NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="chriton227" data-source="post: 6642411" data-attributes="member: 33263">With bullies, their buddies are frequently more sycophants or followers than friends.  They are people who see the bully as powerful and someone to fear, and by sucking up to the bully, they feel they can either share in that power or avoid being a target themselves.  But when the bully ends up in a tight spot, those buddies will frequently abandon the bully to save their own hides, especially if it looks like the bully is going to be dethroned from their position of power.As far as the serial killers, many of them are sociopaths who are manipulating the people around them as cover for their activities.  People don't like the actual serial killer, they like the facade that the serial killer is projecting, the false persona that they use to avoid suspicion.  And the "pillar of the community" thing can easily be part of the role they are playing.There are many cases of people who are unalloyed asses (UA for short) with plenty of "friends", but frequently those friends are not there out of genuine affection, but instead because they want something the UA can offer, whether it be material goods, influence, power, parties, etc., or because they are afraid of the UA and are sucking up to stay in the UA's good graces.  I haven't seen many poor UAs with big groups of friends, but media is full of UAs (or people doing a darn good impersonation) that are musicians, actors, sports stars, or heirs to family fortunes.  With many of them, if they suddenly lost their fame and fortune they would find that they also lost many of their "friends", which calls into question whether they were ever really friends to begin with.  At the smaller scale, the UA could have a crowd of "friends" just because they are the one that has the cool place to party at, or they guy who always has booze available for his "friends", or who has family connections to get his "friends" into whatever local attraction is cool, or even has the family member that could make things difficult for people the UA doesn't like.</blockquote>

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