38 Comments

Starting now:

Nice answer. But you are not a genuine psychopath. Why do you want to be a psychopath? It isn’t sexy or edgy. The real term for it is ASPD, and one of the primary symptoms is a “parasitic lifestyle” and “lack of empathy and remorse.” There is nothing about paranoia, or desires to trick, trap, connive or anything like that.

There is nothing glamorous about psychopathy. 2/3 of the US prison population has this issue. And if you do genuinely have this problem, chances are remote that you will spend your life at the top like some high-functioning CEO who can burn down his own factory in China, just to not have to pay his workers pensions. No. You end up like other psychopaths, unable to make conversation with any other living human being, unless it is about yourself, somehow.

If you are violent, you end up in prison, never seeing the light of day. If violence doesn’t suit you, you live and die lonely, disconnected with every human individual around you, including the ones you created along the way

Nothing sexy about this. Trust me, I am a psychopath whisperer. I can spot one from a mile away and I don’t see it in your post.

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I’ve seen a few comments on quora that claim you’re romanticizing psychopathy. After reading your posts where you talk about your childhood, I’m not convinced by them.

They only consider you a psychopath if you’re a low functioning individual or if you’re an a-lister. I would be surprised but autistic people deal with the same thing. Just replace a-lister with savant.

Why do neurotypicals feel the need to gate keep neurotypes they don’t have or even know anything about?

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I would be very curious about that aspect of it. What are the different sides of autism? I can imagine there are those that villainize and also those that venerate it.

As for the gatekeeping, I think it arises from a need to believe that there is an order in the universe that they are a part of. If they determine that you don't suit that notion of order, you are either incorrect, or lying. Usually the latter, from my observation.

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I will look forward to more entries. This one is a whopper!!

Austism comes in some five or so forms. Asperger's syndrome refers to a high-functioning form.

My son has it. His doctors say it is genetic. They say he got it from me.

It is at least possible the difficulties (understanding and recognizing emotion, processing time, interaction with others) I experience result of Asperger's.

I seem to be a very happy person. Everything that can be controlled in my life is ordered the way I want. Athena as far as I can tell, "everything" for about the past 20 years.

PS: I would normally hit "delete" right here. Bc it is equally true I might be full of shit and none of this is true. But given the location, I thought "What the heck!" haha

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I think with some people there's also an element of fear of their own impulses. If you imagine a black-and-white world where the really bad things are only done by psychopaths, you can then label them as "not really human". That way you can pretend there is no inherent darkness in human nature and therefore in you. It's just them psychos who do all of the fucked-up shit, I'm a totally nice person and have no capacity for shocking evil, right? Right?!

It's way harder to ride the moral high horse when one is painfully aware that they are perfectly capable of violence if things go sideways, justified or not, and so is everyone else. I suppose it's also anxiety inducing for some people.

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I agree, that does seem to be the case.

It seems to me that the moral high horse would be knowing what you are capable of, and deciding not to indulge those dark aspects of themselves.

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Agreed. This is also the only way to have real self-control. You cannot control something you don't acknowledge the existence of. I guess part of the problem is that nowadays there are so many people who haven't experienced fucked-up situations so they are a bit naive even if they are well-adjusted adults in the context of their everyday life.

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Yes, I agree. It either isn't in their purview, or they refuse to think about it because they think the possibility that they will ever be in that situation is less than zero, so there's no need to concern themselves.

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The politics of the autism community is a whole can of worms.

Autism is more infantilized than it is villainized. Google the word autism and the first results will be websites that make reference to ‘your child’ and maybe pay lip service to the fact that autistic adults exist. Then those same websites will then proceed to tell you how you can identify autism in ‘your child’.

Though I guess autism is villainized in a sense, not in the sense that autistic people are evil, but rather in the sense that autism is seen as this horrible tragedy where autistic people and their families are seen as it’s unfortunate victims.

Typically this viewpoint is held by parents of newly diagnosed children and charity groups run by, you guessed it, neurotypicals.

