Whenever I stumble across pop-psych pages on Instagram, they invariably assert the necessity to understand, accommodate, and tolerate annoying behaviors associated with neurological disorders, but then they say to ghost any potential narc. Then zoomer women proceed to label you a narc whenever they flip out at you over something and cite charm as a symptom of NPD to dissuade their peers from associating with you
Narcissism is associated with some pathological tendencies (e.g. external locus of control, low levels of self-reflection, latent insecurity), neutral ones (e.g. willingness to take risks, low empathy, machiavellianism) and positive ones (e.g. extraversion, agency). The "60-80th pctile narcissism is adaptive" theory might be true, but it sounds too much like a cope to me. Regardless, the optimal play is to try to maximize the positive returns of narcissism while keeping the negatives in check.
If a subculture/organization/etc starts to become overwhelmed with the striver types, then it's time to jump ship. Narcissism is definitely not adaptive on a group level.
I am more annoyed by the fact that neurotic hyperverbal autism is easily confused with NPD by chuds and insufferable unagentic normalfag women and I have to suffer for it.
Also the talk about NPD and BPD people being empty inside is dehumanizing garbage and immediately makes me suspicious.
I have a little pet theory that the best leaders are sort of "learned narcissists" or "learned sociopaths". They weren't born that way which is why they can care passionately about something beyond themselves in the cause or group they are leading. But they were exposed to a narc or sociopath early in life, probably one of their parents, and this allowed them to see the benefits of thinking and behaving like the centre of the universe.
Just a theory made up while reading Elon Musk's biography and thinking his dad sounds kind of narcy
The thing that probably hurts you (and all of us über-weirdos) the most is that we live in a culture that would rather fragment and discard you wholesale than actually leverage your explosivity in life-affirming ways, and in return, give you guardrails to curb the self-destruction.
There is a funny accusation that lefties try to throw around about how capitalism is bad because it is 'extractive'. Aside from this statement being utterly moronic (and borderline meaningless), I think what it is trying to get at is that systems that are unhealthy have this characteristic of taking more from the producers who put into it than they can give back in the *currency that matters to the producer*.
I know you well enough that you have no problem being 'extracted from' – you just are looking for a role on the stage where everyone else also plays their performance to a degree that you can take the stage in the way that fulfills you. And that doesn't cause crazy, damaging spirals or pushed people until they break.
A vibrant cultural economy has a right place for you where you need not feel so alienated because the exchanges of what you 'put out' and what you 'get back' filters through the right sequences and mediums to put you where you belong (in a nice, nourishing way).
Let's continue trying to build that vision out – and collect/save as many generative crackpots along the way as we can working toward it.
A thing a lot of normgroids don’t get and never will is that you basically have to be extremely different from the average person to get results extremely different from the average person.
Personality disorders are kinda fake. People who learned about psychology on Wikipedia don’t realize how controversial these categories are. Professionals are reticent to diagnose NPD and a lot of them think BPD is not even a valid diagnosis. This article is good, but imo you rhetorically undermine yourself by throwing around BPD so casually.
BPD thing was kind of an artistic choice to provoke girls who constantly call guys narcs
I agree with ur overall point; imo these things are kind of like obesity, modern dating environment creates a lot of perverse incentives for women to act BPD and men to act NPD
Ahh, gotcha. I’ll take your word for it on modern dating. I think that friendships being mediated through social media isn’t helping either. We’re all so poorly socialized these days (myself included).
BPD is absolutely real. The list of symptoms sounds vague and doesn't do the condition justice, but once you have sufficient experience with them, every one of them had basically the same personality.
The chuds who talk about BPD and use that meme with the green haired girl have no idea what it is. It is not in any way a gendered disorder, there are just as many male borderlines as female, but we don't encounter them as much because they die young and go to prison often.
in my exp most of the girls who self diagnose use it as synonym for "likes lana del rey and cries a lot" but I did know one girl who seemed to have... something at least
I haven't come accross "self diagnosis", maybe its cool to be BPD in America but not Australia, thank god.
