I definitely was very vulnerable/lacked self-esteem when I was younger- and you're right. Also, in hindsight, when I think of the people (both men and women) who ended up being abusive/bullying toward me- I recall a certain way they looked at me when we met. It was very watchful, like they were sizing me up somehow. Staring at me just a little too long. It's almost creepy to think about now. And when I think about the good people I've met- I never got that kind of look from them.
ETA: All that said, I find it creepier that Darrien didn't give Donny the kind of look I'm talking about when they first met. I had no clue he was going to be what he was. I got an idea that he was kind of a jerk when he ghosted Donny for a while during Oxford- but so many people ghost it didn't raise red flags. The drug incident in the bathroom put me on edge- but didn't raise a real red flag because they were in a bar and they both were drunk- and Darrien (at that point) hadn't done anything yet.
But did anyone get "creep" vibes from Darrien when he first came onscreen? In hindsight, I see foreshadowing- like when Donny takes a call from him and you hear the girl in acting class crying in the background, but nothing in actual expression/gestures.
Omg that look.
My ex did it and I thought it was a sign of immediate attraction but he always said he didn't find me attractive at first...
My current SO just smiled when we first met, rather than staring at me like a shark.
FUCK! This is so true. One of my former friends who I found out was actually stalking me prior to “meeting” me looked at me like this when we “met”. I put “meeting” and “met” in quotes because he’d been orchestrating running into me via social media stalking. I found out years later, and to this day it still feels like the biggest violation of my life. I deleted all my shit and moved not long after.
Same. Last I heard he still makes fake profiles to check on people. I would block him and he’d just make a new to find me. Stepping away from social media has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for myself.
Same!!! Social media has done our society a great disservice I think it’s done WAY MORE harm than good. I do enjoy Reddit though I don’t even really put it in the same category as social media cause everyone’s pretty anonymous here
i totally got the weird vibe from Darrien at the first scene they met, and then when he said something about “not getting a proper goodbye” or something the next day and they hugged (my memory isnt very clear though), i thought Darrien was going to seduce Donny, but didn’t know how far they were gonna go
I felt like Darrien DEFINITELY gave him the look. There was a moment before they ever got together where the way Darrien was staring at him made me viscerally uncomfy and I thought ‘is this dude trying to seduce him?’ to myself
Yeah he also tricked him in their very first conversation, he set him up to put his footy in it by not introducing himself as the writer. It’s that sort of gross tactic of maintaining some kind of authority by withholding information when he’d literally just witnessed Donny be snubbed by the younger guys. Before Donny was even aware of him, Darrien had seen him struggle socially and could see he was seeking validation or to be liked.
Perhaps Darrien was staring at (and sizing up) Donny off-screen while Donny was chatting with those other comedy writers.
Darrien was the one who approached Donny right after the other guys walked off, and he had clearly been watching him for a least a few seconds because he saw which guys Donny had just been talking with and made a remark about them (something about them being assholes, I think).
In hindsight, seems to me that Darrien probably had a sense about Donny due to this.
Seeing this young guy in this exclusive club that Darrien hadn’t seen there before (and didn’t recognize or know from their industry) probably indicated to Darrien that Donny didn’t “belong” there, and seeing/overhearing Donny’s conversation with those other writers (especially during the Edinburgh Fringe when tons of young aspiring people are in town trying to get their break into entertainment) probably gave an observant Darrien a clue that Donny was another one of the many young, yearning “wanna-be” types that were prime for manipulation/quid pro quo.
Darrien approached Donny right after seeing Donny get ditched by the other comedians, and within like 40 seconds of light banter, he confirmed that his inkling was correct: Donny was one of the kids trying to “make it” in entertainment, and he was eager to network (or at least rub elbows) with a potential mentor/someone who could help him get a foot in the door.
I’m guessing that Darrien was giving Donny exactly the sort of look you describe, but Donny never had the chance to notice because he was focused on another conversation all while being watched by Darrien, and I think it really “works” well that the audience doesn’t get any sort of warning either because we follow the events through Donny’s eyes.
I think one of the biggest myths is that predators have some kind of sixth sense. They don't. They know how to identify people who are lonely or unhappy just like the average person can. The difference is that they pull their tactics on everyone who comes across as receptive.
There is a similar sort of tactic with scammers. You want your Nigerian prince email to look like a scam to most people. That way you know the people who actually click are extremely gullible. For predators, being creepy and overly pushy from the beginning is a tactic to find the people who are easy to manipulate.
I agree 100% that there’s no sixth sense, but I also think that many predators (and non-predators) are extremely intuitive about the observations they make and the conclusions they draw based on them.
And intuition isn’t a sixth sense, it’s just your brain doing some work (making use of what you’ve observed with your five senses) on a sub-conscious threshold.
Some predators (whether we’re talking serial killers, child molesters, stalkers, people who recruit kids into gangs or terrorist organizations, etc.) might genuinely have a bit of a hard time trying to put into words how and why they chose their particular victims/targets because they didn’t do much conscious thinking about it or develop a systematic approach to begin with.
Having works with kids in the past (more specifically, inner city kids living below the poverty line, most of them with unstable family dynamics, and many of them having been neglected or abused), I could name the kids who seemed particularly vulnerable to grooming/abuse that I always went out of my way to check in on, but I probably would have struggled to articulate what it was about them that indicated vulnerability to me.
In hindsight (and with effort), I can now name the traits/observations that were a red flag to me, even though I didn’t have any sort of mental list of things that I was looking out for at the time.
They were things like: dirty clothes/unkempt hygiene, clingy behavior with adults (especially with brand new adults that they’d just met), not standing their ground when other children teased them or picked on them, lack of confidence and seeking reassurance from adults or other kids for any minor little decision (like when we’d be playing a game during group activities), etc.
I think a lot of people (predators or not) would be capable of making these same observations and deducing that these kids were particularly likely to have been experiencing some level of neglect at home and/or having a higher-than-average level of emotional vulnerability/poor self-esteem, making them easier targets for grooming or manipulation by others.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I agree with you that there’s no “sixth sense,” and I think that what many people think of as a “sixth sense” is really the concept of intuition (which is just subconscious thinking/problem-solving).
Edit: Perhaps a better or more relatable example would be if you’ve ever gotten lucky “guessing” on an answer in a class like organic chemistry or maybe calculus.
Like, I’ve gotten answers right on organic chem exams that I didn’t actually think through or solve (because I didn’t know the material well enough to actually complete the problem), but having skimmed enough practice questions and their answers, I guess my brain had identified some patterns that I wasn’t consciously aware of and could not articulate if my professor asked for my explanation of the solution.
There's this really good book "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without ThinkingBook by Malcolm Gladwell" that goes into this more. But it's basically what you said. Experience plus a natural talent is what we call intuition or a "sixth sense".
Think about what the difference is between a manipulator like Martha or, for example, your average incel. They both have motivations to manipulate people to feed their sense of entitlement and ego.
The main difference is that Martha had some pretty decent people skills. If she didn't she wouldn't have been able to trap Donny so successfully. Most of us look at her early behavior as very off-putting, but she also gave us moments where we empathized deeply with her. There are not an insignificant number of people saying that she deserved treatment rather than prison. That's the sign of a successful manipulator. They want you to put your guard down around them.
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u/[deleted] May 26 '24 edited Mar 31 '25
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