Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. 3 Narcissists: Faker, Iconoclast, Doomsayer

1. 00:02 Today I would like to offer you an nosology a classification of the type of narcissist known as pro-social or communal narcissist. What is a pro-social or communal narcissist? It’s a narcissist who ostentatiously, visibly claims to be morally upright, righteous, sanctimonious,
2. 00:31 a pillar of a community, a dogooder, a goody two shoes, a nice, kind, empathy, compassionate, affectionate, amazing, supportive, rescuer, savior, messiah kind of guy. That’s the pro-social communal narcissist and we you are all there as his audience to
3. 00:54 admire him for it. He claims to be a leader, a guru, a teacher, a savior, a
4. 01:05 rescuer. He is morally not only morally upright but he attains the moral high ground. ethics is part of his genes an integral element in his heredity. I say his but of course half of all narcissists are women. So there are three types of these subtypes
5. 01:33 if you wish of this kind of narcissist. There is the um narcissist who is a faker fakes it. There is the iconoclast and there is the doomsayer. This is the topic of today’s video. My name is Sam Vagnin. I’m the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism
6. 01:54 revisited and a professor of psychology. Let’s start with the faker. The narcissist who fakes all the above. Fakes morality. Fakes ethics. Fakes compassion and empathy and affection. affords Sakur and support at a price is constantly on the covers of magazines,
7. 02:19 online media, offline media, ostentatious, visible bragging, humble bragging. Of course, he is possessed of pseudo humility and false modesty. This kind of faker, a fake, a pretender, an impostor.
8. 02:40 So the main narrative of this narcissist is conformity. Faking is conforming. What What is it that you’re faking? You’re faking conformity to an existing game. The faker follows the rules of the game. He games the game. He plays the game. He’s manipulative. He’s a bit
9. 03:08 psychopathic. But the faker never exits the game, never challenges the game, never undermines the rules of the game. The faker is someone who has found loopholes in the codex, the rules, the codes that govern the game. The faker is someone who believes
10. 03:33 that he can somehow leverage the game to his or her own advantage and often succeeds. So fakers are conformists. They conform. They are not rebels. They do not revolt or rebel against the machine. They are an integral part of the machine or they seek to become an
11. 03:57 integral part of the machine. They love the machine. They adore the machine. They emulate and imitate the machine. Faking is a signal. It’s a form of signaling. It’s says, “Listen, I’m willing to invest the time and energy and resources, mental and
12. 04:19 otherwise, to be like you. I’m willing to play the same game that you are playing. I’m willing to never challenge you or the game. I’m willing to obey the rules. I’m willing to do all this because I foresee benefits. I think it’s a self-efficacious way. And that’s fair.
13. 04:41 That’s pretty fair. So the message of the faker, the message of the person who pretends, the message of the impostor is, I think you deserve my efforts. I think you’re worthy of my attempt to fit in, to become one of you, to include myself in the inroup. And so that’s why people
14. 05:07 don’t resent faking that much. People are not very angry when they find out that someone has been pretending all along or feigning behavior or, you know, just play acting or, you know, is an imposter. People don’t really get angry. They they’re not enraged by this. They
15. 05:28 don’t become furious. Why is that? Because faking says that,
16. 05:36 you know, the game everyone is playing, civilization, the narrative, the rules, the mores, the conventions, the norms, they’re okay. The faker’s main main message is the way you live your existence. I perceive it as enviable something I want to have as well. I want
17. 06:03 to be like you. So in a way faking is a compliment. Consider for example dating. You’re you’re dating someone and that someone goes in into the trouble of faking his attraction to you, his behavior, his empathy, his compassion and so on. So on the one hand, you can say
18. 06:25 he’s faking all of this. It’s not real. I’m on a date and this guy is putting forth a false facade. This guy is falsifying himself. This guy is not what he appears to be. That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is this guy finds me so attractive,
19. 06:46 so irresistible that he would go to any length and he would do anything including deny himself, including falsify, including fake because he wants to be with me because he finds me. He finds me to be the one. And this is a huge compliment. It caters to the grandiosity of people.
