My sociopathic ex was the same way. He had stacks of books about history, religion, botany, etc. He was obsessed with playing backgammon...played online for endless hours...hundreds and hundreds of games often throughout the night. Was always chatting with his opponents, pretending to be someone else, often female. I found out he had numerous fake social media profiles that he used for gleaning information from us "real" people. I think it was just one way to ensure that his pool of potential victims would never dry up.

Mine loves culture. He is white but pretends to be hispanic. He can teach himself how to speak different languages. He also is obessed with african culture. He also is into history and will quiz people about historic facts.

Phoenix, I'm sorry to hear that. "Mine" as I call her (we were never together, thankfully) I thought had different profiles. I don;t think that's the case now, but I could be wrong. I know she has perceptions of herself she likes to step in to at will: the bad girl, the good girl, the christian, the jew, the witch, you name it.

Theview: mine claims to be cajun. When I asked her if she knew any french, she said "a few". She never claimed to know any other languages on her various networking sites other than English "some Japanese, Estonian (there's a reason but that's another story) and Hebrew", until she moved to NY for a while and guess what language she knows? Louisana Creole French. that's different than cajun french. Its true both groups might speak one language or the other and think its their own, but no cajun walks around claiming to be cajun and knowing LA creole and not Cajun.
About the "hebrew' thing; she's at least half Jewish, and was into Judaism for at least 2 years at one time, just before going into "secular Jew" to agnostic, to an ever so brief bout of Islam, to finally a baptist Jesus freak, even though she claims to have been bullied by baptists in a liberal town for being Jewish (place has a synagogue, gay bar and new age oil store for crying out loud). Oh, and she once claimed she was the only Jew in her area other than her family.
I was told by someone I mentioned in my first post that she is only half Jewish, that is, father Jewish, mother no. Not even Jewish by Jewish law.

yes they do this a lot from what ive noticed but a sociopath can find a victim just by reading a few words or a certain way we walk and hold ourselves , which really freaks me out. they love to hide behind religion and often see them selves as or are leaders of such. mine taught me so much about spirituality and so many good things but he is so evil?? go figure, no wonder i get so confused. how can so much good come from something that deep down inside is so evil?? ill never understand that part of the whole mind f*** game that he plays.

My psycho ex was smart and quite well-informed, and my theory is that he read up on a bunch of subjects so as to be able to impress and manipulate a larger number of victims.

Yo're probably right saddest bunny, mine seemed like she tried reading up on everything too in order expand her circle; but only on a superficial level, never getting more than skin-deep knowledge to impress or intrigue people, with the exceptions of her fortes, of which she is only moderately more informed.

bellanomore, THIS is perhaps THE thing that made me have to go into two mental wards: the confusion they cause; from what I've seen and read, it appears that pathological liars tend to believe themselves almost to the point of delusion, which makes them all the more convincing. They of course usually know when enough is enough, as when backed into a corner they'll find a way to say they never said it or find a way to make whatever it is go away without looking like a liar. That should make for a good topic. Thankyou for your reply and help.