Introduction
A young woman meets a man at her father’s funeral. They share an immediate rapport. She spends the whole service crying into his shoulder, knowing from that from now on she can no longer think of herself in terms of “I” but in terms of “we.” This man is now bound to her. They talk all night. They talk all through dinner.
They sleep together and both think that the act of love-making has never been so wonderful or fulfilling.
She’s so goddamn head over heels for him that she doesn’t even realize she forgot to ask for his name until it’s the next day and he’s already gone back home.
She’s in absolute despair trying to figure out his name. No one can remember, and she’s gone through the whole guest list twice. Nada. Worse still, the funeral is nowhere near her home and she’s going to have to leave soon. She has no idea where the wonderful young man may live, and he certainly has no idea of where to find her.
That evening she kills her mother.
Why’d she do it?
Well, if you’re a sociopath you’d know right away that she killed her mother so she could see that nice young man again. It makes sense that he’d come back for the mother’s funeral, right?
Or at least that’s what I was told the first time I answered this question.
The person who asked me, my college RA, even told me that it came off a test scientifically designed to measure sociopathy.
I immediately called bullshit.
Why? Well, it’s not because I’m not a sociopath. I just think there are much better ways to tell whether or not someone is really and truly disconnected from other human beings than a stupid question about killing someone we don’t even know in the context of the story.
Hell, the mother might even have had it coming in the long run. Did you ever even pull your head out of your ass long enough to think about THAT?
What if the mother had molested the daughter her entire life? Am I the only person that finds it odd that this hypothetical woman is so screwed up in the head she’s chosen her OWN FATHER’S FUNERAL to find the love of her life? Talk about attachment issues. Or maybe the mother just stood by while the father sold out the daughter’s body for drugs when she was younger? No, we’re just supposed to sit back and assume that Mother = Good. How good could she have been if she raised a murderer?
Sure, the daughter probably IS killing her mother just to meet that young man again. But if the mother was the sole reason the daughter is fucked up in the first place, then I don’t really mind the daughter killing her to get one fucking CHANCE at happiness.
Like I said, there are much better ways of telling how disconnected someone really is from the collective human soul.
I have compiled the following list of three things that all truly human people share in common. If you are able to go against any of them, you are without a doubt a sociopath. These are universals, that apply to all humans of all cultures.
Dare I say it: they even apply to space aliens.
1. Can You Commit A Violent Act While Listening to Enya?
There is a sound in the universe that controls all harmony. No, it is not the mystical name of “Muad’Dib” from David Lynch’s 1984 science fiction film classic “Dune.” It is the music of Enya.
Don’t believe me? Click on the Enya video I have encoded here. Now imagine the person you hate most in the world, and then try to imagine just beating the living fuck out of them. Think about bashing their evil fucking teeth in with your computer monitor.
Can’t do it can you?
That’s because Enya, as Adam Carolla has observed, is like a magic wood sprite. No one knows what country she comes from. No one has ever said “Oh dude, I was out at dinner yesterday and guess who we bumped into? Enya! That bitch loves spaghetti!”
No, Enya lives in some kind of magical palace made of wood bark and moss on top of a rainbow bridge. Her sole purpose is to create intellectual spaces in which violence can not exist.
If you can think violent thoughts while listening to Enya, your name is Charles Manson.
2. Do You Mist Up When Witnessing Montages In Which People Age From Infancy to Infirmity?
I don’t care what birth defects you have. I don’t care if you’re Hitler. If you show me a picture of you as a child, with pictures showing your gradual growth from infancy to infirmity, I will break down and cry.
Why? Because time ravages rich and poor alike. It is the one thing that connects us all, and villain or saint, you are a human being. You have a human story. All humans are suckers for human stories.
Watch this video and tell me you don’t get sad.
The person in the video isn’t even real!
Especially when you see the montage involves combat in WWII. Any time an American hears about another American dying in WWII we are obliged to feel very sad and reflective about our own life.
That’s why at the end of “Saving Private Ryan” when we see Matt Damon turn into an old man begging his family to tell him that he’s lived a good life it is totally okay to make a tea kettle whistle sound as we break down and just cry like the living fuck.
That’s right. I said “cry like the living fuck.” That is how powerfully you’re allowed to weep.
