8-Ball Shenanigans

February 18, 2014

 I was playing a game of 8-Ball Pool on my Kindle Fire after returning home from the library. The whole playing experience seemed smooth at first, but took a downward turn over half an hour later. I started the game in the Offline Practice mode, playing three matches, which allowed me to get the feel for the game after spending several days away from the application. Feeling a sense of confidence, I began to play online with a real person. I entered the one-on-one section where my opponents are typically selected at random. I won the first match and lost the second. Experience points are typically scored in both victory and defeat, but the former grants more of them. I earned one-hundred seventy-five for winning and only thirty-five just for playing the second match and losing. The thirty-five points provided me with enough on my score tab to achieve advancement to the next level. I continued playing electronic pool, squaring off against additional opponents. Something strange started happening during the third match; my connection to the game's server started to freeze. This was evident when I saw a message that said, "Waiting for server response." The server reconnected a minute later in time for me to find that my turn had expired. From there on, I started experiencing additional hacking that took the form of cue repositioning, strike delays, and additional server freezes. I became increasingly tense as the hacking continued. I started ranting silently, threats to the perpetrators. I threatened to stay up until 1:00 AM instead of my normal midnight bedtime (the perps usually try to get me to go to sleep early, so I can get tortured before they sedate me while subsequently waking me early to keep me from going back to sleep) and get involved with activism in ways that include spreading fliers. I then started thinking to myself that the threat of going to bed later might not be effective. I also began to wonder if that was even a wise move to make for my health. I kept losing additional matches due to perpetrator interference, but could care less; for I was way too steadfast to quit. They eventually relented in their cyber attacks, but this did little to stop the tension that arose as a consequence thereof; by then, I had transformed into a nervous, shivering wreck. I was unable to concentrate as I continued playing for an additional amount of time, making the decision to quit the game a few minutes later.

Closing Remarks

 I, at times, have found myself getting way too addicted to 8-Ball Pool (controlling my urges to play electronic games was never one of my strongpoints; although, this has greatly improved since the beginning of the awakened stages of my targeting), but have found success at reducing the game playing frequency since the night of this incident, for it had given me a reminder that tackling my targeting problem should be my main subject of interest. It had reminded me that more priority should be given to activities in association with my plight even if it is something as modest as research, information gathering, or fighting their efforts to manipulate me into living a sedentary lifestyle; I therefore, have started limiting myself to no more than two matches a day when playing the game. If I do play any electronic game in excess, I will be sure they're at least games that are designed to exercise the brain rather than nullify it.


I have heard of other Targeted Individuals (TI) playing highly addictive electronic games (more so than the pool game for Kindle Fire) to cope with their targeting, and this is a vice of which I would certainly not recommend. Just as drugs, television, and dare I say religion, electronic gaming is also a form of escapism that represses negative emotions rather than venting them. This type of practice could, in the long-term, do more harm to one's own mental/emotional health than good. Any number of things can happen to an individual once he/she had bottled up more anger than he/she can handle resulting in effects such as a nervous breakdown or violent/reckless behavior. If this type of effect does not occur then the mind could also go into a state of apathy where a person may see little or no incentive to do anything about his/her targeting. The type of vices I would recommend are those that vent rage in a more controlled and constructive manner; examples of such vices would be writing a detailed fantasy of malicious things happening to one or more perpetrators (wouldn't recommend publication), communicating to a supportive and trusted friend about one's plight---this will most likely be another TI, posting details about one's targeting to a social networking forum or sub-forum for TIs---if one trusts such sites, and blogging about one's own hardships. When blogging, it is best to write notes on as much perp activity as one can remember beforehand. Waiting for too long then blogging from scratch will very likely cause a person to experience trouble in recalling details while trying to write a blog entry; I speak of this from experience.Being able to recall one's own experiences with at least ninety percent accuracy is essential when trying to expose what is happening.