I just read the Wikipedia article not the myth itself so take it for what it is.
Getting all bent out of shape because of someone using a word that, since ancient times, meant some form toxic self love is silly at best.
Skimming through the wiki article I see more than one interpretation of the myth. An Ovids contemporary gives an interpretation of an asshole who rudely reject everyone and for being an asshole Narcissus is punished.
Yes, Ovid might have depicted the guy differently; no, I don’t know the texts myself.
But the colloquial meaning of the word is a self absorbed asshole. No matter gender or sexuality.
At the end of the day we are talking about a myth that was interpreted and reinterpreted through time by many people and even became term by itself no longer attached to the myth at all. The myth is nothing more than a fun fact and should not be treated as adding extra meaning to every usage of the word.
Well, you have to understand that the average person isn’t a mythology nerd. You might be, but to the average person, the word “narcissist” comes from self help books about the evils of people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. In the common verbiage, “narcissist” is an accusation of personality disorder, in much the same way as other words like autist, schizo, or r*tard. You see the parallel?
Ok, if taken as medical term (which happens way too often with these words) it can be seen as derogatory and making fun of a psychological disorder.
But I’d argue that no average person thinks of the word that way. I don’t think narcissism is ever seen as disorder in popular culture. From outside perspective it looks more like a choice, especially when compared to autism, schizophrenia or mental deficiency. None of those look like choices (autism being the most debatable out of the examples).
In a colloquial sense narcissist is just a selfish asshole. When talking about horror story narcissist, sociopath and / or psychopath depictions, I’m hard pressed to feel empathy for these characters. I’m not saying they are not sick, but having a disorder doesn’t automatically make actions and motivations any more justifiable.
I recently watched a youtube video about autistic kids as horror movie villains. There’s a lot of them! There are also plenty of queer horror movie villains. Plenty of schizophrenic villains, plenty of villains with DID. Plenty of nonwhite villains, or more commonly back in the day, white actors in brownface playing villains.
Sometimes horror can be a mirror we hold up to society’s biases to critique them. See: anything by Guillermo del Toro. But all too often, horror is a mirror we hold up to society’s biases to reproduce them.
The Narcissistic horror movie villain is a repetition of stereotypes about NPD that people already believed.
Maybe you’re young, and those were actually your parents’ generation’s beliefs, which you absorbed out of context. So many people don’t even understand their own prejudices.
But there are young people who still believe the most blatant forms of this stereotype. I meet them all the time. They’re quite unpleasant to be around.
I’m fairly young, so I used to wonder what it was like to be black or gay a few decades ago when racism was more overt. To receive open, direct abuse for a characteristic you have no control over. Even being trans, I never experienced hate so directly.
Then I self-diagnosed with NPD, and I began to meet glowing personalities such as yourself.
I grew up around narcissists, take your sympathy story and stuff it in a fucking sack, other people aren’t the problem and you insisting as much, as well as comparing it to sustemic bigotry at that, based on your self-diagnosis is narcissistic as fuck.
You being a narcissist is not other people’s burden, get over yourself. You are not a victim, those around you are.
Professionally diagnosed? Or did you just apply the label to them because they were bad people, and you know NPD is the being-a-bad-person disorder?
What makes your labelling of them more valid than My self-diagnosis? I, at least, studied the criteria in both the criterion and dimensional models, and read various first person accounts from people with the disability. And I limited My judgements to Myself.
What arrogance you have! No medical school for NotAShark, no clinical interview! No patient consent! No professional boundaries, no HIPPA! Why, you must be the greatest psychiatric mind in a decade to have made multiple diagnoses in such unprofessional circumstances!
Tell Me, why do you think of yourself as the greatest genius who ever lived? Why are you so vain and arrogant, so adamantly sure of your medical opinions?
And why haven’t you accused yourself of having NPD after that display of malignant narcissism?
HA! I’ve gotten this text from my brother, almost verbatim, projection and everything, he later got a professional diagnosis, I still don’t talk to him.
You are all the same one page book. Just a bundle of self-centered, condescending, easily injured little bundle of nerves. Get a personality.
Also, you said that you’re a narcissist, I wasn’t imposing nor diagnosing. Is possible that you arent qualified enough to make a medical diagnosis? Are you sure that you’re a narcissist? Is it possible that you’re wrong/flawed? Maybe you’re just a dick.
I didn’t say I’m a n*rcissist, I said I have NPD. The difference is one’s a slur and one isn’t.
But okay, interesting theory that I don’t have NPD. In that case, I must have identified with and sought to protect a group of vulnerable neurodivergent people due to a surplus of empathy. And since I’m just like your brother, he doesn’t have NPD either. Which means you’re an arrogant prick running around misdiagnosing people with mental disorders as an excuse to be hateful. And I’m protecting innocent disabled people from your hate out of the goodness of My heart.
This is an awesome idea you’ve come up with, I’m getting a lot of narcissistic supply from it! I feel great about Myself!
Hey, call Me a slur again so I can feel morally superior to you.
I just read the Wikipedia article not the myth itself so take it for what it is.
Getting all bent out of shape because of someone using a word that, since ancient times, meant some form toxic self love is silly at best.
