The Screechfeed Dispatches - Letter VIII: On the Addictive Power of Being Offended

 

📍 From: Underfiend Griphax
📍 To: Screwtape, Tormentorship Emeritus
📅 Filed under: #OffendedIsTheNewHoly #WoundsAsWeapons #GrievanceAsGospel

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“A heart truly offended may seek healing. But one addicted to offense will beg to be wounded again.”
— Screwtape, The Theater of Self

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Honored Uncle,

The patient now lives in a state of exquisite, electrified offense.
Every word is a landmine.
Every headline, a dagger.
Every opposing idea, a personal attack.

He is never not bleeding.
And that, Uncle, is precisely the point.

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⚖️ Offense as Power

He’s discovered that being offended grants him authority. It allows him to interrupt, to silence, to correct—not with truth, but with pain.

He is not simply right;
He is injured.
He is targeted.
He is owed.

This makes him louder than logic.
He now enters every room already wounded, every conversation pre-armed with grievance.
He expects to be hurt—so he finds the hurt, even in kindness.

The more offended he becomes, the more control he wields.
He believes offense is insight.
He believes discomfort is persecution.

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📣 The Virtue of the Wounded Mic

We’ve made sure he confuses emotional intensity with moral depth.

• If he feels strongly, it must be important.

• If he’s hurt, someone must be guilty.

• If someone else isn’t hurting, that’s proof they’re privileged—or worse, oppressors.

Even joy in others offends him.
He accuses it of ignorance, of betrayal, of tone-deafness.
He cannot celebrate—only critique.

We have replaced reflection with reaction.
He no longer responds. He erupts.

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🩹 Healing Is the Real Threat

The Enemy, as usual, offers forgiveness, peace, and wholeness.
Dangerous things.

So I distract him with performances of healing—retweets, solidarity posts, awareness merch.
Let him speak the language of healing without ever letting go of his wounds.

Never let him feel actual relief.
Only escalation.
Only performative catharsis, never the real kind.

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I await instruction on whether to steer him further into martyrdom cosplay, or perhaps fracture his friendships with layered identity policing. Either way, he now believes pain gives him moral gravity—and that being perpetually offended is the surest way to never be questioned again.

Yours in hypersensitivity,
Underfiend Griphax
📛 Department of Weaponized Woundedness & Signal Amplification

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🗂 Tags: #OffendedForLife #PainIsPower #WoundWorship #IdentityInjury
🖼 Header Art: “The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise” by Gustave Doré (1865, public domain)
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