Ah…Forrest has an old nemesis, I see. Forrest, let me say that I completely empathize, for I had to deal for a year with a very equivalent character (though perhaps more evil and less eloquent). What advice can I give to show for the struggle and pain I was put through? In the end, little.
Well, this strain of @$$hole is so virulent, it is nearly impossible to eliminate, at any way. First, they will search for weaknesses in you. Then, they will attack you in one way or another. SR seems to be going that track, deciding for a low-profile offense that only you fully understand rather than openly and obviously to everyone. The idea behind this is very ingenious; he just said a couple random things which have little relevance to most people, but then you will respond in a very harsh manor. In reality, your manor is no more and even less harsh than his was in reality, for it's an inside thing only the two of you get, but your angry responses may be more comprehensible by the rest of your audience, and so they will look down on you as the one who started the argument, which the archetypal @$$hole will take advantage of later.
It's later. You have managed to push off the @$$hole in a number of ways, defending yourself well, standing up for yourself…basically just building a wall to be broken down. The @$$hole then may go to publically proclaim his own innocense, and then blame you for the discord in a number of ways (most of which unprovable heresay and his word against yours), but he will be believed because he is able to relate to the people and/or he can use your initial anger as an example of your aggression, and say that you were the one to start it with this, however illogical, evidence.
Now, you are still able to disprove the @$$hole and defend yourself reasonably well, though it's taken a great tole on everyone and everything in the vicinity. One of your greatest asistances in all of this was your alliance and friendship with your collegues and friends, us. Ah, and so now that it's seen that you yourself are not an easy target, your shield is attacked.
—From this point on, we will assume the @$$hole has taken the ultimate persona of the one who will stop and nothing to dishearten and hurt you…a joy Terminator, of sorts—
Your friends and allies are deceived in a number of ways. First, they will be befriended by the @$$hole, the @$$hole showing he's not such a bad guy, explaining how he understands them and you really don't, relating to them on a very personal level that you could not, or simply did not, before.
Your friends, formerly your most trusted allies who totally believed in you before, have now been told a different side to the argument on a different and more personal level. Your friends will become extraordinarily deluded and confused by the @$$hole, and if they even were once your greatest companions, they will doubt what you said, and even try to convince you otherwise of your position, saying that "he's not such a bad guy", and the like, and "he's my friend", even if they didn't happen to be friends before this occasion.
Ah, and now the first backstage process is complete. The time is right for you to be directly attacked again! You are publically portrayed in a similar light as before, but now the @$$hole may add certain underlying themes that only he and your formerly close friends understand.
And that's when the attack comes; not from the front, but from the sides. Your friends and allies, who once believed in you, will turn on you. Like a pupeteer, the @$$hole as been using your friends like marianettes to carry out his own fiendish plan of your bringdown, for nothing else is more important or will be ultimately more rewarding in his mind. You will be utterly appauled as your own men will rise to defend the @$$hole from you. You had no idea of the verbal transactions beforehand, so this is a true shock.
You are able to draw on your common experience to help bring at least a few close friends back into your own ranks. The numbers will be grim, but you resolute that you may be able to go with just them and perhaps run from this place, should that be necessary.
Meanwhile, you go to the @$$hole privately and personally. Questions you ask, like, "Why are you doing this?" and, "What have I done to you?" Any number of replies is to be expected. You are making the most grievous mistake of treating the @$$hole like a human being, or expecting some sort of logic or reasoning from him. Nothing but something as immuture as "I just feel like it" to "You did such and such to me", even though you really didn't, is what you'll hear, all just meant to make you madder, more unhappy, or just angry. All of these negative elicitations from you are a great plus for the @$$hole.
In addition, you may even be presented with some stupid bargain which is obviously unacceptable, but he'll use that on you later by telling others, often publically as well as privately, how you were the one unwilling to compromise, just the same as you were the one to start the discord, in everyone else's mind.
You tried humanity privately, but now it's time to do it publically, to show the people that you are not the inhumane monster you're being made out to be in front of your eyes. Asking the same questions, you get completely different answers this time. There will be an attempt at eloquence on the part of the @$$hole as he does his best
"People are stupid" was my sophmore (year, not the state of understanding) interpretation of how Antony was able to sway the people so easily in Julius Caesar by Willing Shakespeare. I actually based this on the same past experience of which I am drawing this prediction now.
You'll find that, even though the response to your reasonable questions is full of holes of every like and it may be terribly done, everyone but you, and maybe some less naïve friend, will buy it like candy. It will have been written well enough, not to actually answer you or discuss the problem, but to extrude the feelings of negativity towards you that he has created in them. Your closest friends will treat you as an object of ridicule and fun. Their minds easy to bend, they'll be playdough for the @$$hole to mold as he pleases.
