I’ve met men and women who take pride in being toxic (manipulative, liars, taking advantage of people, leading people on, etc). They know they are doing these things, and that they hurt people doing them, but will go as far as to brag about doing these things.
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I’ve also met men and women that are knowingly, and willingly attracted to those toxic behaviors. They can recognize those behaviors going on, and are attracted to them. Also, they are not attracted to what I’d consider healthy personality traits.
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I have a hard time understanding people’s behaviors, and I can’t for the life of me figure this one out.
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Cause humans are not supposed to be angels. What you call toxicity can also been as power or traits that increase your survivability. Power is attractive.
Manipulation, lying are still incredibly useful in our society so they wont be negatively selected against for a long time.
They view themselves as strong and dominant. They take pride in the fact that they can step on other people to get what they want.
It’s a defense mechanism. They know people think they’re trash bc of their behavior, so they pretend it’s intentional and don’t care.
I’ll try my best to explain how a person operating under pseudo logic could find themselves in this position
Say for example that someone was raised in a particularly oppressive and toxic environment. They become acutely aware of the power dynamics between humans, and so this clouds the way they view the world. To them the world consists of two people: the oppressed and the oppressors. Now their situation, as the oppressed, isn’t the most desirable (nor is being the oppressors). Rather, their natural propensity to be free is hampered to some extent. They wish to exercise power and feel in control however they cannot do it under the harsh rule of the oppressors. And so, they find someone whom they regard as weak (but id refer to them as vulnerable) and they oppress them. By oppressing them, they now adopt the victor stance in life (this is a heavily distorted view of life) and so that brings them joy. Instead of being the weak vulnerable person, they’re now the ‘strong, almighty oppressor’.
I hope I articulated myself well enough; my brain is Frazzled