This ad made by Autism Speaks exemplifies this viewpoint.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9UgLnWJFGHQ&pp=ygUYaSBhbSBhdXRpc20gYXV0aXNtIHNwZWFr

To be fair, they have taken down the ad and have since apologized for it, but Autism Speaks has done so much to harm to the autistic community I can’t in good conscience support it.

Of the people who romanticize autism, it’s typically people who see savant characters from Hollywood and think we’re all like them. Or it’s people who like to pretend that extreme cases do not exist. Typically it’s autistic people trying to cope with the trauma caused by the tragedy narrative who fall into the latter category.

There are some people who believe autism is the next step in human evolution, but that’s rare. The vast majority of us just want to be treated like people.

I’m not sure if this is exactly what you were asking for but hopefully it’s sufficient for now.

Edit: fixed typos.

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I think you answered what I was asking very well. I basically was curious what the extreme views of autism are on either side. I imagine that there are people that consider autism to be a superpower, and those that think of it as a curse. Either side of those arguments would lie the imagined aspects of autism that do not apply in reality. It fascinates me that there can never be a discussion about certain topics without the extreme presuppositions about those topics being set aside by some people.

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I second everything you mentioned here. As an autistic woman, these are the same things I have seen and experienced as well.

I suppose I would say that the one particular way in which autism is villainised is that it is not uncommon for us to be portrayed as lacking empathy entirely.

You will see some parents of autistic children viewing their child’s meltdowns and frustrations as intentional malicious behaviours that come from a soulless being lacking in empathy. Somewhat similar to views of psychopathy, but different also.

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Yeah... I try to stay away from Autism Parent^TM groups. I made the mistake of joining an autism facebook group as a teenager, hoping to find a support group, only to find parents complaining about their children's meltdowns and posting pictures of them on the toilet. I left that group pretty quick.

I'm astonished how these parents think it's a good idea to display these aspects of their children's lives to strangers online. Aren't they afraid of predators? Future employment prospects? Kids bullying them over it? Even if we were to assume these kids will stay dependent their entire lives it's still wrong.

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Why on earth would they post such photos? That is totally bizarre to me.

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“Trust me, I am a psychopath whisperer” made me laugh.

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Me too

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So are you disconnected with your current partner

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Would you mind clarifying your question?

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And that's why I don't comment pretty much anywhere so I don't end up on these spheres and being roasted. Jokes aside. It's very creative to resurrect that section cause definitely it's worth it's own discussion. I am not sure if the reason that people share these kinds of comments are aware of what they say and write or because they are protected behind a screen that gives them a false sense of security and detachment with no direct consequences? Throwing threats around and swearing to expose someone. I hope you bring the humorous side of it.

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I will do my best

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Aug 6Edited

I stumbled down an Athena-Walker-is-a-fraud rabbit hole by accident a few weeks ago, while googling to find some old Quora answers that I wanted to send my cousin. It was super interesting.

Some people had obviously come to that conclusion after reading only one or two posts, and I didn't pay much attention to those, because I don't think any opinion based on such a tiny proportion of any writer's output really has much value. But there were some people who clearly were much more familiar with your writing, who had still somehow come to the conclusion that you're faking your psychopathy, and those were much more intriguing.

The main argument that stuck in my mind went something like this: Athena Walker says that psychopaths don't care what other people think, but she spends all her time on Quora trying to influence people's opinions about psychopathy, so therefore she's contradicting herself and is a hypocrite, and therefore must be a fake.

I read that and thought 'I think you may be missing some of the subtleties of what Athena's actually saying - she's saying that as a psychopath she's not EMOTIONALLY AFFECTED by other people's views or opinions, because she doesn't have the brain wiring that would tell her she needs to be part of a social group, and therefore to maintain social cohesion by being attuned to other people's views or emotional states. But that doesn't mean that she can't cognitively understand and recognise that other people's opinions could potentially affect her life, especially given the stereotypes that have some people believing all psychopaths should be rounded up and left on a desert island somewhere, or worse. It's objectively in her interest to change people's views about psychopathy, and being psychopathic is no barrier to recognising that.'

