Social Vampires

We all have that one friend, who sucks the energy out of our souls… They are most probably not your best friend as they are nobody’s best friend but still you may come accross them quite often. Whenever you meet them, they start telling you these terrible jokes, raving about uneventful events or asking for your opinion without giving you time or even a chance to interact. You listen and as it goes on, your liveliness withers and all the energy you had moments ago, abandons you without a forwarding address. They are better known as “energy vampires”, but I like to call them “social vampires” as I am doubtful that they could feed on the pure energy output of a simple generator. You should definitely avoid them but how do you know if someone is indeed a social vampire. Luckily, they are quite similar to ancient vampires in the lore and can be identified easily by using one or more of the methods below:

1. Just like real vamps, social vampires have the ability to hypnotize their prey. You listen to their nonsense and somehow have little desire to leave. As they are highly selfish and really don’t care about others, watch out for those who jabber about themselves all the time…
   

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2. Real vamps don’t have reflections in mirrors. Social vamps are quite the opposite. (They like mirrors and do have reflections, but luckily, they are easily identifiable, as they are the blurry ones in the picture). If you are in a group, take a couple of selfies and be on the lookout for the one with the biggest grin and a blurry body. Freshly fed with energy, they would be the fidgety ones, as their bodies try to break down the excess energy and have a hard time keeping their body still.
   

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3. Another similarity between the real deal and the social vampires, is the ability to alter memories. You never realize why you gradually felt exhausted and depressed after a couple of hours spent with a social vamp, and at the end of the day, you never blame that friend for the physical or the emotional drain. If you can’t find any reason for your sudden mood change at the end of the day, look nowhere else other than the soul sucker for the answer.
   

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4. Still in doubt? Stalk their social media accounts for a bit. If their feeds are full of long depressing stories about themselves or if they had made hundreds of gibberish comments for every single photo posted by their “friends”, you have found your social vamp. The similarity? Well, real vampires, too, tend to moan about themselves a lot if you befriend them; talking about how immortality is boredom for life or that how, being not able to stroll under the sun is depressing and so on.
   

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Now that we can identify social vamps, how do we defeat them?

Remember, they are just like real vampires. Although neither a braid of garlic nor a cross  will help you defeat them, a wooden stake through the heart will work just as well. 🙂