Rawen's Musings

Recent visits to social circles (yes, I’m an idiot for inflicting this damage to myself) have been in the light of witnessing certain people and their deranged thoughts. I won’t name but I believe everyone can guess who’s on my mind. And as my already messed up blood pressure was going even more haywire I couldn’t help but scream inside my head this question: “WHY ARE YOU GIVING THAT DEGENERATE THE ATTENTION???!!!” I was and still am competely baffled by the fact that the same people who avoid certain spaces have no problem reposting the stupidity of whoever they’re avoiding just to have this dopamine rush of “owned the fucker”. Well, strap in folks for you’re probably about to discover your own stupidity.

Quote for the start, as usual:

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The best way to beat a narcissist is to ignore them. By giving them negative attention, you’re serving them a scapegoat on a silver platter.

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Did I make you scream internally? If I did, then you may have realised you’ve done the latter and made yourself an easy target. Or maybe you’re genuinely baffled in which case, let’s dive in.

The reason why “being ignored” is one of the strongest weapons against egoistic or nacissistic people is because these people crave attention. They desperately want to be in the spotlight. Their motivation is personal profit and cult-like glorification. And to do that, they use their talents, rhethorical or other, to build such a cult around themselves. This is even easier because of the online resources.

And of course, just like with any cult, they’ll have “enemies”. These may just be people that are skeptical or people that literally hate their guts. The former are pretty much a non-threat for the cult so they’re mostly ignored or met with condescending tone at worst. The latter however are relentlessly mocked. They’re the scapegoat for any failures because the “glorious leader” is infalible. See the feedback loop forming? Leader does something stupid, negative attention from haters appears, “zealots” start defending their leader or sometimes even the leader themselves interevenes, leader gets an ego boost. Rinse and repeat. At certain it won’t matter what the “leader” does, no matter how horrible.

Now you’re probably asking “But how does ignoring their acts help?” Well, there’s a red line for everyone. And sooner or later this red line will be crossed. Now let’s apply this to the narcissist. Like I mentioned before, people like this crave attention, desperately. So what do they do to get it from you? They start pushing boundaries to see what they can get away with. And sooner or later, they’ll step over the line that will get even the people that are “fine” to turn around. And it’s this point where their little cult falls apart.

How does this relate to the negative attention? By spreading their stupidity, even through mockery, you not only paint a target on yourself (remember that the cult is already established) but you’re also spreading their message, giving them free reach. But if you keep them isolated, just passing by them with, thinking in private “pfft, imbecile” and moving on, they won’t get the reach they need. And they’ll remain small and insignificant, just the way they probably should be.

So, when next time somebody tells you “Don’t feed the troll”, maybe follow that advice. Also, you don’t have to have opinion on everything (I know, slightly ironic in my case :p) no matter how demented it sounds. Sometimes it really is easier to just “shrug”, put the idiot “behind bars” and move on with your life. And in online space, putting someone behind bars is far easier because you can curate your experience ;)

R.R.A.