3. Do You Enjoy Abba?
I’m mostly Croatian. I am genetically designed to believe that the only hope worth having, is the hope that you will die in your sleep. I could walk behind a ox with a plow all day and never plant a single seed. Want to know why? Because I have no internal mechanism that tells me things should or can get better. I don’t believe that hard work should be rewarded.
You get to be miserable and then you die. Happiness is fleeting, and we’re all going to be dead in fifty fucking years anyway. Who really gives a shit?
Yet I am sometimes pulled away from these harsh truths by the joy of a “Dancing Queen” or a very strange song that somehow manages to relate a young girl’s surrender to love to Napolean’s surrender at Waterloo, or another song about two people remembering the Mexican Revolution (Seriously? What the fuck is that? Doesn’t anyone else ever get bumped by that?)
Oh sure in my personal life I condemn Abba has “gay tripe.” I can’t count the number of times I’ve been on a construction site and said “Wow, this song is so gay!” Only to nod my head in time to the beat of “Super Trooper” as soon as I rounded the corner.
There is only one kind of person that truly, deeply hates Abba.
The kind of person that hates life itself.
Ah shit I failed them all.
First- The year I went to college one of my suite-mates actually gave me a similar “test”. The woman in the version I heard never actually met the man, just saw him from across the room at the funeral and “fell in love” and became obsessed with him, and she killed her sister instead of her mother. But yea, same thing and I immediately and without hesitation answered with the “psycho” answer of “So she could see the guy again”. I was told that most people somehow come to the conclusion that the man turned out to be the sister’s boyfriend or something along those lines. This didn’t even occurr to me, as if it was someone the sister was involved with she would presumably have introduced him to the rest of the family long before going to a funeral for someone in said family. That being said, it is just a little disturbing to think that psychotic, sociopathic murderers might be leaps and bounds more logical than normal humans…
Second- I cannot definitively answer the first and third scenarios you put forth for testing whether or not I’m sociopathic (can’t conjure any of the tunes of either artist into my mind and I’m at work so I can’t even see the embedded videos, they’re just blank screen space for me);however, I can say that no I do not tear up during aging montages or when talking about war veterans. Honestly, the only visual media I have actually cried while watching was the end of one of the seasons of House when Amber dies. I got close to crying at the end of the, I think, third season of Bones when they got rid of Zach. Those are the only examples recent enough for me to remember at all though. I’m sure I’ve gotten close during other shows or movies, but it’s never a montage and it’s never anything to do with the military. I’m not patriotic enough for that.
I failed the sociopath test aswell then.
Enya certainly can save me, since she makes me immedeatly want a nap. And ive yet to master killing-while-asleep techniques.
I didnt like the piano much, it always feels like a storytelling cop-out to me, to use the ww2 generation as a sob-story. Especially as its an age thats been made iconic and untroubling because you always know: nazis=evil, everyone else=good,so we immedeatly like the guy who is a veteran/have a lot of preprogrammed responses and ideas about the shape of his life when we leanr hes a war-veteran.
This is opposed to any of the recent wars that have defined our culture. I personally get much more touched when its a story about human isolation in the modern age.
about the third question, i can only wonder at how the Croatian people apparently are genetically bhuddists
altho i might suggest that is common for the wider eastern european region to have a less-than-sunshine view of things, Serbians are also very easily pessimistic (those i have personal affiliation with are anyhow).
you only listed three things
Nice counting job, BC.
You should also include WALL*E.
Sark- Bhuddists or Taoists? Personally, I don’t really associate Bhuddism with pessimism.
The first time I heard that riddle i figured it out quickly as well. It just seemed very obvious to me. And judging from your test I am in fact a complete sociopath. Enya makes me want to kill Enya, I strongly dislike aging montages including the most recent one in UP. I saw it and I was like “What the Eff Pixar?” to myself of course and I hate ABBA. I also hate life itself so your correlation on that one may have been correct.
@London
That… is so near exactness to what I was going to type, it’s freaky.
Though I haven’t seen UP yet. I have no interest in stories about old people.
@IamRob
Yes. I could commit violence to Enya, and Abba irritates me, but Wall-E makes me run the full gamut of human emotion.
Also, I’m not sad about “The Piano”. I’m happy. People who live well get filled up as they age, and a full old person is my favorite kind of person to be with. I’d eat them a la Stranger In a Strange Land if I thought I could absorb their experiences that way.
