Used to work with a dude who took great delight in belittling others. He was quite Sr.
I thought I was taking crazy pills. “Oh, he’s actually a sweetheart once you get to know him”, “He doesn’t mean to be that way”. “He actually really likes me”
People were bending over backwards to defend a guy who was literally getting off on abusing his position of authority. Everyone seemed to think they were the special one who he liked and respected… they just wanted everyone else to “earn it” like they had.
It was scary! This guy had essentially formed a cult!
Anyways, our company got acquired and he was let go during HR vetting. The company doing the acquisition obviously had better due diligence then there was when this guy had been hired: sex crimes against a minor.
Everyone was shocked (STILL DEFENDING HIM). I was like “oh wow it’s actually crazy how perfectly that tracks”.
Anyways, our company got acquired and he was let go during HR vetting. The company doing the acquisition obviously had better due diligence then there was when this guy had been hired: sex crimes against a minor.
At a previous job for several months I worked 2 desks away from a new guy they hired who’d been in prison for raping his kid. I didn’t find out about this until he got fired for unrelated reasons. I was pissed because when I’d gotten hired at that place the background check they did raked me over the coals about my education history but they didn’t catch THAT. I treated that prick like a human being FFS. Now I google new hires myself to hopefully avoid that situation in the future.
Wow that is crazy what a twist.
Talked to my therapist about this just this Friday. I have a friend, let’s call him Saul. He’s got an air about him, the way he carries himself. Good looking but not great looking, wears a certain kind of goatee that looks a little devilish. He presents as he is a gentleman, has manners, good listener, has a light touch - masculine but also effeminate in a way.
Women adore him! Like every woman I’ve ever met says she likes Saul. Not necessarily romantically, but just generally likes him and enjoys his company.
I’ve lived with this man on multiple occasions. He has caused my friends and I emotional harm. He will act overly aggressive about the smallest transgressions. I put a day bed in the common room one time, for a few weeks, and rather than approaching me about him not liking it, he demonstrated overt sex acts on it. The last time I lived with him a decade ago, he and my ex would berate me and the other roommate, in very toxic emotional ways, like in some kind of sadistic hedonist thing that they shared doing together - I think it came from them both being tortured souls from their respective upbringings. Likewise, when he didn’t get his way or the rise he wanted, he would just yell or throw things. Rather than approaching in a discussion, he’d go nuclear.
But that’s not the worst part, because it wasn’t all about what happened to me. A good friend of mine and him started dating about a decade ago. Started out great, romantic, etc. but then he started doing the same things to her, so she broke it off and moved back home. The dude, on multiple occasions, drove the two hours down the road and would just stalk her. Like follow her all damn day. Would make sure she knew he was around.
We’re older now, I see him around town. We have coffee on occasion. He seems to be doing better, got an education, and has a little business that’s woman centric that seems to be doing well.
But I won’t ever forget what I know about this man. The closet is full of skeletons, and damned if this meme wasn’t on point.
How can you still be friends
This is beyond me
Not the OP, but I can help answer this:
Because sometimes you have a bunch of mutual friends in the group and it’s easier to maintain contact than to make a big deal of things that you don’t have empirical evidence of against someone with.
I would rather break contact with all of those friends and start over, personally.
My friend group was in our late teens, we partied hard, we had each others backs… but we were so very inexperienced with the world. Then this one girl brought her new boyfriend… early thirties, soldier, fit, cool, experienced.
I had this instant dislike, his words were… too smooth, his jokes were funny, yes, but also cruel. He radiated a kind of coolness like uranium radiates poison. Everybody was all over him, the lads wanted to be like him, the lasses wanted him. I could not bring myself to like him and got accused of being jealous.
He broke up some lifelong friendships and budding relationships. He ended up getting two of the girls pregnant and went to prison because one of them was underage at the time. I feel vindicated, but I can’t say I’m happy about it. The only good thing to come out of that is that I left that group and went a different way in life.
Narcissists tend to have a certain “charm.” They know exactly how to behave to gain the approval and admiration of others, especially in a society that rewards Dark Triad traits.
When you’ve been a victim of narcissistic abuse, you tend to see through it. But no one believes you, and they all turn against you because they admire the narcissist, and narcissists tend to be pretty manipulative to get what they want.
This is why it infuriates me when people conflate all Cluster B disorders into one thing. Borderline Personality Disorder is more common among the victims of abuse, while narcissists tend to be the abusers and generally from privileged backgrounds.
