This is a fascinating deep dive into modern online communication dynamics.
I think one of the big issues is that NO ONE WANTS TO ADMIT THAT THEY SCAPEGOAT, FEEL ENVY, MANIPULATE, OR ENGAGE IN NARCISSISTIC ABUSE. If we’re being honest with ourselves we ALL do these things from time to time.
The people rushing to place emergent social behaviors (like scapegoating) into a neat little box are precisely the people who should be looking carefully at themselves. If you think that you’re chill, honest, never abusive or dramatic or passive aggressive - then you might be the problem!
I communicate with young women every day who make sweeping claims about themselves: “I hate drama”; “I keep it real”; “I just want you to be honest with me”. Would it surprise you to learn that these rarely turn out to be completely accurate? When people have a mental image of themselves it becomes almost impossible for them to self-correct; instead, they discredit or attack or undermine the person who’s calling their self-image into question.
Back to the original point: do YOU do this, ever? A better question is, when have you done this? Doing these things doesn’t make you bad or a ‘narcissist.’ They make you human. The badness comes in when you refuse to examine the darker elements of your personality and social behavior.
Getting people to admit that they too can be the asshole is tough work. I feel the spectrum of human emotions and at times, act on them immaturely. What's the big deal about acknowledging it. Some people's fear of tarnished image drives their sense of superiority and emotional bypassing behaviour. What they don't realise is that it will all catch up with them eventually and the mask will be forced to come off.
Love your comment and thank you for your honesty and ability to call a spade a spade.
Brilliant as always. You have a way of taking apart your core narrative and then put it back together in a way that is relatable, easily digested and profound. I keep running into these issues as I am sure the rest of us do. Some people take language that isn’t “friendly” in their minds as if it’s an attack or somehow minimizing them and their identity. It’s a jungle out there…
You're very generous Karina - thank you! Social media culture has seriously eroded our humanity and enhanced antisocial behaviour. The things we get away with now that would have gotten me slapped back as a teen is beyond!
There is a huge physical element of communication that is missing in online chatter. Eye contact and body language have so many micro signals that help tie together meaning that behind a keyboard is often assumed without curiosity or any assessment. It got lazy.
Fully agree - without that nonverbal input, it's hard to discern whether someone is being sincere or an asshole sometimes. I think that's one of the reasons why I'm decoding and analysing language so people can pick up on the emotional drivers and patterns instead of taking text at face value.
Hey, this is a really good exchange, I'm impressed!
I'm old, but I like emojis for precisely the reason we were meant to have all the non-verbal cues in our communication, but they are missing from this “at a distance” stuff. I would guess there are MANY signals passing back and forth in face-to-face conversations that are below our concious level of perception. I text a lot with someone a lot younger than me, that got me into the habit. They aren't perfect, even a little silly at times, but they do help with understanding!
Of course, when I send someone a penguin 🐧, that's not as helpful. You know? 🤔🙄🤦♂️😏🤣
Omg, I have to comment just on the first paragraph—excuse me for that, I will read the whole thing. But I just want to say: René Girard certainly does not discount envy as a motive for scapegoating. In fact, his whole theory of mimetic desire is based on it—we imitate others because we want what they have. That’s at the core of how scapegoating works. I love this, and I’m so glad you posted it. Such a strong example of control tactics rooted in envy. Woot! Can’t wait to read further and hear more of your wisdom on this topic!
It was a bonkers comment. This person is known to bring his issues to life in his parasocial relationships (at least the linkedin ones). This sort of thing doesn't happen often but when it does, it leaves a lasting impression.
Thank you for your enthusiasm and solidarity Kelly!!
This is absolute gold. Subscribing to your Substack is better than any money I ever spent on a counselor.
Just today I had to deal with a colleague whom I do not know well, but who approached me years ago for support with a legal matter. She went on and on about how she'd admired my accomplishments in a male dominated industry and was so happy to talk to me. We've never met, we simply work in the same industry. I supported her with hours long phone calls and legal advice.
Flash forward a year or two. When I had cancer and an absolute wreck of a professional crises, not one phone call. I got maybe two scant emails of "Thinking of you!" in a two year period.
Flash forward to today. I got called out by her for not putting anything about GAZA on my social media. Which I don't do, because it's inappropriate and I have major media clients: my public face could reflect on those around me.
