Is it normal that i fake emotions and empathy to gain social standing

65% Normal
22 Comments

I started to realize that I was slightly different from other people around my early teens. I was often confused at the intensity of the emotional responses exhibited by people around me. Seeing other people in mental/physical pain never really bothered me, and I could never understand why people seemed to care so much about every little thing. However I quickly discovered the social rule of reciprocity. When you do things that benefit other people, they will often return the favor. It was therefore in my best interest to integrate socially. Through high school I kept quiet and constantly watched people's actions and reactions. I saw which personalities people liked, and the ones that weren't.

By the time I got to college I had become very good at monitoring my behavior. I was intelligent, cunning and, could dramatically reshape my behavior to fit in with almost any type of social group. That combined with a quirky kind of charisma, an understanding of social reciprocity, and a hunger for notoriety and I quickly became very well known on campus.

I also lied a lot. But not the dumb impulse kind of lying you see in most pathological liar descriptions. My lies were always rooted in truth, often to exaggerate my real life experiences and make them way more interesting. However I only ever told them if I knew there was no way I would be caught.

To sum everything up, by the time I graduated college I was very well known as a charming, charismatic, caring, and genuine person. However all of it was completely fake. In truth I never actually cared about any of the people who thought I was their friend. I knew exactly what everyone wanted to hear, and how to say it. I was driven purely by a hunger for social notoriety.

To those of you who think I’m a terrible person, I honestly don’t care. But it is worth mentioning that I never screwed anyone over or hurt anyone intentionally. I actually ended up helping a lot of people. The fact that it was all for my personal gain is not known to any of these people to this day, and thus really doesn't matter.

I am extremely curious if anyone has had similar experiences.

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65% Normal
Based on 34 votes (22 yes)
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Comments ( 22 )
  • Smokey1D
    7 years ago

    I don't think you're a terrible person. Quite creative really. Essentially this is what most people do though. We watch others and copy the things we like and take notice of the things that people don't like. It all influences how we act. It helps us decide what bits we like and what bits we don't. And then we put it into action. And because we all like or dislike different bits - it adds a bit of variety.

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  • rayb12
    7 years ago

    yeah this is me. However, I think that my behavior is rooted in me never wanting to show my vulnerability/true emotions. It is easy to hide my emotional reactions to things happening to me, and even easier to hide those to things happening to other people. I think that empathy is somewhat inherent but also learned, I think it is like a muscle that needs to be worked, and I think putting yourself in another person's shoes (truly, not just knowing how they will react but attempting to think about how they really feel in any situation) is something that nobody does automatically. It is easy to not feel an emotion and therefor say that it doesn't exist and you are a psycopath, it is harder to consider that there may be something more nuanced going on. If you are quick to reject this notion, that may be an indicator of there being some truth behind it.

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    • Aproxy
      7 years ago

      I have actually thought about this possibility a lot. I have found that there are just to many aspects of my behavior that don't make sense with your interpretation. If what you said is the case, then I have probably buried things so deep that it almost impossible to find them. I thank you for the constructive comment though.

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      • rayb12
        7 years ago

        For sure, I will just add I feel like mine are impossible to find right now too.

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  • bucketfullofassholes
    7 years ago

    Yeah, you recently read about psychopathy and now you're trying to fit in and gain approval.

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    • Aproxy
      7 years ago

      I'm not sure what you mean. You think I posted this to fit in and gain approval from a few anonymous people on a random website?
      As stated before, I'm simply interested in how many people work in a similar way that I do.

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      • peterrabbyt3
        7 years ago

        Do you suck cock?

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  • Tealights
    7 years ago

    I agree with John. Sounds like you have psychopathic tendencies, but go to a psychologist to be sure. If you are, no worries, as said before, it doesn't mean you'll become a murderer or anything. You're just different from the majority of people around you, and psychopaths do play important roles in society and can live normal lives if they don't mind interacting with others.

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    • Smokey1D
      7 years ago

      What a load of rubbish. "psychopathic tendencies' my arse. Show me one person who doesn't watch others to see how they act and react....and learn from it and use it to develop their own communication repetoire.
      It starts when you are a baby and never really stops.
      psychopathic my arse. Everyone thinks they're a psychologist, don't they tealights.

