive Dissonance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
"In modern psychology, cognitive dissonance is the discomfort experienced when simultaneously holding two or more conflicting cognitions: ideas, beliefs, values or emotional reactions. In a state of dissonance, people may sometimes feel "disequilibrium": frustration, hunger, dread, guilt, anger, embarrassment, anxiety, etc.[1] The phrase was coined by Leon Festinger in his 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, which chronicled the followers of a UFO cult as reality clashed with their fervent belief in an impending apocalypse.[2][3] Festinger subsequently (1957) published a book called A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in which he outlines the theory. Cognitive dissonance is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.

The theory of cognitive dissonance in social psychology proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering existing cognitions, adding new ones to create a consistent belief system, or alternatively by reducing the importance of any one of the dissonant elements.[1] It is the distressing mental state that people feel when they "find themselves doing things that don't fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold."[4] A key assumption is that people want their expectations to meet reality, creating a sense of equilibrium.[5] Likewise, another assumption is that a person will avoid situations or information sources that give rise to feelings of uneasiness, or dissonance.[5]

Cognitive dissonance theory explains human behavior by positing that people have a bias to seek consonance between their expectations and reality. According to Festinger, people engage in a process he termed "dissonance reduction", which can be achieved in one of three ways: lowering the importance of one of the discordant factors, adding consonant elements, or changing one of the dissonant factors.[6] This bias sheds light on otherwise puzzling, irrational, and even destructive behavior."

Fear, Obligation, and Guilt (FOG) in Relationships
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...-relationships
"According to Susan Forward, Ph.D. (Forward and Frazier 1997), emotional blackmail is a “powerful form of manipulation in which people close to us threaten, directly or indirectly, to punish us if we don’t do what they want." The main tool of the trade, Forward says, is FOG: fear, obligation, and guilt.

People with borderline or narcissistic personality disorder may use emotional blackmail because it’s the best or the only way they know to get what they want or need. Unwilling or unable to make a direct request, FOG becomes the lever of choice to those who suffer from low self-esteem and have difficulty setting personal limits and stating what they want. Victims capitulate because they often possess these same qualities. And perpetrators use whatever works again and again.

FOG works in the dark. It resides in the land of emotion, not logic. At the heart of it is this flawed reasoning: “It is permissible for me to push your buttons to get my needs met, but if you try the same thing, I’ll make sure you will regret your selfishness.”

That’s right: the emotional blackmailer’s reasoning is illogical; he lives by a double standard. That’s why emotional blackmail is never discussed outright: the minute you try to shine a light on it, by discussing it or asking pointed questions, it will scurry away like a cockroach. If you try to pin a blackmailer down—“Are you saying you will pout if I refuse to go to the party with you?”—he will project the FOG back onto you, deny its existence; or try to distract you by changing the subject, being dramatic, or getting angry. The supposed anger may have nothing to do with the particular topic—a combination of anger with a request to change the subject is designed to throw you off-balance."