Wondering how to spot someone acting Machiavellian and Anti-Social behind your back? Look for the person who is in all the right social circles, who has established a presence as a trustworthy person working between all parties for the common good, and wait for the mask to slip the first time they don’t get their personal way.
Covert Narcissists, Sociopaths, Introverted Narcissists, and Covert Psychopaths — especially those among those ranks who are socially empowered and turn Malignant Somatic status-seeking Dark Triad as time, life, and their health devolve and or escalate — are the types most likely to do things like manufacture social triangulation so they can manipulate.
The social con and gaslighting ruse goes something like this…
There are always three parts — the Hospitality Abuser (the HA HA gotcha guys and Dresden Dolls), the Primary Mark (the PM), and the person who — bless their hearts — ends up feeling like THE MAYOR of clueless town all the time while the other two parties tug at their heartstrings, always pulling them in different ways and leaving them in a social position of non-stop stress and perpetual victimhood.
The Ha Ha guy is what’s knows as a skilled Interpersonal skillset manipulator. They are not fickle like their mindless targets in mind or emotion; the Ha Ha is a lethal social hunter and masterful con artist.
Depending on their MBTi personality type as well as things like their looks, access to money or social and political power, and their state of physical health in general, the Ha Ha will seek a flock of sheep to feed upon as their primary Narcissistic Supply. Then, they will find other (what they call) “honeypots” of people to abuse and manipulate either by personality type or as a peer group who voluntarily congregates.
People with hunter personality types like these are often drawn to SALES PROFESSIONS. Those into feeling powerful and in control of other people’s time and emotions tend to go into the SERVICE INDUSTRIES.
The Ha Ha knows they are only sizing up mark after mark, pretending to be just like them or to agree with that person’s opinions in secret.
Understand this. Understand THIS is their social survival strategy.
When they tell you it was nothing personal when they abused your hospitality or trust, know that they really mean it. It’s just the way they treat everyone — and they really want you to understand to your core in your mind that you (specifically as well as in general) are absolutely nothing special to them.
Understand that to a person who was groomed to believe they had a close personal connection to a Ha Ha and that the Ha Ha loved, cared about, socially valued, and honestly likely them that hearing that it’s NOTHING PERSONAL typically causes our heads to spin around like tops while our blood boils, we are devastated intellectually and emotionally, and then we tend to lose all forms of physical ability to prevent ourselves from sobbing, feeling profound betrayal, and feelings of deep personal shame and inadequacy.
It’s how they win our affections and how they keep us on the stringer for years like a fish they hooked hours ago in another part of the lake. They pretend we have a special friendship — a connection. And they use that hook to get us to trust them more than we trust our own eyes, our own ears, our own body, and our own mind with regard to social and emotional situations.
The person who is at the TOP of the social predator food chain is NEVER the person who is a toxic peer group’s mouthpiece.
It’s not the bully with the thuggy posse of a hateful clique of successfully recruited Flying Monkeys backing him or her up.
The person with all the 9th Circle social power [thank you Dante] is the guy who has dinner with Jesus on Monday and the people plotting his social, physical, and emotional destruction on Tuesday — telling BOTH PARTIES that he’s on their side and that in private whether he or she can say it or not for their own self-declared social interest they agree with whatever their target’s position is completely.
Now, The Mayor — typically the person who is the biggest People Pleaser and the likely preferred scapegoat and pinata for Cluster B people — is left with a person who shows them a mask of being their friend and a gift.
You see the minute anyone tells you that in private they are on your side but in public they must do or say something different… or worse — that they tell you that in certain social settings they have to pretend they don’t know you, don’t like you, or that they are not your friend the mask slips.
Realize who they are in that moment.
Think it through.
Is this a person who is neurologically capable of being a friend to anyone? Or are they capable of using complex emotion in a healthy manner but instead prefer to aspire to use Cluster B logic to self-promote at the deliberate, Machiavellian expense of others?
Are they willing to lie to or about one person so they are shown more social or political community favor from someone who is a more skilled social predator?
The minute they tell you, “Buddy — trust me… I am on your side in this thing and I understand completely BUT…”
Make mental note of their core values by NATURE — regardless of nurture.
That person is a social COMPETITOR — not not not a collaborator. That means they are socially and intellectually untrustworthy.
Mayor — why you freaking out over what that person is doing or saying or trying to sell you? The Mayor is responsible to use his own intellectual sorting hat to decide what is wheat and WHO is chaff.
Take your power of subjective authority back.
People who are Machiavellian for narcissistic reasons are not trying to make you feel or think a certain way about any social situation or about other people because they are hoping you will figure out when they have used a mix of lies, gaslighting, spin, and withholding pertinent information from you to control your mind and to weaponize your emotions against your own best interest.
People who are Machiavellian for narcissistic reasons seek to triangulate the affections of other people so those people will never talk, trust or esteem one another, or compare notes. By keeping everyone spun into a successfully triangulated whirlwind of distraction, emotions that arose due to gaslighting and hospitality abuse caused directly by them rather than actually happening in reality, and in a constant state of upset, the Covert Social Predators thrill.
Why?
Because that’s when they have the greatest access to social and political power — when they have everyone under their influence and completely misled while having been Stockholm Syndrome groomed into believing that they are the only person of trust or of confidence to the people who they have en masse manipulated.
In a country, such antics are called sedition. In a family unit or office, it’s called playing politics.
Personally, we think it has nothing to do with the body politic.
People who are political by nature are NEVER Cluster B. What they are is GUARDIAN by pro-social nature.
Anyone who has told you all politicians are crooks was actually discussing Cluster B people who were successful at pretending to be caregivers in society. Ultimately those types were simply covert takers who succeeded in conning or strong-arming their way into positions of social power and influence over their family, their peer groups, their neighbors, and the community.
Those people are not leaders or public servants. They are social predators.
Social predation is what it is…
Commonly overlooked or praised in societies whose ancestors nurtured their offspring to embrace their emotionally hedonistic and truly most devolutionary social natures.
People who are Machiavellian believe Thomas Hobbes was right. All Cluster B repeat HIS NLP programming and emotional intelligence damaging FOLKLORE.
The rest of us tend to be like Rousseau’s Noble Savages. We seek to collaborate.
Know the difference between the types and if you are not sure about a person… watch. Test, then verify.
Avoid reverse projecting goodwill intentions or the same core values as your own onto everybody. Not all human beings perk to the same social stimuli rewards mechanisms.
Don’t believe us? Good!
Fact check this by doing your own research on people like Charles Manson and Ted Bundy. Both men were incredibly well-liked and socially supported by their peers.
Similarly, a guy in a red robe might be dressed that way for Halloween because he aspires to be Santa. Or he could secretly have a desire to live his reincarnation glory days from when he was harming others for pleasure and on command while carrying out his “duties” during the Spanish Inquisition.
It’s up to you to assess which type of person anyone who is showing red flags of Covert Narcissistic or Anti-Social and predatory behavior. Who people are in life always shows over time as their core nature impels all of our social and forensic psychology development.
Why do we call them the Ha Ha guys and girls?
Because they are always laughing in public or private about other people behind that person or peer group’s back. Listen long and hard enough you can hear the slights they hide in choice phrases they use to mask disdain for you and for other human beings implied by their actual words despite any social presentation of “sing-songy” tone.
