6 ms·

I have been a victim of this, and it is still an ongoing matter. If you don't want to find yourself a victim of these kinds of people, then you better keep thes

I have been a victim of this, and it is still an ongoing matter. If you don't want to find yourself a victim of these kinds of people, then you better keep these two links as a reference, and always take them to heart: Narcissists Online: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-online.html http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-on... What to Remember When Dealing with a Narcissist: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-what-to-remember.html http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-wh... People who do this sort of stuff have narcissistic traits at minimum, which of course is an armchair diagnosis. But, these people really do not need to meet the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. All you need to know is that they are people who will harm you in some incredibly hurtful way, because they have contempt for you being yourself. Some of these people have antisocial traits, and are malignant narcissists. Some of them outright have both narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. Regardless, these people tend to masquerade as "entrepreneurs", "researchers", "thinkers", "doers", or as "authors", when their entire works are just plagiarized material from others. People make entire livings off of such grifts and it becomes a central identity, if not their only identity. Of course, it is always about getting the next award or accolade, even though it is "empty" to them because they have intrinsically low self-esteem and an unbelievably fragile ego. But, of course they would never want you to know that.

Veen 6y ago
> Regardless, these people tend to masquerade as "entrepreneurs", "researchers", "thinkers", "doers", or as "authors" And activists.
- longshui 6y ago
  when it is in a circle where the people know more or less who is who, its unlikely to happen any masquerading sometimes there are misunderstandings and some in the circle may have the impression that there is some masquerading going on sooner or later, I guess, things naturally clarify as time flows and the views are prettier
  - disabled 6y ago
    It is not a figment of my imagination: There were things going on besides multiple forms of outright plagiarism within several submissions. Because there are often multiple forms of plagiarism occurring in the same submission, once you catch it, it's pretty clear cut that it was deliberate. It is not only in writing but at actual conferences when she gives speeches. The individual I mention is known to wear a custom "code t-shirt" of the program (aka "product") that she claims to be her original work, to conferences and meetups. The t-shirt along with the code itself has the /exact same specific variable names/ that I provided via email to a colleague years ago. She is also seen wearing this t-shirt in several media publications. She also publishes "research" based on this "work" in peer-reviewed journal articles. It really is quite disgusting.
    - longshui 6y ago
      I was not talking about your experience , by any means, sorry if you understood that I was aluding to your comment, its not the actual situation at all I was comenting on the parent of my comment, not on your comment, and I was talking, clearly, in a general sense, in a quite specific situation that is absolutely different then your experience
N00bN00b 6y ago
I doubt it's a narcissist and I'm saying that as a narcissist myself. That fragile ego basically means narcissists are afraid of humiliation. On top that, mentally everything is build around shoring up my ego to compensate for the low self esteem. My ego. Not someone else's ego. I'd have to do some really weird mental gymnastics to be satisfied with copying someone else's work, that would just lower my ego even more. I guess it's doable if I straight up believe I'm that other person? But now we're talking about something really special and uncommon. Not just a narcissist anymore. The narcissistic self deception is involuntary, I can't just say "well, I know I'm copying the work of that person, but now I believe that's me." It doesn't work like that. The person doing this clearly knew there was considerable risk of getting caught and being exposed. That's someone that doesn't give a fuck about the social consequences. So you were closer with the malignants, but it's probably just a sociopath (ASPD). A lot more rare in general and more willing to take risks.
- rriepe 6y ago
  > The narcissistic self deception is involuntary Self-aware narcissists are pretty rare too. Can you e-mail me? Info in profile.
  - aiisjustanif 6y ago
    What evidence is there that it is rare?
    - N00bN00b 6y ago
      I'd say it's fairly rare. Most therapists often won't diagnose patients, because it's considered not helpful to the trust relationship and trying to make someone that's narcissistic understand that they are narcissistic is... Hard, because of the splitting and the disconnect between the internal self image and the external presentation. They'll often mirror or turn it back on you and there's not much you can say at that point ("I'm a narcissist? No! You are a narcissist!"). It's a tricky disorder.
  - N00bN00b 6y ago
snvzz 6y ago
A popular label they pick these days is Moralist. https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-cruel-moraliser-uses-a-halo-to-disguise-his-horns https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-cruel-moraliser-uses-a-halo-t...
- cycomanic 6y ago
  I really don't see any connection. Can you elaborate.
- de_nied 6y ago
  Really enjoyed reading this. Fantastic essay. I disagree that the label is "moralist". The essay outlines various types of moralism, which I think is important to distinct them. Such as vain vs cruel and pure vs impure moralism. However, regardless of all that, there are two important questions to ask when dealing with moralism. First, what's the motivation? Second, what's the method of implementation? A cruel moralist is motivated by self-validation in moral superiority, and a vain moralist is motivated by group-validation (vanity) that uses moralism as a tool (their method of implementation). In this case, it is vanity that is the motivation, but narcissism in how they go about doing it. Moralism is neither a motivation, nor a method of execution.
nvarsj 6y ago
I was also a victim of this. At my first engineering job, I came up with a novel way to handle project estimation for a very large company, using a combination of basic statistical techniques (hierarchical linear regression, markov chains). It replaced an existing terrible model by the resident PhD in statistics, which was doing a very simple 2 degree fitted curve. Anyways, this person seemed to really dislike our team and what we had accomplished, and was constantly trying to road block us for a long time. Then out of the blue, he asked us to come and explain it to him. I thought he was reconciling, and we showed him all the details and spent a while so he could understand. We provided him the implementation as well. Then 3-4 weeks later, he quit to go work at Apple. It seemed like he'd stolen our work to improve his career.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  If he took the implementation with him to Apple that's IP theft. Did you mention this to legal at your employer? They might have a case there.
  - nvarsj 6y ago
    Maybe we should have. This was well over a decade ago now. It wasn't something we could easily prove either. We just had strong suspicions based on the timing and his behavior.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      It wouldn't surprise me at all. One of the things that we check for during technical DD is to ensure that all of the IP the company claims as theirs really is theirs. Large dumps of code into a repo just after incorporation or just after a new hire are pretty suspicious and require an explanation, such an explanation isn't always available. Good team leads / code reviewers / laywers can be real assets because they will stop such a thing before it gets to the stage of doing significant damage to the company. If you have a 1000x programmer on your team you may have a problem (or you've hired Fabrice). Copyright lawsuits have one interesting property: the statue of limitations starts when you first became aware of the infringement, not when the deed was done. So you may still have a case, even today, because technically you are still unaware that the infringement happened, it may have happened, but you have no proof. If such proof ever surfaces then that would be the point in time to trigger the suit, and such proof can be obtained through the weirdest channels. I once became aware a company had been started by an ex employee based on a large body of code that I wrote, and through sheer chance I found a tiny sliver of really hard proof. That's what set the ball rolling.
imesh 6y ago
Our neighbor started doing this with my dad. My dad was a school teacher and didn't have any sort of content to plagiarize. The man started buying the same clothing as my father, the same surfboard, same car, dyed his hair the same color and got the same haircut, got fake glasses in the same style and even started copying his mannerisms. It was bizarre. We moved shortly after it started for unrelated reasons but it was pretty terrifying as a young kid. Interestingly enough, he was a PHD student.
- moksly 6y ago
  A tip to get rid of an annoying neighbour perhaps? :p
- fnord77 6y ago
  I bet PhD programs attract narcissists like flies to ... In a way, a PhD could be seen as the ultimate intellectual validation.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
slightwinder 6y ago
> Narcissists Online: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-on http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-on... I'm not sure how serious I should take this site. Most things they bring forth are valid for the majority of discussions when they enter the heat phase. Some other aspects naturally grow with more experience in throwaway discussions. But I don't wanna think that because of this everyone online is a Narcissist. And what the heck is with those mixed overly specific topics on this site? Is this someones private homepage?

