A long time ago, I asked a narcissist, “What is your favorite movie?” He answered, “The Wolf of Wall Street.” I was surprised for a moment because back then, I didn’t know I was dealing with a narcissist. I asked him, “What’s so interesting about it? Why is it your favorite?” He smiled, but that smile was not a casual smile—it was a smirk. And he said, “Well, it teaches you strategies.” “What kind of strategies?” I asked. “To be smart, to get rich, to become famous. To get your money from other people.” I was taken aback. Then I asked again, “But isn’t that an unethical way to earn money? Like, illegal? There is something called illegal—the guy who did that was sent to jail for a lot of years; he was a scamster. What do you have to say about that?” “Oh, that part—ignore that. The system didn’t want him to escape the matrix,” were his words. But now I see it has nothing to do with escaping the matrix; he was scamming people. “No, no, no,” he said, “You don’t know things as they are. He didn’t scam anybody; he was just doing what he needed to do for his family. He wanted to get rich, and he got rich.” I simply cut off that conversation right there because I knew there was something deeply wrong with this person. But that tells us these people are really messed up.
They watch movies, dramas, serials, series, sitcoms that teach them strategies. In these movies, you will usually find a narcissistic presence. And this narcissist, who is watching, vicariously lives through the actor because the narcissist does not have an actual personality. So it’s almost like they step into their shoes and say and do things in the movie. That is their fantasy, their delusion.
And then what happens? Their personality changes when they watch stuff. As explained in the beginning, they take that stuff with them, make it their own, and then apply it to other people. Back in their mind, they are always testing, thinking, “Oh, this thing works. I said that.” It may not be learning from an artist; it could be just watching a famous actor saying a famous romantic dialogue, something from Shakespeare. And then, the next thing, the narcissist says the same thing with the same impact, the same emphasis on different words, in the same tone. That’s crazy! It looks like multiple personality disorder, doesn’t it? They become what they know will get them maximum supply. That is how they lure people into their trap. You don’t know that is fake charisma; you don’t know there is no true personality, just an absorbed and created one—created out of all the movies they have watched. You feel—or should I say, they make you feel—that it’s their authentic self. And that is why they are true copycats; they are shape-shifters. I keep saying they are shape-shifters. They are like a cloud that can become anything.
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