In this day and age of living in “surveillance” Britain with statistics about CCTV cameras and “personal privacy” being shouted from every conceivable Daily Mail headline, it’s easy to feel a little bit paranoid. Easy to feel that “the men” are coming for you, that that cash machine you just withdrew a tenner from is scanning your retinas, that every time you pick something up your fingerprints are being sent to a secret government database where a weedy man in huge glasses looks at your prints and goes “oooooh, I knew it.”
But, to be honest, all that is a bit boring. What you need is to know how to make somebody personally paranoid. All this surveillance bollocks is a bit impersonal, don’t you think? So, here are five ways to make somebody really, personally paranoid.
5 – Whenever your victim buys ANYTHING mutter “interesting choice”.
It doesn’t have to be loud enough for them to hear – so long as they notice your mumblings the drips of paranoia will begin to seep in. An important addition to this is the lean and stare, don’t just say it, lean over their shoulder, gain eye contact, raise your eyebrows, shrug, turn away and KABAM. If your victim says “what..?” smirk and say “nothing”.
4 – ‘Like’ every status update your victim makes on Facebook.
Even if it’s something like “…is so sad” or “…is on fire” or “…just pooed so hard he lost hearing.” Literally ‘like’ every single one and then. Here comes the hard part: after about a week of continual ‘liking’ wait until they have a status such as “…is well pleased no one found out he killed those kids” and don’t ‘like’ it. By this point, they’ll be so used to your easy to please ways, that you disliking something will cause questioning.
3 – Spread rumours and downright lies.
This one is pretty simple. Tell your victim “Steve said that you’ve got no balls” and watch as your victim goes to Steve and Steve denies everything. Meanwhile before your victim gets to Steve, you tell Steve that “Gary said you steal Pritt Stick”, so your victim essentially goes on a wild goose chase of lies, wondering who is spreading all these rumours and why no one seems to like/trust them. Just to rule yourself out, create a rumour about yourself.
2 – Indiscreetly write “help” on your victim’s face.
Obviously if you see someone with something on their face you have a little stare and then a little giggle to your friends. But if you really want to mess with someone’s head, writing “help” on their face will illicit a whole different kind of staring. People will think “maybe this guy has a weird tattoo”, “maybe he thinks his brain is trying to kill him”, “maybe he got well battered last night and got a crap tattoo”, “maybe he’s got a weird disease”. Whatever they think your victim will get so many odd looks and hushed comments they’ll become really, really paranoid.
1 – Send anonymous tip-offs to his parents.
Become his best friend and encourage him to partake in various ‘laddish’ activities and adventures. Get him to tell you every sordid tale about his sexual life, inject him with non-lethal STIs and persuade him to take a trip to Conifer House, get a matching tattoo – but secretly ask the tattoo artist to make yours one of those six-week ones. Tell him fancying his cousin is normal, and encourage him to make a move, encourage him to participate in underground organised crime, tell him blowing his student loan in one massive spree at the casino is what all the cool kids are doing. Tell him he’s stupid for not sexually experimenting with glory-holes, dogging and mature gang-bangs. Tell him Tucker Max is a god amongst men.
Then follow him on his adventures, noting down events, taking photographic evidence and statements from witnesses and mail it all to his mum and dad. He’ll have no idea how they found out, and the best bit is, they will probably force him to drop out from university and live with them ’til he’s 30. Post them just in time for Christmas for a particularly explosive festivity!
Although why you’d want to make someone paranoid I don’t know.
Samuel Lanncombe Oliver
Loading ...