Beware the Schmooze-Parasite

Over the years I've seen this pattern emerge far too often and ruin far too many good things. I complained about it on fedi once and decided to put it up as a separate page for "don't make me tap the sign" purposes if I see this developing again.

This doubles as an explanation for why I'm always highly suspicious of business-savvy extraverts who have not thoroughly proven to me the depth of their understanding of something they want to work with me on - or, at least, that they themselves have been burned similarly in the past.

1. Some dedicated, usually neurodivergent person, often a bit of an outcast or black sheep, is working on a project. This is a good project that contributes to the sum knowledge and happiness of mankind.
2. Some smooth-talking, charismatic, almost always neurotypical white male (though I have seen a few Asian women come close) with some appearance of upper-middle-class wealth and higher connections (or capacity for it) appears. This is the titular parasite.
3. Parasite happens to hang out in overlapping circles with the creator of this project. Parasite ingratiates himself to the creator and introduces creator to a larger audience. Creator experiences the joy of social validation for their project at a level and of a nature that they have never experienced before.
   • (A clarification is needed. I'm not talking about a targeted con here; that would call for a much more thorough analysis of risk factors that I am not at all qualified to discuss. In the situation I'm trying to warn people about, we can assume that the parasite has a sincere interest in the subject matter - just one that does not go far enough to force them into the self-reflective prioritization that can overcome the pattern in behaviour that I'm going to describe. But this means that merely establishing that someone is sincere is inadequate protection from this dynamic: the scorpion actually wants to get across the river.)
4. Parasite continues ingratiating himself, and proposes a partnership for additional growth opportunities. This is the creator's chance to have their work recognized in the mainstream.
5. Time goes on and the project grows thanks to the parasite's efforts at bringing in more people. Because of the gatekeeping role the parasite inevitably undertakes, he ends up getting handed more and more power over incidental (tedious, people-related) tasks until he has control of vital logistical and legal components of the project - controlling voting shares in the company, trademarks, lawyers, etc..
6. Parasite never develops that true, deep understanding that creator has of what makes the project good. His passion for the project never goes beyond that superficial interest; what predominantly earns his time and effort and meta-knowledge is the connections and clout that come from the project being good - or, rather, it being widely perceived to be good.
7. Complications arise from the project as more people, more money, more drama, more conflicting interests, more cooks in the broth, more investors to appease, more debts to be paid, more people wronged or offended, more edge cases the project never planned for, etc. keep piling up.
8. Third parties begin to grumble and make dire, actionable threats. Or maybe it never even gets to that point, but a few people here and there are grumbling loud enough to spook the parasite into existential fear for the project since in his world the power of their brand is everything and if that reputation dies it's all over.
9. In response to the risk, parasite tries to bring in even more people hoping to make up for losses with more growth. New people, new money, new problems. Parasite makes many promises to both old and new people that he convinces himself creator can fulfill in due course.
10. Thousands of tiny (and not so tiny) compromises happen. Whatever was originally good about the project has long been smothered under innumerable layers of enshittification. Its existence may even have become a net detriment to the sum knowledge and happiness of mankind.
11. Creator inevitably fails to appease everyone. Parasite naturally, without even necessarily thinking about it, frames the situation for everyone involved so that all the blame gets dumped squarely on the creator.
12. There is conflict and drama. Creator loses in the court of public opinion - and, given who was in charge of the legal paperwork at the start of the relationship, the actual court as well if it gets that far.
13. The project is now the property of the parasite.

Bad Ending

14. The project eventually collapses. Nothing will ever emerge to replace it that can do what it did - there is just too much in expectations and affordances that any attempt ends up getting lost in the weeds of the conflicts that have built up. The creator has disappeared into obscurity, completely burned out by the experience.

Good Ending

14. Creator is forcibly ousted from the project (or quits in circumstances that in employment terms would have amounted to constructive dismissal). Project lives on in name and law, using the power of its brand to continue growing its market share even though nothing of that original spark of goodness remains. Creator languishes in the outer darkness of that field's underground scene, almost completely unknown to the general public who only knows about the original project, pulling a few loyal followers with a shared vision into a tiny, obscure new project that retains the seed of what made the original project good.

Good Ending Fake-Out Into Bad Ending

15. The original project, now a completely zombified husk controlled by private equity reapers, discovers where the new project is hiding and lawyers and PR-psyops it out of existence. Perhaps some of the more knowledgeable users fleeing the wreckage might pass on that knowledge in some secret unknown places for a little while...

Actual Good Ending

5. Creator reads this and recognizes what's going on. They realize they don't even want the clout and money that the parasite is bringing in - and that, despite his subjectively sincere objections to the contrary, the parasite fundamentally does not share their appreciation for why the project is good in the first place. They've still got enough control of the project that they can throw out the parasite, or at least leave and take the ball home with them in a much stronger position to pick up where they had left off, unmolested by the parasite's lawyers.

A few additional points to be considered:

• While they correspond with certain clusters of personality traits, there is no binary between kinds of people who are creators and kinds of people who are parasites. Extraverted neurotypical creators can fall into this trap and introverted autistics can be parasites as well. The same person can be their own creator and parasite.
• Not every partnership between people who superficially match this description ends this way. A lot of this hinges on:
  1. sharing that deep respect for the craft and knowledge of whatever it is your enterprise is about, with a long-demonstrated conviction that each of you would have been and would still be doing this thing even if you were doomed to do it utterly alone;
  2. mutually setting clear, non-negotiable boundaries before any not-immediately-reversible steps are taken;
  3. learning to say no to the other person early and often and to stick by it - and to respect the other person's no, provided that the "no" you're asked to respect is to you trying to get them to do something (if it's "no you can't take a break" then you take the hell out of that break and never come back);
  4. not getting cajoled into anything that you don't fully, honestly understand the reason for doing.
• That said, however, the relationship between artists and publishers and record companies is inherently this.
• This often happens on a collective level, when a nonprofit doing real work becomes a larger org and starts doing terribly misguided things like hiring a CEO.
• In fact, this is arguably only distinguishable from some forms of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish in terms of whether the parasite is a person or a large org.

~ * ~