I’ll be returning to full posts soon. In the meantime, some food for thought:
It ties into many posts I’ve made here in the past few years, but I won’t spell out how. I think it should be obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention, but experience has taught me you can never assume. For example, I’ve come across people online who have apparently read every last word on this site and intellectually learned the principles to an incredible extent yet seem to have missed the point entirely by taking away the message that the point is to learn to “outgame” emotional vampires or learn to use their tricks against them to establish ego-driven superiority.
This is exactly what I warned about when discussing narcissistic contagion. This misinterpretation and misapplication I find is especially prevalent among readers from the so-called “manosphere” and “red pill” blogs, movements I’ve never explicitly claimed membership to and even occasionally stated I don’t consider myself a part of.
It’s surprising (although it really shouldn’t be) to see multiple article writers use my ideas as fuel to build their own mustache-twirling false, idealized selves, or as a call to action to “outnarcissize” other narcissists. If the only thing you take away from my writing is evidence and ammunition to point out how much other people and groups suck, then the tragedy is that no matter how much you’ve memorized the intellectual concepts, you’ve missed the bigger point.