Well, my roommate got asked to move out by the owner of the house I'm in, we know the people and rent rooms individually from them. His actions didn't make any sense to me, but thought about it and did some research, and all the traits match, he's a classic narcissist. This happened yesterday, and I needed to write this down somewhere, it was interesting, to me to do the research and notice how many of the classic traits match this guy to a tee, and explain some of his otherwise inexplicable behaviour that actually harms himself in the long run. Narcissists have a need for praise and avoiding criticism (no matter how tiny), which causes them to do things that actually fuck themselves over - like going into full denial-mode over very small criticisms like having left a pot uncleaned on the sink. They lack the clarity to see how their actions truly affect what people think of them. Nobody likes criticism, but normal people can flow with it and move the discussion on, whereas narcissists get stuck on denying the original criticism completely, and will almost never apologize, and if they do they will always cite circumstances out of their control rather than saying "I slipped up".
- is an artist, check. (narcissism is the most common in creatives)
- always talking about himself, it's his only topic of discussion
- if he mentions other people, it's only ever about what they think of his work, or what they're doing for his career, never about them as a person or their work
- name drops the most famous Australian painters of the 20th century as fans of his work, that it's implausible he actually met since they both died a couple of decades ago. he would have been 20, and they would have been over 70 at the time and not far off death.
- anyone who doesn't get his work are the plebs
- had parents who were overly critical (he's talked about this)
- lies about his past - he told me one life story, but told the landlord a totally contradictory story. The version to me was about how "my pleb parents don't get my amazing art, they hate artists", and the version to the landlord was "my mother was an award winning artist"
- can't take any criticism no matter how tiny, lies to get out of taking responsibility no matter how implausible the lie
The last point is what got him kicked out. We rent rooms individually from the owner, who we both know. Over the semester we let the house go a bit with cleanliness and the landlord pulled us both together with the typical "look guys you need to keep this place a bit cleaner, get it together!" speech. I do a typical apologetic thing, promise to improve my game, did some cleaning, but this other guy argues with the landlord, "none of the mess is down to me, I'm immaculately clean, you all know how perfectly I keep my surroundings, and I clean everything constantly, I've just been sick for three days and let the place go a bit". Now, this got me upset because it sounded like he was trying to throw me under the bus - saying that if there was any mess that it was entirely due to this other chump (me) so I yelled at him and called him out on it.
But, reading articles on sociopaths vs narcissists I've realized my interpretation of his actions was wrong. Sociopaths and narcissists have some similar traits (they both tend to lie a lot) but what drives them is completely different. For example sociopaths usually want to talk about you, not themselves, because knowing about you gives them power over you, and prevents you learning too much about them, whereas a narcissist brings the conversation around to themselves in order to receive praise. Sociopaths look for someone to blame to get away with things, whereas narcissists just want to deflect the criticism in a vague way, because it's impacting their pride.
So when he was like "not me! not me!" he was just doing a simple thing narcissists do, to avoid being perceived as at-fault for anything, no matter how small. They want to be perceived as perfect, all the time. But it was painfully obvious that his protestations of innocence didn't match the scene. We'd let the house go for a couple of months, and he's there claiming that he'd kept been perfectly clean up until catching a cold 3 days earlier. Everyone there could plainly tell 2 months worth of mess was not the same thing as 3 days worth of mess, he even pointed to the stove, which was filthy, and tried to say that it was an example of how much cleaning work he put in, because he'd cleaned it at one point. Clearly pointing to something that is filthy is not a way to explain how clean you are. There's a clear disconnected between your words and the visible reality. This is a trait of narcissistic lying - it serves not to convince but to maintain an illusion that the narcissist is perfect. Surface appearances are everything to a narcissist.
So the whole situation was one of those farcical things where someone outright denies stuff that everyone in the room can plainly see with their own eyes. This makes no sense for a normal person, it's better to just nod and say you're sorry for the mess and go from there, but for a narcissist this action would actually make sense. The landlord, not being a total idiot, decided on the spot to kick that guy out. That's the problem with being a narcissist but not actually being very smart - their narcissistic lies aren't well-constructed.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9765524 times)