Real BPD:
- very aggressive nature to the victim narrative "everyone is out to get me and if you don't believe me, fuck you i will hurt you/myself"
- extremely jealous, clingy and paranoid of betrayal by romantic partners. Like a caricature of the jealous girlfriend. My friends BPD wife had a meltdown because he went to watch his cousin play soccer. Absolutely ridiculous shit thats hard to even imagine
- once in an agitated state, social boundaries cease to exist. There is no agree to disagree, giving their opponent space, there is no "im not going to bring this one thing up no matter how angry i am", in short, just not going to behave like a civilized person when angry
Narcissism and excessive pride are bad. That said, it's true that people throw the term around way too casually, as is the case with many psychological diagnoses (also applies to autism and such).
makes sense to me Walt. Every once in a while my wife accuse me of being narc. Interesting as I'm the one who stuck at building a business that supports us in our old age as she "retired" decades ago. I put myself out there to be a success. If I hadn't I'd be living in a trailer park or dingy apartment.
My dude, Narcissism is an unfortunate mental disorder. If being a narcissist was optimal then evolution would have selected for it exclusively and we would all be narcissists. Can you admit that narcissism may have some drawbacks?
I honestly feel sorry for you. Selfless acts and being kind to the less fortunate is not a sign of weakness it is a sign of abundance and strength. Acting out of benevolence is legitamtly one of the most gratifying things a human can do.
Whenever I feel myself slipping into narcissistic behaviour I remember the following quote "There but for the grace of God go I."
All Dark Triad traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) are lumped here together and discussed as "narcissism".
The idea of the Dark Triad is that these traits are often correlated, but to some extent they exist independently. For example, not caring about mass layoffs or cutting people open is not narcissism, it's psychopathy. Deceiving people and treating them instrumentally is also not narcissism, it's Machiavellianism.
I understand that the people that criticise "narcissism" often conflate it with the Dark Triad, but it seems like so do you. And I would expect from someone who publishes such analysis to know the difference.
Rob Henderson has some great posts about the Dark Triad, I would suggest to start there.
If it makes you feel any better many of the people making accusations of narcissism are often very self absorbed themselves. It's a coping strategy in a highly competitive and individualistic society. A highly religious community of peasants in a medieval world would naturally have much less need for narcissism.
Confidence, however fake, isn’t narcissism. This sounds like you’re personally offended because the guy has the balls to write what he thinks of other people. Is that really a worse crime than armchair amateur psychoanalysis?
You think Walt would go out to dinner and only talk about himself and not listen to anything the other person says? I don't.
The point isn't how or arrogant and self assured the person is or how much they present as "black and white" thinkers, the point is that in a real NDP the "status hierarchy" programming never switches off. Even when they are alone in their room they are the top of that hierarchy they made up.
When they say NPDs are "performative" what they mean is an NPD will signal his engineering knowledge (if thats his status hierarchy) to a homeless drunk. There is this obliviousness to other people (hence the overlap with autism), they almost don't know you exist if theyre not using you as a prop in some way to aggrandise themselves in their own mind or to others.
A lot of this is very difficult to determine online. But here is one trait you can definitely see in online interactions (not everyone who is like this is NPD but everyone who is NPD is like this)
They literally know everything. You can't challenge them on things they think they know even if they have nothing to do with their area of specialty. They will get really mad. Even if its some YOU have a degree in they know more than you. This weird competitiveness with people in normal conversation is so overblown that they can't learn new information from talking to people, they can only learn from reading or consuming media because it feels like "their idea".
(You can have all of this without the high confidence, you can be a depressed narcissist whose status hierarchy is inverted to give you low self esteem. You will still talk over everyone and disregard their opinion of course)
Just putting this out there, I don't think this describes Walt at all. He's not telling people to shut the fuck up in the comments. His writings and podcasts show evidence of self awareness and interest in learning things from in person interactions. I'm 99% sure hes not NPD, just my 2 cents
Whenever I stumble across pop-psych pages on Instagram, they invariably assert the necessity to understand, accommodate, and tolerate annoying behaviors associated with neurological disorders, but then they say to ghost any potential narc. Then zoomer women proceed to label you a narc whenever they flip out at you over something and cite charm as a symptom of NPD to dissuade their peers from associating with you
This comment shows that you are a vulnerable narcissist 😏
Narcissism is associated with some pathological tendencies (e.g. external locus of control, low levels of self-reflection, latent insecurity), neutral ones (e.g. willingness to take risks, low empathy, machiavellianism) and positive ones (e.g. extraversion, agency). The "60-80th pctile narcissism is adaptive" theory might be true, but it sounds too much like a cope to me. Regardless, the optimal play is to try to maximize the positive returns of narcissism while keeping the negatives in check.
