Paraphrased:
The narcissist’s smirk is a subtle but telling expression that occurs when a narcissist experiences pleasure from manipulating or deceiving someone.
For narcissists, the smirk usually reflects contempt, which is a deep-seated disdain or lack of respect towards others. For narcissists contempt is tied to their belief in their own superiority. They view others who do not serve their needs as worthless or beneath them, showing a complete disregard for how their actions impact those around them.
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nah this is bullshit. i actually recently watched a sarah z video essay about exactly why this is bad and it’s a pretty compelling case.
in short, humans are shit and the basis on which most people are called a narcissist is more biased and tenuous than most would ever admit which is problematic if we’re going to ruin people’s lives over their perceived faults.
You are very lucky not to have experienced this firsthand. I’m not so lucky, and I can tell you it is real. They get off on deception and power over others, but that’s also their weakness - it’s a compulsion. While they imagine themselves to be masters of manipulation and control, the urge to gaslight and fuck with people is so great that they typically change jobs, locations and social groups pretty often, depending on how sophisticated (or lucky) they are. They get caught because they can’t help themselves. If they see an opportunity to manipulate someone, they will take it - they overestimate their ability to fool people.
Here is what it looks like, in case you were wondering
Article goes on to say the same smirk is also a non-narcissist’s sign of satisfaction at seeing justice served.
So will you be the Psych 101 student who is suddenly a psychoanalyst and labels people because they smirk, or will you understand that something you saw on lemmy doesn’t equip you to judge anyone?
Always funny to see the narcissists come out to muddy up their detection cues when they get leaked
“Anyone who disagrees with an article about X group must be in X group”
- Too many people
Funny all the nazis on X say the same exact things as you do. I wonder why that is?
Found the narcissistic piece of shit.
I literally have paperwork proving I’m not a narcissist. Needed it for my job clearances. Project much?
Nah. They’re reminding people that nuance exists and that reading the actions of others in absolutes can lead to severe mistakes in the way we engage with the world. There is always more that we dont know than there is that we do, and, when it comes to people, forgetting that can make it easy to mistreat others over simple and preventable (with the appropriate amount of communication ofc) misunderstandings. It’s a valid and important point to remember imo
narcissism isn’t a gradient, you either are and display the behavior, or you are not and do not.
There are no ‘semi-narcissists’
Is there room for nuance in what TYPE of narcissist they are? Sure, I’ll grant.
Narcissism is a somewhat multidimensional trait with gradients of intensity. Who told you that it’s a binary classification?
a lifetime of dealing with narcissists
Autism is a spectrum as swell but again, there is no such thing as a half autist
I don’t think you know what “spectrum” means
I don’t think you think.
There’s a conceivable reality where you have a spectrum of autistic traits, but whether someone is autistic is a strict binary. Imagine a lamp that can have any color, but that is either turned on or off. This would be quite funky, because there’d have to be some sort of mechanism that causes strict grouping - something you see in psychology maybe sometimes in sequence learning research and some types of reasoning research, but otherwise is quite rare.
However, this is obviously not reality.
There’s people with more pronounced autistic traits and those with less pronounced ones. There isn’t half an autist, but there can be someone whose autistic traits’ intensities are near the middle of those of a person who clearly is autistic and those of a person who clearly isn’t.
The categorical nature of diagnoses does not reflect the underlying phenomena, it reflects arguments about healthcare resource allocation. The actual phenomena are more nuanced
Should we trust someone called Angry_Autist on how black and white we should treat the human psyche? Probably not.
The phrase you are being nudged towards is “false positive”.
A smirk is not the same as, what we’ll call here, the narcissist smirk. So no, not the same.
Found the Psych 101 student.
I would defy anyone to distinguish between the smirk the article describes - “a half-smile where one side of the lip lifts slightly” from the google definition of smirk - “a facial expression characterized by a subtle, often one-sided, upward curving of the mouth, often without showing teeth.”
Better yet, how about those of us who smirks or half smile because we had bad teeth when we were younger?
Growing up poor with no dental visits or appropriate dental care products and trash food being bought = narcissist now?