Fuck, I AM a sociopath.
I first heard this test when I was like in 4th grade and answered correctly.
@Eric
I am not surprised.
@Banshee
Yeah, when she told me that I was like “Well then I guess we’re all fucked, because serial killers are much better problem solvers than we are.”
Also, how can you hate Enya? All she does is her whole wood sprite routine.
@Sark
Well I’m not pure Croatian is how I escape the total depression that has wreaked havoc on my father and his siblings. I’m also Irish, Scottish, English, and Norwegian which means that I am also having Viking genes and a thirst for a glorious death. And a desire to drink and think heavily about the past.
@a dude
Thank you sir, I fixed it immediately after reading your comment.
The other two weren’t as funny and I forgot to edit that line when I cut them.
@IamRob
I actually was going to include anthopomorphized fawns and animals, but I couldn’t because I was attacked by that fawn when I was a child and I still haven’t forgiven animals in general.
@London
How can you not be moved by a human life summed up in just a couple of minutes? You see the whole of someone’s existence from the time they’re a baby to the time they’re an old man…. and well it’s just a very fundamental part of our existence. It makes me stop and think when I see it.
@Jessica
It’s also about a fat kid.
@Rosie
I think I grokk what you’re saying.
@DJ
I have such wonderful readers!
I know!
One day we’re all going to snap and go on a murderous rampage and it shall be GLORIOUS!
I mean…ya know. We will live perfectly normal lives without killing anyone or anything.
You know you gotta start thinking more highly of me before I kill you and wear your skin.
BC- I never said I hated Enya O_o Just that I couldn’t conjure any Enya into my mind… actually, come to think of it, I’m not entirely certain I’ve ever even heard any Enya…
I’m so not sociopath that I can’t think of anyone I’d be willing to imagine to be beating even when not listening to Enya.
In the second video, I think Tiersen’s music makes me sad, not that strange animation.
And I don’t remember old people being eaten in Stranger In A Strange Land. Oh… Right. Dead people. Entirely different from old people imho.
Speak of Tiersen. You linked his song “Summer ’78″ a while back B.C. and thanks to that I have become a fan. I even bough his CD when I saw at the store.
@DJ
Believe it or not I’ve gotten e-mail where I have no recourse but to think “This chick totally wants to cut off my face and wear it as a mask.”
Which usually prompts me to think “cool!”
@Eric
Just don’t wear it as a boa or anything gay like that and we’ll be fine.
@Banshee
You’ve heard “It’s Only Time.” You may not know that’s what it is called, but is what everyone hears when they transition from consciousness into sleep.
@Kibrika
But aren’t old people dead inside, and isn’t that a much more fundamental death especially in “Stranger in a Strange Land?”
@DJ
You’re welcome!
@BC
When I was 14 I had a stalker. This girl that was my girlfriends best friend became obsessed with me. It’s one of my proudest stories because she was 17 and hot.
Perhaps my disdain for aging montages comes from my disdain for old people. that’s right I hate old people. I hate their see through veiny hands, I hate the way they walk all hunched over, I hate their whispery papery voices…I could go on but their you have it I have a wierd hatred for old people. I have a wierd hatred for a lot of things but old people crack the top 5 maybe even the top 3. and Jessica we are clearly soul sisters.
Are you fucking kidding me? The boa is the key to the whole outfit!
@DJ
Was she just into kids or what?
@London
I love old people. They’re like real people, except you can keep them as pets. And they give good hugs.
You should try it sometime. Just give a random old person a hug.
@Eric
I’m sorry, but I won’t have you press my flesh into some kind of feather machine. I have standards in how I want to be mutilated.
@BC
No clue but to quote her “I LOVE HIM!”(this was to my mom on the phone when her mom called to ask my mom to talk some sense into her daughter)
I don’t think I want to give an old person a hug. They seem fragile. Also, they smell and can be sticky.
Which is why I don’t like children either. That and the drool.
@London
Hells yes!
If you think Saving Private Ryan is bad, go see Up. It’s both one of the best and one of the most evil movies I’ve ever seen. It had me crying like a little girl within the first 10 minutes, and then every time I managed to stop sniffling and start enjoying the entertaining aspects of the story it slammed me with another heartwrenching scene. I love the movie but I resent it for toying with my emotions so effectively.
