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Comment by mercurialshark | Hacker News Reader

> a nightmare because they appear so charming outward to powerful people in decision making positions, while being cruel and sadistic to others

I wouldn't conflate emotional intelligence - i.e. the ability to modulate behavior based on person specific interactions - with necessarily possessing negative, vindictive, malign or cruel personality traits. That's definitely a stereotype.

It is entirely possible to be charming, without secretly being cruel or vindictive. Yes, it can be more difficult to judge a disarming person's intentions, but that doesn't mean the person is inherently sadistic or ill willed. Perhaps they are just good at making other people feel comfortable.

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I didn't imply that every charming person is suspicious for being cruel.

Just that when you are on the receiving end, it can be very frustrating to try and tell others about it. This is in fact one mechanism that keeps victims of sexual or other harassment and bullying silent. And I don't mean small misunderstandings and microagressions. There are people who will literally tell you "you can try telling about this to XY, they will never believe you." being absolutely conscious and intentional about the whole thing. The existence of such people is really hard to believe for many. There are truly evil people out there who know they are evil and probably cannot even help it very much.

They also often try to turn things around and blame you for the things that they do. We call it gaslighting. And in a meta way, they will even preemptively say you are gaslighting them! And it devolves into a "no u" kind of debate and some victims even end up believing it! It can literally make you go crazy!

Search YouTube for narcissist or psychopath, sociopath recordings. There are secret video and audio recordings of what these people will do to their subordinates, eg their children or employees. It is absolutely mind bending and life changing to see how predictable and consistent they are.

Now, this is of course a pathological extreme. But there are milder versions of it too.

All good points, thanks. Yes, being on the receiving end - especially when you rely on the other person's best intentions - can be traumatizing.

And yes, that's a particularly terrible form of manipulation.

The problem is especially bad when they get into a position to police other people's conduct and are supposedly there to serve justice.

The problem is that many well intentioned people cannot imagine that it's the case. This will have to be a big realization that the reasonable factions of the social justice movements will need to make. In the current climate this is just too far out to be a topic of rational discussion. Indeed I assume many people now discount everything I wrote due to mentioning this political angle.

But when you actually think about it, it would be surprising if such people didn't seek out some of these powerful positions to roam free.

Makes me wonder what you think about the former president

> seek out some of these powerful positions to roam free

I guess you mean Trump (still prez till Jan 20). He's a clown. I don't know if he's actually a cruel person who likes to psychologically torment people around him.

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