Skimming through the wiki article I see more than one interpretation of the myth. An Ovids contemporary gives an interpretation of an asshole who rudely reject everyone and for being an asshole Narcissus is punished.
Yes, Ovid might have depicted the guy differently; no, I don’t know the texts myself.
But the colloquial meaning of the word is a self absorbed asshole. No matter gender or sexuality.
At the end of the day we are talking about a myth that was interpreted and reinterpreted through time by many people and even became term by itself no longer attached to the myth at all. The myth is nothing more than a fun fact and should not be treated as adding extra meaning to every usage of the word.
But someone above here in the thread was just using the myth to defend using a mental disorder as a casual insult. That’s fucked up.
What are you talking about? Maybe I have something blocked, but I see nothing close to that in this thread.
Well, you have to understand that the average person isn’t a mythology nerd. You might be, but to the average person, the word “narcissist” comes from self help books about the evils of people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. In the common verbiage, “narcissist” is an accusation of personality disorder, in much the same way as other words like autist, schizo, or r*tard. You see the parallel?
Ok, if taken as medical term (which happens way too often with these words) it can be seen as derogatory and making fun of a psychological disorder.
But I’d argue that no average person thinks of the word that way. I don’t think narcissism is ever seen as disorder in popular culture. From outside perspective it looks more like a choice, especially when compared to autism, schizophrenia or mental deficiency. None of those look like choices (autism being the most debatable out of the examples).
In a colloquial sense narcissist is just a selfish asshole. When talking about horror story narcissist, sociopath and / or psychopath depictions, I’m hard pressed to feel empathy for these characters. I’m not saying they are not sick, but having a disorder doesn’t automatically make actions and motivations any more justifiable.
I recently watched a youtube video about autistic kids as horror movie villains. There’s a lot of them! There are also plenty of queer horror movie villains. Plenty of schizophrenic villains, plenty of villains with DID. Plenty of nonwhite villains, or more commonly back in the day, white actors in brownface playing villains.
Sometimes horror can be a mirror we hold up to society’s biases to critique them. See: anything by Guillermo del Toro. But all too often, horror is a mirror we hold up to society’s biases to reproduce them.
The Narcissistic horror movie villain is a repetition of stereotypes about NPD that people already believed.
Maybe you’re young, and those were actually your parents’ generation’s beliefs, which you absorbed out of context. So many people don’t even understand their own prejudices.
But there are young people who still believe the most blatant forms of this stereotype. I meet them all the time. They’re quite unpleasant to be around.
Fucking cry about it you gods damned narcissist.
I’m fairly young, so I used to wonder what it was like to be black or gay a few decades ago when racism was more overt. To receive open, direct abuse for a characteristic you have no control over. Even being trans, I never experienced hate so directly.
Then I self-diagnosed with NPD, and I began to meet glowing personalities such as yourself.
Cry me a fuckin’ river.
I grew up around narcissists, take your sympathy story and stuff it in a fucking sack, other people aren’t the problem and you insisting as much, as well as comparing it to sustemic bigotry at that, based on your self-diagnosis is narcissistic as fuck.
You being a narcissist is not other people’s burden, get over yourself. You are not a victim, those around you are.
Ah, you grew up around people with NPD!
Professionally diagnosed? Or did you just apply the label to them because they were bad people, and you know NPD is the being-a-bad-person disorder?
What makes your labelling of them more valid than My self-diagnosis? I, at least, studied the criteria in both the criterion and dimensional models, and read various first person accounts from people with the disability. And I limited My judgements to Myself.
What arrogance you have! No medical school for NotAShark, no clinical interview! No patient consent! No professional boundaries, no HIPPA! Why, you must be the greatest psychiatric mind in a decade to have made multiple diagnoses in such unprofessional circumstances!
Tell Me, why do you think of yourself as the greatest genius who ever lived? Why are you so vain and arrogant, so adamantly sure of your medical opinions?
And why haven’t you accused yourself of having NPD after that display of malignant narcissism?
HA! I’ve gotten this text from my brother, almost verbatim, projection and everything, he later got a professional diagnosis, I still don’t talk to him.
You are all the same one page book. Just a bundle of self-centered, condescending, easily injured little bundle of nerves. Get a personality.
Also, you said that you’re a narcissist, I wasn’t imposing nor diagnosing. Is possible that you arent qualified enough to make a medical diagnosis? Are you sure that you’re a narcissist? Is it possible that you’re wrong/flawed? Maybe you’re just a dick.
I didn’t say I’m a n*rcissist, I said I have NPD. The difference is one’s a slur and one isn’t.
But okay, interesting theory that I don’t have NPD. In that case, I must have identified with and sought to protect a group of vulnerable neurodivergent people due to a surplus of empathy. And since I’m just like your brother, he doesn’t have NPD either. Which means you’re an arrogant prick running around misdiagnosing people with mental disorders as an excuse to be hateful. And I’m protecting innocent disabled people from your hate out of the goodness of My heart.
This is an awesome idea you’ve come up with, I’m getting a lot of narcissistic supply from it! I feel great about Myself!
Hey, call Me a slur again so I can feel morally superior to you.
Sure. Don’t break an arm jerking yourself off that hatd, hero.