@DJ
I am jealous. Almost all my stalkers are dudes.
@Jessica
Then just put on a glove and pat them on the head. Most of them don’t bite anymore because their teeth have been removed.
@csulli
I was actually thinking of “Up!” when I included that.
@BC
Stalkers suck period. They get creepy and weird. I hope I have more!
i think your test is flawed. its not the montages or the war veterans you surmised, but the music. all of the videos are coupled with music that makes you feel sad. not the videos themselves. and really Abba is not a band to be compared with anything. i hate that “gay-tripe” as much as the next American male. the drama sequences in film, theater, and even print is a lot harder to cry to without moving music. think of all the scenes of all the movies in which you cried. i can guarantee you with astounding accuracy that the scenes included soulful, moving, sad music. if it were not for the music in your videos, it would be easy to think of violent actions towards other human beings. but that doesn’t make me a sociopath…does it?
I can actually think of violence while I hear Enya. More specifically, a man getting run over by a giant mining truck while playing matador with it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CTJqwX-AwM
@DJ
I didn’t mind any of my stalkers in particular except the one I thought wanted to rape me.
I think rape is where I draw the line in most of life. Also, don’t kill nobody unless you have to.
@Clay
I get very emotional about montages. Never cried at one, but I don’t really need music either. I’m very interested in the ideas of human beings getting older and dying. And I’m also very moved by the fact that we’re all going to die eventually but we all get up and keep living anyway.
But the music definitely helps.
@ShawShaw
Did you really have to kill Enya for me?
Also, I meant human on human violence.
Ok, am I the only one who thought “what kind of a dumb slut would ‘fall in love’ and have sex with a dude when she doesn’t know his freaking name???”
@not that rachel
No. No you are not.
In fact, when I first heard this, I was like “Well obviously the mother had it coming for raising such an emotionally unstable daughter.”
Is this shit a joke? It wasn’t that difficult to think violently while listening to Enya…I thought of bludgeoning one my arrogant, socially inept narcissistic jack-ass of a friend (associate or whatever you call it) with a spiked metal bat and we’ve known each other since we were nine years old. That montage was a waste of my fucking time, and Abba pissed me off; I had a sudden urge to shove her microphone sideways up her fuck-hole. The sound of that would’ve helped me make it through the video, I think. It takes a professional in the field to adequately assess the degree of psychopathy present in an individual, not a stupid series of WTF videos. As for the funeral scenario, the notion that it is an adequate determinant of psychopathy is FALSE. Robert D. Hare is the leading scientist in that field of study; confer to his psychopathy check-list if you want to know if you’re a psychopath, not this bullshit. But honestly…if any of those videos evoked a significant emotional response, it indicates merely that you’re a submissive pussy-cat bitch. So all you emotional faggots go suck yourselves off while getting raped in the ass by your 3-legged Chihuahua.
Yes. Yes it is.
I think I can do better than a 3 legged Chihuahua. Maybe a yellow lab.
@Eric
How many legs though? That’s the real question.
@Vladimir
Of course it’s not a joke! This is a serious blog about serious things. How could you even think about calling this a joke? BC Woods has a Doctorates degree in dealing with psycho people. Read his stories and you’ll see how he got them.
If its true love the amount of legs doesn’t mean a thing DJ.
Deep man. Deep.
I failed all three tests at the bottom and have already seen the first test though one thing about it doesn’t make sense to me.
Sociopaths are incapable of love so the woman in the story could not be a sociopath as she wouldn’t have “fallen in love” with the man. And I’m not sure that it’s a good test of sociopathy in the first place. It’s logical, plus like I said before, socipaths don’t feel. I am not sure if killing someone to get to someone you love would make sense… though killing someone to get soemthing you want would so maybe that’s the way they interpret it.
I found your rendition of the “Serial Killer” test quite refreshing ~ it is a massively creative version more than the original. I use it as a lead in for my criminal behavior classes. My university questioned me one time about their concern that my students would think they were qualified psychologists. I assured them that I clearly instilled that they would not be. Your RA explains why they might be concerned because the question definitely does not apply to Sociopaths ~ It is a psychopath. And they are significantly different. Psychopaths can mimic any emotion, any action, or relationship to get what they want. They are void of sensitivity. I will let it go at that,
, but since you passed the test ~ I thought you might want to know. 