To me there's no contradiction in being a psychopath and wanting to change people's opinions about psychopathy - logic and a moderate level of intelligence and foresight will get you there, regardless of brain wiring.

There were other arguments that were equally as perplexing, which I forget now, but my overall impression was that they're people who for whatever reason haven't fully grasped the true nature of what you're saying in your writing. I think there's a reason why so many of your regular readers and commenters seem to be highly educated and knowledgeable people in fields like science, neurobiology, medicine, psychology, neuro divergence etc - they can actually follow the science behind your arguments... I'm not sure that's true of everyone.

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People will simply dislike what is different. Interestingly, when engaging with people like that, when asked to define what they think psychopathy is, it is so often laced with totally illogical and incongruent emotional traits that, for whatever reason, they are dedicated to making synonymous with psychopathy, despite it being impossible.

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I've noticed that too, people seemingly determined to try and force illogical and contradictory emotional traits into the definition of psychopathy, and I have a bit of a theory about it.

Whenever I read comments like that I strongly suspect that an element of jealously may be at play behind those ideas. I think someone has made this point on your blog before, but many of the traits of psychopathy (minus the criminal ones that should never have been defining features in the first place) are an almost perfect match for the idealized emotional state that many neurotypicals are constantly striving towards.

No fear to hold you back from doing otherwise fun and exciting things... confidence and being comfortable in your own skin, equally as accepting of your own flaws & weaknesses as your talents... not caring what other people think of you... calm and steady under pressure... no stress... no self doubt... no real anxiety about what the future holds.

These are all traits of psychopathy, but they're also ideals that many neurotypicals spend a lifetime trying (and mostly failing) to achieve.

I think for some NTs who place alot of importance on that ideal, and dedicate alot of time and energy to trying to achieve it, reading your writing is probably quite a maddening experience - all those things they work so hard for, psychopaths get for free! The idea that some people were just born into that very zen state of mind as a side effect of their brain chemistry and wiring, without even needing to think about it, is bound to stir up a certain amount of jealously in some people I think.

So to me it makes sense that some people's reaction to that is to either deny that the person is really psychopathic, and dismiss them as a fake... or to deny that those are really the traits of psychopathy, and try to redefine it into something closer to the norm, and therefore less envy inducing.

I think that's maybe part of the reason why you get so many comments along the lines of 'you're not that different really', 'you're not special', 'you're just like the rest of us' etc etc. People are somewhat salty that your default state of being is so close to what they're constantly striving for and never quite reaching!

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I believe your argument has merit, but it is unfortunate that it does. It seems as though it would be easier to simply go through the necessary steps to achieve their goal. Every moment focused on someone else is wasted.

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Never have I ever...

Met such an edgelord:

Areyoumad34

you deserve to become like junko furata search her up :3 are you mad? lol psychopath rage so funny i love making u ugly psychos mad :3 i would sk1n u alive i love doing that

cluster b bpd npd sociopaths and psychopaths deserve an infection becoming septic and having removal of the arms and legs as a result, as well as consequently spending the rest of your days in a wheelchair being a nub with a head.

The infection should get to you brain meaning they'll become intellectually challenged with 20 IQ drool dripping out your mouth with a glazed smile on your face. They will then get beet till they end up in a wheelchair and can't speak or think because they got beat so bad they became retarded and have the IQ of a toddler. A serial killer will then keep them in their basement and torture them till you die. This is the fate all cluster Bs deserve. It makes me so happy. This is the life they should get no exceptions. I will round them all up and eat their bodies, strip their skin off and suck their bones clean while streaming it on the dark web in the red room for people to laugh at. It would earn so much money and also be so funny, we are getting rid of evil while earning bags and racks.