20. 07:10 The fakers, the imposters, the conmen, the swindlers, the scammers, the pretenders, they are all engaged in types of behaviors which are complimentary which which complement other people because why would you go to such length? Why would you become someone else? Why
21. 07:36 would you imitate and emulate other people’s behaviors and accomplishments, thoughts and emotions? Why would you not be yourself? Because you think that others are superior to you somehow. There is a strange element of humility in faking. When you’re faking, it’s as
22. 07:56 if you’re saying, “I am not good enough. I need to become you. I need to become someone else. When someone is pretending, when someone is an impostor, when someone is feigning behaviors, it’s because they think whatever it is they have to offer, their essence, their
23. 08:19 quidity, their skills, their talents is not enough. They are inadequate. They’re insufficient. They need to upgrade themselves. They need to improve themselves by denying themselves, by negating themselves, by becoming someone else. So that’s why
24. 08:39 people don’t actually resent faking. They accept it. They even regard it strangely as a kind of compliment. And then you have the second type of pro-ocial and communal narcissist and that is the iconoclast. The iconoclast is someone who does challenge the rules of the game.
25. 09:05 Someone who exposes the weaknesses and shortcomings and frailties and vulnerabilities of the narrative and of everyone who conforms to the narrative. Someone who undermines social mores and conventions and norms. someone who exposes and belittles and denigrates and
26. 09:26 demeans the way we live, the choices we make, the decisions we take, the people we surround ourselves with. This is the iconoclast. Literally the word iconoclast means a breaker or a destroyer of idols. And so iconoclass in ancient history were people who walked around went
27. 09:53 around breaking physically the sculptures of idols. Abraham was an iconoclast. So iconoclasm is the opposite of conformity. The iconoclass says I am not going to conform. I am not going to play by the rules. I am not going to be like you. I am not going to subjugate myself. I’m
28. 10:15 not going to be submissive. I’m not going to listen. I’m not going to obey. I’m going to be defined. I’m going to be consummacious. I’m going to be re I’m going to reject authority because it’s all false. It’s all based on falsity. It’s all wrong.
29. 10:31 It’s all make believe. It’s all founded on conventional wisdom which is unwise with the opposite of wisdom. It’s all an agreement to negate reality and to falsify it. So I’m not going to I’m going not not go not going to become a cog or a will in this machine. I’m going
30. 10:54 to break the machine. I’m going to destroy the machine. Remember Charlie Chaplain in modern times. And so iconoclasm is the opposite of conformity. But at the same time it’s a form of conformity. The iconoclast says, “Out with the old game, in with a
31. 11:15 new game.” The old game is rigged. The old game is wrong. The old game is dis discriminatory. The old game is abusive. The old game is false. I have a new game for you. This new game is founded on honesty, is founded on a level playing field. This new game encompasses and
32. 11:40 integrates truth, the truth and facts. This new game is far more healthy and far more worthy than the old game. So you have people like Adolf Hitler who was an iconoclast and you have people like Donald Trump who is an iconoclast and what they’re doing is they’re
33. 12:00 dismantling the old order, what the French called the anan regime. They’re dismantling the old order and they’re introducing a new order. Hitler said the old order, the the empire, the German Empire, the VHimar Republic, the old order led us nowhere, led us to defeat
34. 12:23 and humiliation. I’m coming up with a new order, an order founded on race and founded on domination. And that was Hitler’s new order. And Adolf Hitler was loyal to this new game, to this new order, followed the rules that he himself had established. He
35. 12:45 Hitler was a conformist, but he didn’t conform to the old game. He conformed to the new game. Similarly, Donald Trump drain the swamp, destroy institutions, uh legitimize corruption. Might is right. This is Donald Trump’s new world order and new universe, new
36. 13:08 reality. While Donald Trump is definitely not a conformist in the sense that he has rejected wholesale and wholeheartedly the old order. Donald Trump is a conformist is conforming to the MAGA world is conf conforming to the new universe that he has created. So iconoclasm
37. 13:32 is at the same time nonconformity rejecting the old order and the authority that it embodies and conformity conforming to a new world order. Iconoclasm offers hope. Iconoclasm is prescriptive. It prescribes a path forward. Iconicasm takes care of the members of inroups and
38. 14:02 clubs and constituencies and castigates and chastises and prosecutes and persecutes members of the out group. So iconoclasm is a narrative that says the old world, the old order, the way things have been until now, it has failed you. It has failed you. It
39. 14:25 didn’t cater to your needs. You were not seen by the old elites, by the establishment. You were not seen. And the only way to be seen, the only way to be taken care of is to destroy the old and to bring in the new. And when we bring in the new, there is hope
