Society is a dangerous and treacherous place… Your social network is an even more dangerous and treacherous place…

It all starts with infiltration.  Never has the phrase “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer” rang truer to a person, than to a social assassin.  A social assassin is someone who attempts to damage a person or a group of people by destroying their social credibility, personal lives, and/or professional lives.  There are countless scenarios that we have all witnessed or experienced which include coworkers sabotaging each other to get ahead in their company, exes trying to damage current relationships, and the smearing of a person or group of people who may have a different point of view.  No matter the scenario, social assassins utilize relationships with their target, or the social networks of their target, too carry out their master plan.  A social assassin’s motives are simple; jealousy and/or revenge, or any derivatives of these, are the primary reasons a social assassin will strike.  Social assassins utilize four techniques which have been used throughout the centuries by assassins all over the world.  Each technique offers the social assassin different levels of identity security which plays a huge role in continuing relationships with the target(s) and the target’s social networks.  Here are the four techniques:

Poison (Stealth): There is no better way to go undetected and destroy a target’s social credibility than to slowly inject falsities about a target to strategic people in a target’s social network.  With poison, social assassins spread rumors to key figures in the target’s life.  These rumors slowly degrade the social credibility of the target while circumventing any connection to the social assassin.  The social assassin remains undetected through this process because the social assassin never actually confronts their target.  The entire destruction method relies on the influence of other people within the target’s social network.  Not knowing who may be spreading rumors about you makes poison one of the deadliest techniques social assassins have in their skill set.

Stabbing (Short Range): If you want to ensure that someone is socially assassinated, you do it yourself.  And you do it by intimately stabbing them in the back (or front).  This technique relies heavily on the relationship between the social assassin and the target.  The social assassin uses secrets and the trust of their target to gather enough negative intelligence, in order to strategically use that negative intelligence to destroy the target’s social credibility.  This type of social assassination technique commits the social assassin to direct contact with their target; totally opposite from the poisoning technique.  The social assassin usually waits until the target is most vulnerable (breakup, occupational failure, fight within a friend circle, etc.) to deploy the negative information, usually destroying the target’s reputation even more.  This invective scenario will reveal the social assassin’s identity to the target which removes the social assassin from the target’s social network “permanently.”  Stabbing someone in the back with the right information and timing makes this one of the most cunning and devastating techniques a social assassin has in their arsenal.

Sniping (Long Range): It is very common for people to move away (literally) and distance (figuratively) themselves from their social networks.  Social assassins may find resentment toward people who “want out” which carries forth the motives of destroying someone who the social assassin believes abandoned them.  Sniping is a skill that involves discrediting someone who no longer lives in the same location or who decides they want to remove themselves from a particular social network which the social assassin belongs to.  Social assassins who use sniping as their method of attack strike their target’s social network while the target is unable to defend themselves due their distance (literally and/or figuratively) from the social network.  Just like in the stabbing technique, sniping reveals the assassins identity and just like the poison technique, the target is unable to defend themselves from the attacks.  With enough shots taken without a counter from the target, the social assassin will effectively destroy their target’s credibility under safe and unchallenged conditions which makes “sniping” an effective tool for any social assassin.

Suicide Bomb (Mass Destruction): Fucking boom!  That’s right, fucking boom!  If you are going to take someone down you might as well take everyone down, including yourself.  The suicide bomb technique is not the cleanest, most cunning way to take down a target, but it certainly accomplishes the mission.  In this desperate act of unimaginative annihilation to destroy the target’s credibility, the social assassin reveals all secrets, players, traitors, truths, falsities, rumors, predictions, and the identity of other social assassins of the target and the target’s social network; bringing down everyone involved, no matter the intentions.  This mass destruction technique puts everyone in question and destroys the target and their entire friend circle, which is almost unrecoverable for anyone involved.  Destroying everyone’s credibility, and making people question their trust bonds all over the social network, is a great way to take down a target and make recovering their social network almost impossible.

Social assassins either succeed or fail.  Their success or failure depends on how close they are to you, how much information you give to them, how close they are to your social network, and how credible they are (or making people believe how credible they are) to everyone involved.  If someone wants to cause harm to you socially, it will come from within your social network.  Why do people decided to become social assassins and target someone in their social network for assassination?  As stated before, a social assassin’s motives will always stem from some sort of jealousy or revenge.  We live in an age of instant communication, gigantic social media networks, and search engines that record your every move (literally), award, punishment, success and failure.  What once was private to most is now displayed publicly or semi-privately for all to see.  Secrets are quickly ousted by technology and communication.  Never has the environment been more conducive for a social assassin to succeed than now. We must investigate who poisons our reputations and use the facts of our deeds as the cure. We must disarm people with the truth who would stab us in the back. We must dodge and counter snipers from a distance with the accuracy of achievement. We must wear a shield of honor to protect us against suicide bombers.

Defend yourself.