Areyoumad34

retard i hope you get raped till you cant walk anymore and die and everyone laughs at you. you deserve to get raped and kidnapped on some snuff site and killed thats the only fate psychopaths deserve, i would skin you if i met you lol are you mad ugly psycho?

i will put your name on the dark web to have you raped and tortured retard bitch

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Two in one day:

You would stalk if there was something to gain or win out of it. You would become obsessed to the point of fixation if you were invested in something for your own personal gain or preventing a perceived loss. You would win at all costs, no matter the consequences if you had a personal investment in something or someone/something was threatening that….and that’s where the danger comes in because you have very little morals, no remorse, no empathy so anything could be on the cards in the correct circumstances which is why you are portrayed like that on TV.

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A new one:

It’s impossible to be a psychopath and not cause harm. Your lack of empathy allows you to strategically put on an act to acquire/take the things you want, without considering the emotional impact on others (the them problem you describe). So long as that person is useful to you, you can lead them on in immeasurable ways that a person with empathy would restrain themselves from doing out of conscious. Then, you can withdraw/hide/escape, leaving others exploited, confused, deeply saddened, embarrassed, lost. You become who you’ve always been beneath the veil of fake charisma and charm - an emotionless monster who expects people to just recover and leave you alone. Yes, you cause hurt, terrible confusion and a lot of shame and grief. Yet even still, you move on because so many people actually love you and are rooting for you, despite your despicable ways. You make it off of the prayers of friends, loved ones, and people you’ve harmed. We’ll continue praying that God heal your soulless hearts and grant you empathy, kindness and mercy — something you can’t extend to others.

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Yay, another one:

Listening to the way you describe this I don't think you're a psychopath at all…I think you want to be a psychopath but I don't think you are…and i have a real nack for spotting them…first of all…heres my problem with all you public psychopaths…true psychopaths rarely see anything wrong with themselves…they generally feel superior to everyone around them…and even if they did know and accept the fact that they were psychopaths they would never ever openly admit it…just trust me on this one man…youre not a psychopath…my bet is you got bullied a lot…started playing crazy to try to ward bullies off…some of em bought it so you started to believe it yourself…it's the same routine this guy i knew named shawn pulled all the time…big mouth all show attention seeking outwardly arrogant but inwardly he was a coward…afraid of his own shadow…i think telling his therapist how “bad” he was gave him some sense of pleasure…he got to paint the picture for her…so instead of painting himself a feeble frightened weak victim…he portrayed himself as the fearless psychopath…but the only harm he would ever inflict was on himself…it was pitiful…i hope i see him again soon so I can torture him more…i did enjoy torturing him…i screwed the love of his life…and his sister…and took all his drugs from him…he still refused to fight me…which is a shame…now that wouldve been really fun…but anyway…you remind me of him…you're prey…not predator…thats why your eyes are so far apart…stop trying to be something you are not…just be a normal person…people will respect you more for being sincere and not living in a fantasy world…

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Next:

“There is nothing to be cured, there is nothing wrong with us”

An impaired brain is definitely something wrong.

“The people that want to “cure us” are the ones that need to remind themselves that their way is not the only way.”

Empathy is literally REQUIRED for a society to function properly. Without those kinds of emotions civilization would never came into be, because every human would want to kill their way to the top, and they will never love enough to procreate and found families. Lack of empathy is anathema to social species.

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Aug 16Edited

Wow, people are determined to fixate on the lack of empathy aren't they, and ignore the fact that all the negative emotions are missing or muted too. I don't think some people really put much thought into what 'no emotion greater than 0-2 out of 10' actually means. As an NT I get it, complete lack of empathy is a scary thought, because we're thinking in terms of our own emotional impulses and imagining them without empathy to keep them in check (I think you described it as 'they imagine us as like them but without the brakes') - but it's still so misguided. Not the first time I've read a comment directed at you and thought 'will you please just listen to what she's saying for once'!

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I agree with your assessment of what people imagine versus reality. It is a place where cognitive empathy would definitely help out.

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Ironically you probably have more cognitive empathy than they do lol :o)

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So are you disconnected with your current partner

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Pardon?

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