Veen 6y ago

> Regardless, these people tend to masquerade as "entrepreneurs", "researchers", "thinkers", "doers", or as "authors" And activists.

longshui 6y ago
when it is in a circle where the people know more or less who is who, its unlikely to happen any masquerading sometimes there are misunderstandings and some in the circle may have the impression that there is some masquerading going on sooner or later, I guess, things naturally clarify as time flows and the views are prettier
- disabled 6y ago
  It is not a figment of my imagination: There were things going on besides multiple forms of outright plagiarism within several submissions. Because there are often multiple forms of plagiarism occurring in the same submission, once you catch it, it's pretty clear cut that it was deliberate. It is not only in writing but at actual conferences when she gives speeches. The individual I mention is known to wear a custom "code t-shirt" of the program (aka "product") that she claims to be her original work, to conferences and meetups. The t-shirt along with the code itself has the /exact same specific variable names/ that I provided via email to a colleague years ago. She is also seen wearing this t-shirt in several media publications. She also publishes "research" based on this "work" in peer-reviewed journal articles. It really is quite disgusting.
  - longshui 6y ago
    I was not talking about your experience , by any means, sorry if you understood that I was aluding to your comment, its not the actual situation at all I was comenting on the parent of my comment, not on your comment, and I was talking, clearly, in a general sense, in a quite specific situation that is absolutely different then your experience

N00bN00b 6y ago

I doubt it's a narcissist and I'm saying that as a narcissist myself. That fragile ego basically means narcissists are afraid of humiliation. On top that, mentally everything is build around shoring up my ego to compensate for the low self esteem. My ego. Not someone else's ego. I'd have to do some really weird mental gymnastics to be satisfied with copying someone else's work, that would just lower my ego even more. I guess it's doable if I straight up believe I'm that other person? But now we're talking about something really special and uncommon. Not just a narcissist anymore. The narcissistic self deception is involuntary, I can't just say "well, I know I'm copying the work of that person, but now I believe that's me." It doesn't work like that. The person doing this clearly knew there was considerable risk of getting caught and being exposed. That's someone that doesn't give a fuck about the social consequences. So you were closer with the malignants, but it's probably just a sociopath (ASPD). A lot more rare in general and more willing to take risks.