If a subculture/organization/etc starts to become overwhelmed with the striver types, then it's time to jump ship. Narcissism is definitely not adaptive on a group level.
Yeah I agree with this framing.
I am more annoyed by the fact that neurotic hyperverbal autism is easily confused with NPD by chuds and insufferable unagentic normalfag women and I have to suffer for it.
Also the talk about NPD and BPD people being empty inside is dehumanizing garbage and immediately makes me suspicious.
I have a little pet theory that the best leaders are sort of "learned narcissists" or "learned sociopaths". They weren't born that way which is why they can care passionately about something beyond themselves in the cause or group they are leading. But they were exposed to a narc or sociopath early in life, probably one of their parents, and this allowed them to see the benefits of thinking and behaving like the centre of the universe.
Just a theory made up while reading Elon Musk's biography and thinking his dad sounds kind of narcy
So genetic narcissism is bad, but environmental narcissism is good?
That's a testable theory, by the way.
The thing that probably hurts you (and all of us über-weirdos) the most is that we live in a culture that would rather fragment and discard you wholesale than actually leverage your explosivity in life-affirming ways, and in return, give you guardrails to curb the self-destruction.
There is a funny accusation that lefties try to throw around about how capitalism is bad because it is 'extractive'. Aside from this statement being utterly moronic (and borderline meaningless), I think what it is trying to get at is that systems that are unhealthy have this characteristic of taking more from the producers who put into it than they can give back in the *currency that matters to the producer*.
I know you well enough that you have no problem being 'extracted from' – you just are looking for a role on the stage where everyone else also plays their performance to a degree that you can take the stage in the way that fulfills you. And that doesn't cause crazy, damaging spirals or pushed people until they break.
A vibrant cultural economy has a right place for you where you need not feel so alienated because the exchanges of what you 'put out' and what you 'get back' filters through the right sequences and mediums to put you where you belong (in a nice, nourishing way).
Let's continue trying to build that vision out – and collect/save as many generative crackpots along the way as we can working toward it.
> There is a funny accusation that lefties try to throw around about how capitalism is bad because it is 'extractive'.
... and they're pissed off because they don't have anything worth extracting, except possibly their organs.
A thing a lot of normgroids don’t get and never will is that you basically have to be extremely different from the average person to get results extremely different from the average person.
Personality disorders are kinda fake. People who learned about psychology on Wikipedia don’t realize how controversial these categories are. Professionals are reticent to diagnose NPD and a lot of them think BPD is not even a valid diagnosis. This article is good, but imo you rhetorically undermine yourself by throwing around BPD so casually.
BPD thing was kind of an artistic choice to provoke girls who constantly call guys narcs
I agree with ur overall point; imo these things are kind of like obesity, modern dating environment creates a lot of perverse incentives for women to act BPD and men to act NPD
Ahh, gotcha. I’ll take your word for it on modern dating. I think that friendships being mediated through social media isn’t helping either. We’re all so poorly socialized these days (myself included).
BPD is absolutely real. The list of symptoms sounds vague and doesn't do the condition justice, but once you have sufficient experience with them, every one of them had basically the same personality.
The chuds who talk about BPD and use that meme with the green haired girl have no idea what it is. It is not in any way a gendered disorder, there are just as many male borderlines as female, but we don't encounter them as much because they die young and go to prison often.
in my exp most of the girls who self diagnose use it as synonym for "likes lana del rey and cries a lot" but I did know one girl who seemed to have... something at least
genuinely terrifying shit
I haven't come accross "self diagnosis", maybe its cool to be BPD in America but not Australia, thank god.
