Story in progress

you have to deceive your companion before deceiving your enemy

 I don't know why this is going on so long, but you seem to be missing the point, if you don't mind my saying.

You didn't "miss" anything. I'm simply pointing out to you that sometimes things people say or write aren't necessarily to be taken verbatim. This was one of them.

The only other point I was making is that language is not simply words on paper or online. It also involves prosody, i.e., tone, pitch, and stress, among other things. Furthermore, it involves body language and eye contact. There's just so much that can be gleaned by reading what people write, especially in person-to-person direct communication.

I remember when people first started sending e-mails to one another. There were lots and lots of situations in which people misinterpreted what somebody had written to them, which led to unnecessary hurt feelings or anger. Slowly but surely, many people have learned to write e-mails much more cautiously and carefully, and they have reduced the amount of humor in their messages. It seems that humor can get people into more trouble than anything else since the reader must be able to understand without all the visual cues I mentioned that what they're reading is supposed to be something funny, something not taken seriously. Humor in direct communication can be a dangerous thing without those prosodic cues.

Anyway, I think this topic is dragging on too long, Izzy. I hope I've clarified enough now. 

https://thegrammarexchange.infopop.cc/topic/followed-by-and-followed-with