12 Comments

This seems to be an attempt to stake out psychopathy as some manner of victim status. Once the teen can establish himself as a victim then he's absolved of responsibility of his actions and the bonus for being a psychopath is that he has no limits to how bad he can be

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Indeed, that does seem to be part of his motivation.

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OK this kid is all over the place, and as you say it's frustrating that he is locking himself into mental traps that prevent growth. But my takeaway is a bit different- he is thinking and searching, he will outgrow his floundering in time, and stagnant trapped periods can be a normal part of what overall will be self discovery and maturation. More trouble than it's worth to try to converse with him at the moment, but he might come good yet. Or not, who can tell?

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I certainly hope that you are right

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Well yeah, lots of young kids are thinking about nothing important at all. Or, maybe I'm showing my age here, but when I was a kid in my country there was zero introspection all that stuff was widely scorned, so a nationalist dumbass party line applied, unless you were super geeky, and so few went beyond. It does seem from the internet that there is a surprising amount of spectacular intelligent maturity and awareness among young Youtubers. I am grateful.!! I remain amazed. My life, it was a bit bland and repressive and feral, the mental environment. So that's why I say that this confused kid in the story has got so SO much more info and so many advantages compared to what I knew. Also, its worth looking back at ones junior high school work, if it is available. At the time, if you were a conscientious scholar, you felt it was like sort of 'adult' work, yeah, cos you got good marks. Look again. It's kid stuff more than likely. Even of you were a bright child, its kids' work, shock. And so, that's how I look at this desperate edgy inquisitive young kid.

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I know just what you mean. We continue to grow and change as we age, and when we are kids, and teenagers, we certainly think that we know more than we do. It's interesting to me to track that growth over time. Hopefully for this young man he will see where he was in a few years, think it a bit silly, and go on to live a great life.

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Yep. He's miles ahead of the people I grew up with.

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Two things, if delusion and obession were things that defined psychopathy he would be all the way there. They aren't though, and that just makes him obsessed and delusional. Hopefully he does mature at least a little bit. The last thing we want is for him to be dug into that mindset forever.

Second thing is that I'm 23, and I like to think that I'm doing alright right now. Excited to see where I am when I become a full human in a year and a half.

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You're a full human now, you just have a wider array of experiences that will become available to you in a little bit.

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For sure. It's interesting that I can't fathom it. Having been a teacher, it's also just as interesting to actually see the limitations of teenage brains daily, and they just physically can't think some of the things that I'm thinking.

That and I'll have the experience of being able to rent a car, which is definitely something that'll be useful.

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I can imagine that watching teenagers and knowing how differently they see the world has to be a bit strange.

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Haha... When I was in high school I had an episode of somewhat serious misconduct and it got uncovered (and let's just say there were also other difficulties) and then some time later I was on our family computer and noticed a search window with ASPD. I haven't considered it before that. I have afterwards. I don't have it. But it was one more stone paving the way of privately wondering and searching for what exactly is wrong with me. I've been afraid, I've felt self-loathing, I've wallowed in self-pity. These things were not feeding exactly sense of empowerment much, but they fed something, there's been some fixation on the notion and it served as a constituent of well-worn tracks of inner life and shape of identity. It wasn't exactly empowerement, but there was something to lose without it, with fear of fakeness, of not having right to feel certain way of having right to claim to know about something. Years before the incident I found myself wanting to walk into underworld of humanity holding a lantern. As years passed I came to feel more like I was part of that underworldand I either lost or never held any lantern. That seems to be part of my path. Struggling with pull between feeling I can mine wisdom out of what fascinates me and doubt whether I am not indulging something bad and useless.

And here's the thing, so many people feel like they are spectacularly bad when... They are average. We are. It is ok. And not totally set in stone, though something to work on. Current considerable wide-spread aocial alienation plays into it.

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