Real BPD:
- very aggressive nature to the victim narrative "everyone is out to get me and if you don't believe me, fuck you i will hurt you/myself"
- extremely jealous, clingy and paranoid of betrayal by romantic partners. Like a caricature of the jealous girlfriend. My friends BPD wife had a meltdown because he went to watch his cousin play soccer. Absolutely ridiculous shit thats hard to even imagine
- once in an agitated state, social boundaries cease to exist. There is no agree to disagree, giving their opponent space, there is no "im not going to bring this one thing up no matter how angry i am", in short, just not going to behave like a civilized person when angry
Scary is the right word
Narcissism and excessive pride are bad. That said, it's true that people throw the term around way too casually, as is the case with many psychological diagnoses (also applies to autism and such).
makes sense to me Walt. Every once in a while my wife accuse me of being narc. Interesting as I'm the one who stuck at building a business that supports us in our old age as she "retired" decades ago. I put myself out there to be a success. If I hadn't I'd be living in a trailer park or dingy apartment.
Okay but what if witches and vampires are real and being authentic trumps being a borg.
My dude, Narcissism is an unfortunate mental disorder. If being a narcissist was optimal then evolution would have selected for it exclusively and we would all be narcissists. Can you admit that narcissism may have some drawbacks?
I honestly feel sorry for you. Selfless acts and being kind to the less fortunate is not a sign of weakness it is a sign of abundance and strength. Acting out of benevolence is legitamtly one of the most gratifying things a human can do.
Whenever I feel myself slipping into narcissistic behaviour I remember the following quote "There but for the grace of God go I."
yummy word food for a guy like me
How has this worked out for our society? For our communities? In the long run?
Good, but overtly simplistic analysis.
All Dark Triad traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) are lumped here together and discussed as "narcissism".
The idea of the Dark Triad is that these traits are often correlated, but to some extent they exist independently. For example, not caring about mass layoffs or cutting people open is not narcissism, it's psychopathy. Deceiving people and treating them instrumentally is also not narcissism, it's Machiavellianism.
I understand that the people that criticise "narcissism" often conflate it with the Dark Triad, but it seems like so do you. And I would expect from someone who publishes such analysis to know the difference.
Rob Henderson has some great posts about the Dark Triad, I would suggest to start there.
If it makes you feel any better many of the people making accusations of narcissism are often very self absorbed themselves. It's a coping strategy in a highly competitive and individualistic society. A highly religious community of peasants in a medieval world would naturally have much less need for narcissism.
The untalented uncharismatic simps are the most dangerous and there's billions of them
Confidence, however fake, isn’t narcissism. This sounds like you’re personally offended because the guy has the balls to write what he thinks of other people. Is that really a worse crime than armchair amateur psychoanalysis?
Sorry I’m too busy being narcissistic
You think Walt would go out to dinner and only talk about himself and not listen to anything the other person says? I don't.
The point isn't how or arrogant and self assured the person is or how much they present as "black and white" thinkers, the point is that in a real NDP the "status hierarchy" programming never switches off. Even when they are alone in their room they are the top of that hierarchy they made up.
When they say NPDs are "performative" what they mean is an NPD will signal his engineering knowledge (if thats his status hierarchy) to a homeless drunk. There is this obliviousness to other people (hence the overlap with autism), they almost don't know you exist if theyre not using you as a prop in some way to aggrandise themselves in their own mind or to others.
A lot of this is very difficult to determine online. But here is one trait you can definitely see in online interactions (not everyone who is like this is NPD but everyone who is NPD is like this)
They literally know everything. You can't challenge them on things they think they know even if they have nothing to do with their area of specialty. They will get really mad. Even if its some YOU have a degree in they know more than you. This weird competitiveness with people in normal conversation is so overblown that they can't learn new information from talking to people, they can only learn from reading or consuming media because it feels like "their idea".
(You can have all of this without the high confidence, you can be a depressed narcissist whose status hierarchy is inverted to give you low self esteem. You will still talk over everyone and disregard their opinion of course)
Just putting this out there, I don't think this describes Walt at all. He's not telling people to shut the fuck up in the comments. His writings and podcasts show evidence of self awareness and interest in learning things from in person interactions. I'm 99% sure hes not NPD, just my 2 cents