40. 14:49 for you. There is love for you. There’s support for you. there’s sakur for you. There’s a path forward. There’s a way forward. There’s a trajectory. There’s a clear horizon for you. So iconoclasm is conformist in the sense that it conforms to a new world order and also
41. 15:10 is allied or married with a sense of hope, direction and purpose. Same goes same goes same applies to fakers because fakers adopt embrace and integrate themselves in the existing order and by doing so they actually pass verdict or pass judgment on the existing
42. 15:31 order. They say the existing order can provide me with hope and and a prescriptive path forward. And now we come to the third type of pro-ocial communal narcissist. The type that is universally hated. Examples of this type, the biblical prophets, the uni bombber and of course
43. 15:56 Samvaknim. The third type involves brutally honest pro-social narcissists. These are pro-social narcissists who wield honesty as a form of weapon. weaponize honesty. They use honesty to injure, to hurt, to destroy. They revel, they celebrate the pain and the hurt
44. 16:27 that their honesty causes. So brutal honesty is nonconformist because brutal honesty is about not playing any game, not adhering to any rules, not accepting any order or new, not complying with any narrative, not being integrated in any system and rejecting every possible
45. 16:55 establishment. consummatiousness and defiance taken to the maximum and to the point of recklessness. And in this sense, brutal honesty is highly psychopathic. Whereas fakers manipulate and iconoclass supplant the existing order with a new one. Brutally honest narcissists
46. 17:17 are actually concerned with meeting out pain. In other words, brutally honest narcissists are sadists. Brutal honesty is a form of sadism because it offers no hope, only doom, no path forward, only stagnation and because brutal honesty is highly antisocial.
47. 17:45 Brutal honesty is sadistic because it is founded on two pillars. Aggression, externalized aggression in a way that is sublimated, in a way that is socially acceptable. It’s socially acceptable to be honest. Yeah. And at the same time contemptuous. So the brutally honest narcissist
48. 18:07 number one refuses to play any game with anyone. Rejects everyone. He is misanthropic. He hates humanity. Number two, he’s sadistic. Enjoys pain inflicted on others by weaponizing honesty. Number three is aggressive. Externalizes aggression in a way that
49. 18:27 cannot cannot be criticized by society because his aggression is twinned with honesty. Number four is contemptuous. He holds everyone in utter profound unmitigated contempt. disdain, hatred,
50. 18:46 and number five, misanthropy. Brutal honesty is mis misanthropic. It is not intended to help people. It is not intended to open people’s eyes. It’s not a form of tough love. Brutal honesty is about destroying people, about rendering people incapacitated and
51. 19:04 disabled and hurting and harmed and broken. It offers no hope. It is doomsaying at its worst. No path forward, no solution, no prescription. And in this sense, of course, brutal honesty is destructive and is antisocial. And yet, brutally honest narcissists
52. 19:27 pretend to be pro-social, communal. They often cloak and disguise their brutal honesty with morality and ethics. They say, “I’m the most honest person I know.” They claim to use honesty to help people. Say, “I’m being honest with you because I want to wake you up.
53. 19:47 I want to open your eyes. I want you to improve upon yourself. I want you to be aware of risks and dangers. That’s why I’m brutally honest with you.” So, they have a host of justifications and narratives that underly butress the brutal honesty and legitimize it.
54. 20:06 socially and yet none of it is healthy. None of it is benign. Brutal honesty is a form of sadism. End of story. And it is a pericious and insidious form of sadism because it cannot be identified as such. Cannot be criticized as such and is sometimes commended by
55. 20:31 society and by by culture. Many many religious figures are brutally sadistically brutally honest, many gurus, many teachers, many leaders. Brutal honesty is a great way to exercise your hatred of humanity and your contemptual sadism without ever being exposed. So let’s
56. 20:56 summarize. There are three types uh of pro-social communal narcissists. The fakers who conform to an existing world order and want to leverage it to their benefit. The iconoclass who detest and reject the existing establishment want to destroy it and
57. 21:16 supplant it or replace it with a new order, a new structure. And by doing so they are offering hope, a path forward, purpose and direction, motivation. So iconoclasm is actually perceived by the collective or the ingroup or the constituency or the followers or the
58. 21:37 fans or the cult members. It’s perceived as positive. And finally, we have the brutally honest um pro-ocial or communal narcissist or actually disguised sadis, aggressive, contemptuous, hateful, and they revel and they rejoice when their brutal honesty, the slings
59. 22:01 and arrows of their brutal honesty, weaponized as it is, reach the target and demolish people. There are of course other types of communal pro-social narcissists and I have dealt with them in other videos but these three are becoming more and more
60. 22:20 prevalent in postmodern civilization and it’s worth paying attention to their ascendance and emergence because I horrifyingly believe that they’re taking