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      • Tealights
        7 years ago

        I'm talking about the no empathy, lack of sympathy, and all the lying. Also, I wrote tendencies, because he may not display all the traits, but I still advise him to see a psychologist to be sure.

        Sweety, if you're having ass day and feeling the need to word battle someone, at least know about the subject first so you can understand the post.

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  • johnpartridge
    7 years ago

    Two options here: 1) you are a psychopath; or 2) you are a troll.

    Psychopaths aren't particularly prone to self-reflection, so would unlikely be concerned enough about their traits to post about it on the Internet. That said, it's a spectrum rather than a binary opposition, and everyone's on that spectrum somewhere.

    If you were a trolling looking for attention, on the other hand, you might look up the criteria for qualification as a psychopath and find basically your post.

    Psychopathy isn't the same as ASPD. Plenty of people have psychopathic traits and don't go around murdering people. It really depends what they're into, which could be running businesses, being adept surgeons, or going around killing people. Sometimes psychopaths are split into the 'functional' and 'dysfunctional' camps.

    I don't think this makes you a terrible person. I'm as neutral towards you as you will be to me. Unless, of course, you're a troll, in which case my passing interest would give way to a degree of contempt.

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    • Aproxy
      7 years ago

      Honestly there is no way for me to prove that I'm not a troll, so I'm not going to try. I posted this as I am very curious as to whether my experience is unique or just uncommon.
      From what I have read online, psychopaths tend to take pleasure in other peoples suffering, which I do not. I simply don't care about any of the problems in peoples life that they so often talk to me about, yet I listen and comfort them anyway.
      My reading suggests I'm closer to the sociopathic spectrum, however most descriptions of sociopaths that I have read about portrays them as outcasts that have trouble adapting socially.
      Regardless of your belief, I thank you for your comment.

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      • johnpartridge
        7 years ago

        Well, we could get technical, and then I'd be out of my depth. My understanding is that not all psychopaths enjoy people's suffering. There is a high incidence of (dysfunctional) psychopaths among the prison population (I've seen estimates at 40%, versus the 1% for the general population). At the same time, many top surgeons are said to be psychopaths, as the requisite steady hand comes from not having any emotional investment in the outcome of the procedure beyond being perceived to be successful at one's vocation. Psychopaths are remarkably stress-resistant, on account of differences in the amygdala. But like I say, I'm reaching the limits of my knowledge on the subject.

        Do you have any significant emotions?

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        • Aproxy
          7 years ago

          I do have emotions, I just tend to play them up to the level of the emotions people around me express. But I will also express emotions I am not experiencing based on social context. If people are angry about something, I act angry.

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          • johnpartridge
            7 years ago

            I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum, and adopt the opposite strategy. In order to control what can be overwhelming emotions, I have learned to masquerade as unflappable. Just goes to show you that you can't judge a book by its cover.

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  • Sodium
    7 years ago

    Lol everyone is like this. Some people like you are extremely good at it. I'm half like you and the other half has some humanity left which I try to get rid of.

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  • SkullsNRoses
    7 years ago

    I'm slightly curious, if you don't care about people, why the obsession with being popular?

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  • SirChazwickEsquire
    7 years ago

    Let me guess you want to pull the autism or aspergers card like so many others like to do these days. This is just ridiculous. I am so mad right now you do not even want to know. I am super duper cereal.

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    • Aproxy
      7 years ago

      I fail to see why you would be so upset at a random anonymous post. However I do feel the need to point out that people on the autism or aspergers spectrum tend to have a lot of trouble recognizing social cues. I have made no such claims. As I stated before, no one in real life knows this about me.

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      • SirChazwickEsquire
        7 years ago

        I am not upset in the slightest. Sarcasm.

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  • Couman
    7 years ago

    I would say not normal, because most manipulative people seem to do it for more harmful purposes. Heck, if all psychopaths were like you, they wouldn't have such a bad reputation.

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    • Aproxy
      7 years ago

      I never understood people who manipulate harmfully. The whole point of making people like me is so they are willing to do things for me, be happy about it, and willing to do more things. If you screw someone over, they aren't going to help you anymore. Even if I don't care about the golden egg goose, I'm still going to keep it happy so it keeps laying me eggs. I'm sure as heck not going to kill it.

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