That approach worked surprisingly well. There was no more my stepdaughter could say. Whenever something came up about my person that she didn't like, I pointed out my evil nature. The poor thing was saddled with an evil stepfather. Her miserable fate was something she just had to live with.
A further advantage that I soon discovered was that whenever I had been genuinely grumpy or mean, as we all are from time to time, I could dismiss this too as something inherent to my nature. I would admit that I was mean. I would excuse myself. But there was no need to explain. Being evil by nature, implies after all that anything nice comes at an effort. My default condition is to be evil. Nice is a bonus.
A somewhat surprising effect of this was that my stepdaughter soon came to like this game, and we've become good friends. The fact that I'm open about my dark side must have made her realize that her own dark thoughts were nothing to be ashamed of either. She could share these with her evil stepfather. All sorts of dark things could be brought forth and examined. Instead of being insecure about these tendencies that we all carry with us, she realized its power, and so did I. There's simply a huge advantage in being open about our dark side to the point of declaring it as our default tendency.
There's of course humor mixed into this. My stepdaughter knows full well that I'm not evil. She knows it's a convenient excuse with some truth to it. But truth is that I could do something terrible if I was pressed to do so, and some have come to realize this by now. They can't decide on whether to think of me as a nice guy, or as a would be sadistic murderer. That's not a weakness. It's a strength, and I think a number of my nearest and dearest are internalizing this to the point of seeing themselves in this light themselves. My stepdaughter, my wife, and my children are all of this kind. They are open, honest and nice. But there's an aura about them that tells of a dark energy just below the surface.
All of this comes in handy in a world gone mad with hyper-sensitivity. If anyone gets offended by anything I do or say, that's their problem, not mine. Many are shocked to discover that I'm a selfish tax cheat, that I pay no attention to inconvenient rules that cannot be enforced, that I position myself and my family as best I can in the greater scheme of things, etc. That's evil and selfish, they say, as if that was an argument for anything. Well, it so happens that I'm evil by nature, and I don't intend to change. What are they going to do about that? Shoot me?
As long as we're not at the point where self declared evil people get a bullet to their head, this strategy works like a charm. I can highly recommend it as it makes for more openness, and less self censorship. There's no need for us evil people to pay any attention to what the outrage mob happens to think. If anyone questions the reality of our self identification, we can tell them that it's none of their business. If I can self-identify as a woman, why not self identify as evil? In fact, the latter seems more natural to me, not least because it's true.
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