This is such a subjective quality to judge its just asinine.
The dude just needed to publish SOMETHING for his grant yall. Lol
Hmm… both definitions mention one side of the lip, but not which side. We can only hope that the good smirks are all on one side of the mouth, whereas the bad smirks are all on the other side.
Good catch! The internet loves simpe rules for whether somebody deserves a black hat or a white hat without pesky details like a thought process.
That’s my standard smile, unless I’m really smiling big.
Hello again narcissist, I’ll be explaining the difference for others who come along.
The ‘Duper’s Delight’ reaction is distinct as it is actually an extension of our prehistoric predatory behavior of stalking, the facial rictus exposes the teeth for biting and widens the eyes for pouncing. This is why it is almost impossible to suppress, as it is a very very ancient instinct. Also an antisocial instinct, one that unsettles other non-narcissists. Other stalking predators like big and domestic cats also display the same behavior almost identically, the exposed teeth and the pulled back eyelids. It’s all hunting behavior
What sets it apart for narcissists is that your complete lack of empathy means you see no issue using stalking behavior on basically anyone as you don’t see anyone else as actually human.
The ‘grin at justice done’ is a group communal agreement sign, the nod that what had to be done was done.
It is a social instinct, one that narcissists will never understand, like the shared yawn. Everyone in the group recognizes it and echoes it
You know flying off the handle when questioned might be a bigger sign of narcissism than a smirk I’m beginning to think.
No, that’s just my IEDS wow you are a shitty armchair psychologist
Better a shitty psychologist than a fucking pathetic degenerate so willing to judge others on shit they demonstrably do not understand. Genuinely, fuck you.
Oh my did mommy not handjob you good enough today sweetie? you so angie
“I read about psychology on the internet, so I can read peoples’ minds”
- You
Some us have degrees, funny boy
All doctors have degrees, yet nobody with common sense would say trust all doctors without doubt. Some would even say a doctor that tries to diagnose people through a few comments online are definitely in the category of those that shouldn’t be trusted.
Hmm, looks like you’re comment stalking me. Taking care of that right the fuck now.
What’s the thing Elon does where he keeps his head lower, but looks up at the most extreme angle-of-eyeballs he can?
can you show me an example I try to avoid looking at him in general
It’s interesting that you engage in attacks and then ask for a discussion. (I wonder if me saying that will cause you to again say found the psych 101 student.)
The attack is warranted. Seriously, the article you posted is about as reliable as an astrology chart.
I was wrong to call you the Psych 101 student, since you weren’t doing the Psych 101 student behavior I described. “They’re not the same thing” is more of a typical social media comment from someone who simply likes to argue, as you’re continuing to do. Not interested.
typical narcissist behavior
This goes right up there with stock chart technical analysis. "It’s definitely this. Though it can also be this. Or that. And it depends on the person. And the context. And…
It’s so messy/noisy with variables, stuff like this just gives people false confidence that they know who/what someone is or what something represents. Psuedoscience
And micro expression analysis to prove deceit.
“expression analysis” - 2025 phrenology
seen this with jesse watters, he always make that sneering or smirk when he does his segment. and it was same with some low-level right wingers on yotube.
The thing about narcissists is they are never as clever or subtle as they think they are. They get away with everything because their behaviors dysregulate decent people and make it easier to manipulate them. And while it’s obvious, in these little pleased gestures and exaggerated emotions, it still hurts to be manipulated and used. We seek closure to these events, they use that motivation to string the victims along. Terrible disorder.
And yet, for some reason, in our system it seems that narcissism is almost a prerequisite to becoming the leader of large publicly traded companies or indeed an entire nation.
I literally just learned this in a Ted talk that youtube fed me yesterday or the day before. Here’s a fantastic example of that smirk.
Ted talks used to be amazing. Also, bringing up “post truth society” 13 years ago, before knowing how bad it would eventually get.
Used to be amazing. Then they asked everyone to replicate.
Oh no. I smile all the time. I guess I’ll die
Ah fuck I think I’m a narcissist.
;\
I learned this one a few year ago, the hard way.
