Is this a new leaf?

 A person online shared their impressions about Marc Maron's newest material, after seeing him perform in LA recently. The person made it sound like Maron is exploring past pain.  Maron himself has alluded to something like this, in a recent intro.  I do not personally know the person who posted about Maron's new stuff, but they came across as a new fan of Maron's, and concluded by saying they just wanted to hug Maron and "make it all better for him."  When spoken by a young person who has just been listening to a longtime grooming predator,  those words are a red flag.

The sda principal often spoke about the pain in his life.  He had experienced pain.  The awful loss of an immediate family member when he was young, killed by a drunk driver.  He had also gone thru a lot of pain because of his father's philandering.  Once, while speaking to the church youth sabbath school class back in the 80's, he got emotional as he spoke of how it confused and hurt him, to hear his father tell him how a good man should treat his wife, all said while his father was cheating on his mother.  Tears were in that principal's eyes as he told us about this, and the rest of the youth group seemed to be taking his words to heart.  The words he was saying, his tears, combined with what he had been doing to me just the night before, was too incongruous for 15 yr-old me.  I left the youth room, walked the half mile to the river, and smoked a few cigarettes, trying to figure out all I was feeling.  I kept remembering a time when my father was sitting on the couch, telling my mom and 6 yr-old sister that he was going away for the weekend to spend time praying, asking god to make him be a good husband and father.  My mom had recently accused him of sleeping with pam again, and a big fight had ensued.  When my father had stomped out, I was sent after him, to ride in his truck as a sort of chaperone, to keep him from cheating.  He drove to pam's, where she begged him to leave my mom for good.  He promised to spend the weekend with her instead of his family, and said he would drive me home and be back in an hour or so to take her away, camping.  Twenty minutes later, I watched my mom and little sister believe the silver charade his tongue wove for them, as I stood against the dining room wall trying to make sense of a world where everyone was either lying to those who trusted them, or believing those who always told them lies.

Did Maron experience trauma in his earlier life?  Hell yeah.  So did my father.  So did the sda principal.  So did everyone who has ever been born.  What we do with that trauma as we grow, that's what counts.

Is Maron gonna quit grooming and fucking damaged girls, some now young enough to be his granddaughters?  I can tell you exactly what to look for, to find your answer.  Will he continue making it clear onstage that he does not love his current gf, but he may be ready to finally accept love somewhere, someday, with somebody?  He has been grooming little damaged girls online with exactly that hope, the hope that he might be ready to "accept love." That is a phrase those broken girls he grooms will grab onto like a lifeline, and he knows it well.  The girl in recovery, and also the girl with the gun, clung to this line of his, and begged him to get back in touch with them, to please stop ghosting them, that they really did love him.  Publicly.  On his Instagram Lives and posts, in their Instagram Stories, in desperate responses everyone ignored.  Little damaged girls, so broken they think what he is doing to them is love.  Do you know what is one of the worst things an abused girl with BPD can face?  Abandonment.  That's a hallmark of BPD.  Each of these 2 girls, in starting to have to face how Maron had purposely sexually exploited their damaged minds and was now done with them, was driven into the very crisis such exploitation causes broken young girls to experience.  If Maron was 25, doing this unintentionally for the first time, not yet knowing the outcome for such girls when abandonment after exploitation happens, that would be a bit different. This is a 59 yr-old man, who knows full well how these girls react, because he has made fun of these damaged girls for these very reactions, onstage, for decades.  Laughed at them for "glomming" on to him, and being obsessed, for being lunatics he just can't say no to, for trying to control him. Those are his own words, describing these girls when he is done using them, after he has groomed them to reach out for him.  After he is done re-exploiting them.  They simply can't handle him being yet another old man who fucks and then leaves them.  Finding out how he conned and lied to them is so fucking damaging.  Sad, too, because that is an awful trauma he causes them to experience, and they don't get to let that trauma out anywhere, much less on some public stage, because they will be blamed for what he did to them. What he.  Did to them.

Last year, while he was touring, on at least two different occasions, young girls who went to different Maron shows said one of his "fake" instagram accounts sent them a dm as they were leaving his show, asking them to meet him around back, or at his hotel lobby.  One girl posted about it on Maron's Instagram, acting giggly.  The other girl, after the show she saw, posted on his Instagram that she was disturbed by that dm.

Maron has been grooming teen girls for 30+ years.  He has desensitized and normalized this grooming behavior for everyone around him, and has done it so well, he is now being spoonfed to children.  Do I think he has changed at all?  Well, whatever trauma he is processing onstage right now, it left one of his young new fans feeling like she could help him feel better.  That is what his grooming has always been meant to do.  So, it doesn’t sound to me like he has changed at all.  

When Marc Maron's fans start leaving his shows talking about how Maron says he is done hurting young girls, he is sorry for ruining the lives of damaged young BPD sufferers, he never wants to re-exploit another sexually exploited child again, and he is no longer going to be 13-stepping young girls in recovery, then maybe I will think he has grown and changed. Until he stops being a grooming predator, though, I am not interested in playing make believe.

Time plus behavior equals truth.