Narcissists are infatuated with themselves, whereas people with BPD tend to hate themselves. It’s two different kinds of self-obsession, with completely different causes and consequences, yet people try to treat them as if they’re the same. While failing to identity narcissists, and mislabeling BPD as narcissism.
BPD traits in general are far more stigmatized, even though people with BPD are the ones who both require and deserve more compassion, understanding, and acceptance in order to recover. The treatment for NPD involves removal of the social approval they’re so used to and expect; whereas the treatment for BPD requires a more affirming and validating social setting. The conflation keeps people with BPD suffering, while simultaneously enabling people with NPD to continue.
Long story short, if you’ve been the victim of narcissistic abuse, you’re far more likely to be ostracized by society while the narcissist continue receiving approval, admiration, and promotions…
Edit: Ugh, autocorrect changed “with” to “without” so I fixed it. I hate it when my machine silently changes the entire meaning of my sentence to its exact opposite!
Current society is still ass, though very slowly improving.
I admire your optimism, but I don’t share it…
Emphasis on the ass
Person at my work is a psychopath I’m pretty sure… I know there’s nothing inside… empty and hollow… needing constant external validation to feel like they matter. No interest in really getting to know someone.
Everyones super charmed by them though! And psychopaths are useful in organisations if channeled into the right stuff!
Edit: Ugh, autocorrect changed “with” to “without” so I fixed it. I hate it when my machine silently changes the entire meaning of my sentence to its exact opposite!
Shit like this is why I never use autocorrect. I’d rather have a few typos that a completely butchered sentence.
Edit: But somehow, I keep making mistakes that look like I used autocorrect. IDK what’s going on there.
I have autocorrect turned off but sometimes it changes it anyway. Sometimes it even changes my commas to periods.
Tech companies do not care about consent or user control.
This happened many years ago for me. A guy at a party was giving me massive red flags. The final straw came when he outright lied to me and doubled-down on it when I asked if it was true, just to brush it off as a joke later that same day and make fun of me for believing him. I avoided him at every friend get-together afterwards.
A few years later, after I’d moved away, I learned that the rest of the friend group left him too. Turns out he had a habit of trying to hook up with teenage girls and after some event (that I never learned the details of) brought it to light, everybody abandoned him.
God, the vindication felt good.
Mr Tumble has a basement full of dismembered prostitutes, and you’ll have a hard job convincing me otherwise.
Now I wonder if the lying to your face behavior is actually connected to attempt statutory rape.
I’d say you were vindicated when they brushed off what you were saying. That’s just shitty behavior that’s completely disrespectful and people don’t take seriously.
Im an introvert so I actually don’t know how people generally accept that behavior
Are you absolutely insane? “Lying is connected to attempt statutory rape?” What the fuck kind of meds are you injecting? What does that even mean?
Yeah I legit asked that question. Wow I committed the atrocity of being curious
My wife is like this with nearly perfect accuracy
Aren’t you going to tell us how you slipped past her radar?
Copious amounts of what the kids call rizz
Ah so it was the rizz. All I could say for sure was that it was not Steve.
Grew up with people like that. My dad and my brothers. They’re so out going and funny on the surface. Great in their element of drugs and alcohol. The moment you dig deeper they’re cesspool level human beings. I’m the opposite. People usually tell me I’m so intimidating or quiet, but once they get to know me I’m a big teddy bear. That’s because I got to listen to you speak first. See what type of BS comes out of your brain. What actions you take.
Me for Jack Black
OH GOD YES. He gives me the heeby jeebies
I guess I’m out of the loop, what did he do?
Capitulated to right wingers by firing his supposed best friend and band mate Kyle for making a joke about Trump.
so many YouTubers.
everyone else is shocked when it happens.
I even brought up text messages from years previous about how “they give me the ick, so I don’t watch them” which is responded with, “well they got caught after you said that”.
people are stupid, they believe what they want to believe. this is why I’m unsurprised that a pedophilic administration has a cult following.
This, it is really, really easy to tell which youtubers are grooming kids for the most part. Even if you don’t really pay attention to content creators and just consume at random in small amounts. Yeah, the guy marketing to children, constantly making sexual jokes, constantly trying to collab with kids wants to fuck kids.
It’s really not that difficult to work out.