Your last, valiant attempts fail as the @$$hole has attained control of everything he possibly can, especially the people's verdict. You will become everyone's enemy and a towering tyrant to be brought down: "We don't want dumbass Dec to control us anymore!" is a paraphrasing of something I was referred to as, my TFL name being The Deceiver.
You will understand what's really happening and what really did happen. The @$$hole will understand as equally. No one else will. Which is the greatest evil? Incabability, conscious lieing to generate deception, or ignorant stupidity? It's a trinity of sin.
Every day, you are onslaughted with hundreds of foul and deliberately mean remarks, and that's just from your closest friends. They, have been turned into the @$$hole, for the @$$hole has used all of the deception to create clones of himself who sadistically enjoy the torment they put you through. Perhaps this procreation of sorts was the target all along for the @$$hole…perhaps it was merely a pleasant sidedish to the main course of his insane vendetta being fulfilled.
If you are particularly well-known, you will be brought down in every regard, and become the living joke of everyone, demeaned and rendered little more than a disliked jester in the @$$hole's court. It may even come to the point where people call for your head. The Bully has one, Evil has triumphed, and righteousness, honor, and God are dead.
You have few options remaining, but none are those to bring about any kind of victory; your fate was sealed when you were targeted. No, you cannot win, and your only options are those of the defeated:
Running—you try to find a place where no one has heard of you or the @$$hole, making a new name for yourself.
Advantages: You don't have to deal with that life anymore and you are relatively free to start again.
Disadvantages: Besides not seeing everyone and everything you used to care about, it doesn't even work. You will still be "alive", as Mistic put it, in that you will yet exist in the world and are a creature to be hunted down. The @$$hole has forever runined your former home, and has now come to ruin your new one. The same thing will happen again, except that it will be much quicker, as your friendships with these new people are so thin, the @$$hole can manipulate them far more easily than you can.
Lying Low—intermedeiate is this, and often very effective. You stay away completely from the world, out of sight and mind in all aspects, for as long as possible. Upon returning, you might come back to find everyone has forgotten the hellish unpleasantness and a lack of the bully's presense. If you're unlucky, you'll find the @$$hole has been lying low too, awaiting your return to stir up some new fun.
Advantages: You might actually "not lose", that is, be able to rectify the former situation after a long, long years' work at it to repair the damage that was done.
Disadvantages: You weren't there for a long time and missed out on everything…not that there'd be any joy in it. Besides this, it probably won't work, and most people will remember and continue to hate, even without the presense of the @$$hole, though it's much easier now.
Staying—you stay to simply be stubborn and hold your ground, as a sort of honor thing. You don't futily do anything but try to live as if nothing happened.
Advantages: Heh? Not really any here, except maybe honor…
Disadvantages: …for you only can allow yourself to be ridiculed and subjected to many torments and punishments by your former friends. Eventually, it won't work. If the @$$hole weren't there anymore, you might be able to keep your power (though joylessly). But if he stays in any regard in the people's minds, you'll eventually be stripped and challenged of your power, meakly forced to give it up.
Suicidal—for those who won't accept defeat, they may try harder and harder all the time to outlast the bully. You can't win this, obviously. The basic goal in mind here is to at least show the @$$hole that you're not bothered by the chaos around you, and that you can even be on the same level of pride. If you outlast the @$$hole, which you won't because he'll never get tired before you, you will have worn down everyone else with such tedium that they'll hate you even more than before, if that's possible, and the relatively temporary affects of the drunken haze of the @$$hole which had bound your people away from you so long has become permanent and immutable.
In most situtuations, I'd say "choose wisely", but…I don't think it matters. Do what you think will be most fun to go out on.
How to win: make the @$$hole bored. If he is slightly bored, he will want to do more torturous things to stir up interest. If he is mainly bored and sees no success or fun it the project, he will just disappear…perhaps to reappear again. How to go about how to win? Lol, gl.
The no-win situation is what the protagonist faces. He will not win at all, as long as the @$$hole still exists in the world in question (such as online being one world and offline another). There is no hope; there is no help; there is no joy, point, or life. Your sorrow is endless and his pleasure great. If there is a hell, this is truly it.
"How did I win?" you ask, based on the fact that I draw this from actual experience and lived these terrible scenarios and circumstances. I'll let you read this first and ask in your own words :-).
'Tis he. O brave Iago, honest and just,
That hast such noble sense of the friend's wrong!
