Miles

Years ago, Miles was reported to be an awful human being by every estimation, and there was corroborating evidence to support this. There was little good to say about him so he was mostly ignored. But at any appropriate opportunity, which was almost any time, his family and friends decided they would remind him of the hard truth. That he was:

Lazy
Boring
Insignificant
and most of all,
Stupid

He wasn't sure what he could do to resolve these things. Being so stupid, he couldn't understand what they meant particularly...only that they were criticisms, and that he was the exact example of them. When he heard others criticized he seldom understood why. Of course, he knew others needed help seeing how flawed they were, and wanted to help, but he was unable to detect all the flaws in people the other kids did, being stupid and all.

As he grew older he realized it was the people who reminded him of his flaws that seemed to be the most unhappy. Indeed, he saw that being critical of others itself seemed to be a flaw. Not only that, a person's capacity to criticize others seemed to be exactly proportional to their own disappointment in themselves.

As he thought about it he realized that he had no reason to believe those who charged him all his life and the years of despair were unnecessary. He was indeed stupid, but only for listening to them. In such he also realized the capacity for people to become that which they are wrongly accused. Furthermore, petty accusations that are correct only reinforce the self-destructive behavior because they lead to more despair and anguish, and that criticisms are actually seldom truly intended to benefit the accused - nor are they precisely directed.

He had such anger for the people who had falsely misjudged him all his life that he wanted to scream at them. More than that, he wanted to scream at the whole world and tell everyone to go to hell. That was when he first discovered how the others had felt when they had accused him. It enraged him. Now, he had indeed succumbed to what he might have predicted. He was so frustrated and disappointed in himself that he had become the very thing that he had never before understood.

If he could be so weak and stupid, he could prove that others were just as pathetic. He felt for the first time like he must monitor the behavior of others looking for weaknesses to exploit. He realized it didn't matter what they did - only that they had reservation when doing it that made them vulnerable. But that wasn't enough. He could be most effective if he treated others objectively, pointing out flaws that were petty, but literally irrefutable. After all, if someone was incapable of proper grammar or syntax, how could they possibly achieve anything of any difficulty whatsoever.

Of course, he was really a good person, so he needed to treat others as he wished to be treated. Easy, he decided he would welcome insults and nasty treatment from others. Then he went online and purchased a book: "How Piss-off Thy Neighbor in Politically Correct Ways."

Not only would others feel completely dejected, but he would be completely innocent of any crime, since he was only pointing out the plainly observable. This could have the most devastating effect on his nemesis - everyone.

So, he sat in his room studying the common things people messed up, like grammar, spelling and so forth. There he sat for years perfecting the art of criticism. He indeed became perfect at identifying every technical slip of the tongue he heard. He was delighted to see that others were most furious when he would act completely baffled at a thought because of some trivial mistake.

In the subsequent years he became rather unpopular. But, he wasn't able to anger people to the degree that he was angry, and it angered him. After all, he was now incapable of missing any minor flaw whatsoever. He was therefore flawless. Yet somehow still unhappy.

In the end his childhood accusers could not have been more correct.