Self-proclaimed Elders and the sucklings who love them:

I do not recognize the title of Elder in the Vampire communities, nor do I automatically kowtow to anyone claiming the name, as most who do are just pompous elitist desperately seeking someone to masturbate their egos for them.

The reason behind this is that none of these subcultures are based around learning, and are more the result of people with similar conditions seeking each other out for socialization and information exchange.

Unlike with the Occult, the majority of Vampiric practices can be covered in appropriately an hour or two. They require zero study, or any real discipline. You might extend this by researching the mythology of the creatures the term was taken from, but that has little to nothing to do with the actual practice.

As for seniority.....given that most of the "Elder" Vampires I've met over the years tend to possess the mental maturity of a 4-year-old with ADHD, I find it extremely hard to dredge up so much as a smidgen of respect for them based solely on the fact that they’ve lived on this planet longer than I have, regardless of how much they prance around like self-proclaimed demiGods, demanding the adoration of their sheep-like bandwagon of brain-dead sycophants.

Forget that most of them are idiots and losers with zero life outside their on-line communities, the mere fact that they have more candles on their cake than you do demands your instant, unquestionable awe.

Seriously, the last “Elder” vampire community that I was bored enough to join actually plagiarized the Cobra Kai symbol for their group’s crest. If that wasn’t bad enough, they also just sat around bitching and whining about those in their little subculture who embrace the vampire stereotype, only to turn right around and do the very things they claim to disdain in others.

Hypocrisy is one of the few consistencies that ties the various metaphysical communities together, and no other subculture embraces it as wholly as the Vampires.