The Paul Brothers were an instant “Nope” for me. I know a lot of people that loved to watch them, but i just saw cruel and uncaring people. Steven crowder also rubbed me the wrong way. For someone that proclaims “change my mind”, he didn’t really change his mind, ever.
Pretty much every twitch-variety streamer also gives me a feeling of discomfort. A feeling of “why are you even streaming? You don’t seem to do anything except screaming for attention”
There’s a clerk at the neighborhood grocery I am certain will be caught with bodies in his cellar.
Funny there’s one in my local supermarket
Clerk or body?
There is this one guy I know in the org I’m with who gives me these vibes. I have been extremely open about this. I will not engage with him or talk with him. Everyone seems to like him for some reason, but every red flag for me was triggered for some reason. He comes off as extremely manipulative. As petty and vindictive. As emotionally immature. As ‘not safe to be around’ period. I have not a shred of doubt that he would be a domestic abuser.
If it helps, people with autism tend to see straight through people with narcissistic personality disorder. People with NPD tend to try and isolate and ostracize autistic people as soon as they recognize them, because autistic people miss or disregard basically all of their attempts at manipulation. And if a person can’t be manipulated, a narcissist will see them as a threat to be excised.
People with autism will usually be baffled at why everyone likes the narcissist, because the narcissist comes off exactly as you described. Manipulative, petty, vindictive, immature, etc… And for some reason, the entire group just seems to go along with what the narcissist wants.
Lmfao yea you clocked my autism correctly lol. And I agree, it does give you a bit of a bullshit radar I think.
I’m a DA outreach worker i say 100% trust your gut instinct it’s telling you something. DA perps are manipulative and so tend to be well liked IME. Just fyi there’s a list of DA warning signs here. Every tip for narcissism is someone that does more than their fair share of the talking, always brings things back to them.
That is a grim list to read. Especially since it describe my late mother exactly (other than the sexual issues I thankfully know little of).
Thanks for that, really. I’ll check it out. I’ve had my fair share of experiences so I have learned to trust the red flags. It just sucks when nobody else seems to notice them (though with this guy I am definitely not the only one noticing as I found out recently…)
Yep! I’ll bet there’s a few. The interesting thing is perps often know that, especially when they’re older… they test people to see if they do realise the perp is abusive.
But from what you’re saying, not a shred of evidence either. I mean srsly, sometimes we’re just wrong about things, and everybody else feeling differently can be a clue. Not saying you’re wrong, because I don’t pretend to have psychic powers, just that it’s healthy to question our own process sometimes.
Not hard evidence but I have heard of some scummy things he has done and he had several pretty bad moments already. But those are easily overlooked or ignored because of his charisma, which I seem to be immune to. Or repulsed by I guess.
That’s just every popular person. No shit, how else would you achieve that.
I hated Kevin Spacey from the start. He always looked like a creep to me, and American Beauty seemed like a blatant boast of that.
Of course, it didn’t quite go the way I was thinking. But still, every time I saw people getting hyped, particularly around House of Cards, I was getting a repulsive sensation.
I suspect that’s exactly why he became famous. He feels like someone you should hate, affable at first but there’s just something off, so you watch for it and his characters eventually display it.
I wonder if allegations against him were dismissed simply because he played that kind of character, and people assumed it was a character and not Spacy himself being the character he’s best at playing.
Or perhaps the characters he played eventually bled into the actor and he became that kind of person. That also seems to happen to actors over time.
Adore, maybe a couple times, but usually its even just being tolerated. If a toxic person is part of your friend group, I’m not going to be apart of that. And I hate the whole “friend group” thing anyways. I prefer to just maintain personal relationships and spend time doing what we enjoy. I’d rather hang out once a month with just a buddy or two than spend every weekend with a group.
This was a while ago, but it was a Tuesday night at my bar and Cillian Murphy was there by himself, and he hung out and chatted with me for like an hour, hour and a half. I was a 20-somethiing bartender at the time- there was no one else there really, he had no reason to be nice other than he was just a nice guy. He was a 20-something superstar as well, this was after the Dark night
Is it vibes if they’ve already done something shitty and people just ignore it until it happens to them?
I’m still messed up from what a certain someone did to me in high school, and it’s taken her slowly treating the rest of our mutuals the same one by one for each of them to reach the same conclusion that I had back then. Except some of them deciding that they still want her in their life for whatever reason. People seem to have this weird idea that they can manage her or deal with her to prevent her from hurting them.