rriepe 6y ago
> The narcissistic self deception is involuntary Self-aware narcissists are pretty rare too. Can you e-mail me? Info in profile.
- aiisjustanif 6y ago
  What evidence is there that it is rare?
  - N00bN00b 6y ago
    I'd say it's fairly rare. Most therapists often won't diagnose patients, because it's considered not helpful to the trust relationship and trying to make someone that's narcissistic understand that they are narcissistic is... Hard, because of the splitting and the disconnect between the internal self image and the external presentation. They'll often mirror or turn it back on you and there's not much you can say at that point ("I'm a narcissist? No! You are a narcissist!"). It's a tricky disorder.
- N00bN00b 6y ago

snvzz 6y ago

A popular label they pick these days is Moralist. https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-cruel-moraliser-uses-a-halo-to-disguise-his-horns https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-cruel-moraliser-uses-a-halo-t...

cycomanic 6y ago
I really don't see any connection. Can you elaborate.
de_nied 6y ago
Really enjoyed reading this. Fantastic essay. I disagree that the label is "moralist". The essay outlines various types of moralism, which I think is important to distinct them. Such as vain vs cruel and pure vs impure moralism. However, regardless of all that, there are two important questions to ask when dealing with moralism. First, what's the motivation? Second, what's the method of implementation? A cruel moralist is motivated by self-validation in moral superiority, and a vain moralist is motivated by group-validation (vanity) that uses moralism as a tool (their method of implementation). In this case, it is vanity that is the motivation, but narcissism in how they go about doing it. Moralism is neither a motivation, nor a method of execution.

nvarsj 6y ago

I was also a victim of this. At my first engineering job, I came up with a novel way to handle project estimation for a very large company, using a combination of basic statistical techniques (hierarchical linear regression, markov chains). It replaced an existing terrible model by the resident PhD in statistics, which was doing a very simple 2 degree fitted curve. Anyways, this person seemed to really dislike our team and what we had accomplished, and was constantly trying to road block us for a long time. Then out of the blue, he asked us to come and explain it to him. I thought he was reconciling, and we showed him all the details and spent a while so he could understand. We provided him the implementation as well. Then 3-4 weeks later, he quit to go work at Apple. It seemed like he'd stolen our work to improve his career.

jacquesm 6y ago
If he took the implementation with him to Apple that's IP theft. Did you mention this to legal at your employer? They might have a case there.
- nvarsj 6y ago
  Maybe we should have. This was well over a decade ago now. It wasn't something we could easily prove either. We just had strong suspicions based on the timing and his behavior.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    It wouldn't surprise me at all. One of the things that we check for during technical DD is to ensure that all of the IP the company claims as theirs really is theirs. Large dumps of code into a repo just after incorporation or just after a new hire are pretty suspicious and require an explanation, such an explanation isn't always available. Good team leads / code reviewers / laywers can be real assets because they will stop such a thing before it gets to the stage of doing significant damage to the company. If you have a 1000x programmer on your team you may have a problem (or you've hired Fabrice). Copyright lawsuits have one interesting property: the statue of limitations starts when you first became aware of the infringement, not when the deed was done. So you may still have a case, even today, because technically you are still unaware that the infringement happened, it may have happened, but you have no proof. If such proof ever surfaces then that would be the point in time to trigger the suit, and such proof can be obtained through the weirdest channels. I once became aware a company had been started by an ex employee based on a large body of code that I wrote, and through sheer chance I found a tiny sliver of really hard proof. That's what set the ball rolling.

imesh 6y ago

Our neighbor started doing this with my dad. My dad was a school teacher and didn't have any sort of content to plagiarize. The man started buying the same clothing as my father, the same surfboard, same car, dyed his hair the same color and got the same haircut, got fake glasses in the same style and even started copying his mannerisms. It was bizarre. We moved shortly after it started for unrelated reasons but it was pretty terrifying as a young kid. Interestingly enough, he was a PHD student.

moksly 6y ago
A tip to get rid of an annoying neighbour perhaps? :p
fnord77 6y ago
I bet PhD programs attract narcissists like flies to ... In a way, a PhD could be seen as the ultimate intellectual validation.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

slightwinder 6y ago

> Narcissists Online: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-on http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-on... I'm not sure how serious I should take this site. Most things they bring forth are valid for the majority of discussions when they enter the heat phase. Some other aspects naturally grow with more experience in throwaway discussions. But I don't wanna think that because of this everyone online is a Narcissist. And what the heck is with those mixed overly specific topics on this site? Is this someones private homepage?