Apparently, I don't care about Arabs, though I've done work with refugees. I just don't make it a public thing.
I was tempted to call her out for doing nothing for people in Somalia, or Chad, or Nigeria or the Yemenis. But I know she just did what her sort sets out to do: she ate up my day.
I was so angry about the cruelty and manipulation of what she'd one. Well, she got my attention.
She got to tell me she "loves" me but no longer admires me. It was such manipulative bullshit.
She sounds like a typical sanctimonious asshole, signalling her virtue while imposing her will on others.
Thank you for illustrating her character so clearly, and why people like this should stay far away from humanitarian work. I'm also glad you've been able to get through cancer and its impact on your professional life, no thanks to that woman.
She sounds like she's a master in the art of Soft Control. If you haven't read about it, this article might have you nodding along in agreement:
Thank you as well for supporting my Substack with your enthusiasm for the content. It's heartwarming to read how helpful it is for you and others in describing everyday bs!
Might not that writer have deep problems with your paradigm, overall? That is, staking everything that is "metaphysical-social" on a paradigm that is essentially "individual-communal" (a shortened polarity) might not cover the whole ethical field. I am an Aristotelian and a Natural Law thinker, for instance. I sense that the hermeneutic of power/narcissism/cult, and the like, doesn't really cover the transcendental character of soul and society. What you do seems to explain too much and too little at the same time.
I am intensely interested in "workplace" and "interpersonal" dynamics, but these are not the whole of society. And what about the concept of Law? So, I really do think that there is something missing in your paradigm, at least if thinking is supposed to aim at "wholes". I am very interested in what you write because I want to *use* it in assessing my institutional context, but I cannot see how what you write provides a telos for sociality, for mission and the like. Nor can I see that it deals with the soul as a transcendental locus of exchange with the logos.
Another way of saying it might be that modern psychology has a metaphysical deficit.
Last note: someone like Girard makes *divine agency* a normative part of the world. Modern psychology brackets it. Girard would think Christ would be the necessary and explicit standard for consideration of scapegoating. That is to say, something is known about scapegoating, in Christ, that cannot be accounted for otherwise.
Thank you for your thoughtful reflection. I recognize that my focus on interpersonal and workplace dynamics presents a more specific lens on scapegoating. While this may feel narrow compared to broader philosophical or metaphysical perspectives, it is intentional and suited to the aims of this article.
I’m not a psychologist, nor do I draw on modern psychology as my foundational tool for understanding relationships and how the world works. Instead, my approach arises from rigorous observation and analysis of real-world dynamics, grounded in personal and interpersonal experience.
The central purpose of this article is to illuminate how covert social dynamics, including bad faith behaviours such as subtle discrediting and covert envy, function in everyday interactions, especially in professional and institutional contexts. These patterns often appear polite or intellectual on the surface but serve to undermine and control beneath.
My intent was to provide a practical, grounded analysis of these covert behaviors that often go unnoticed, rather than an exhaustive exploration of scapegoating’s full ethical or transcendental dimensions.
By attempting to address every possible dimension, philosophical, metaphysical, psychological, we risk spreading ourselves too thin and not providing sufficient depth or clarity on any one aspect. Focusing on a specific slice of the experience allows for a more thorough and impactful exploration, which can then be complemented by other perspectives in different contexts. The purpose is to remain relatable and actionable, not only theoretical or philosophical.
I appreciate the invitation to consider wider contexts, and I do explore these in other works. My next piece on envy will delve more deeply into the spiritual, divine, and metaphysical dimensions that complement the interpersonal and social dynamics I focus on here. For this article, the emphasis remains tightly on revealing how envy and control manifest subtly in everyday social interactions.
Thank you, in turn, for your reply. What was your Ph. D. in? I had assumed it was psychology, but no? I guess some of this was the focus of your degree? Maybe not. Now, isn't the whole idea of narcissism and BPD and all that, nonetheless, modern psychology?
"Cluster B behaviour attacks have a way of snapping my focus to where it needs to be." Well nothing grabs attention more than manipulative viciousness. It's a kind of factory setting in humans - if someone is abusing or exploiting us, that becomes the much salient psychological reality for us. It's fascinating how the people who launch these attacks always have an internal narrative which positions them as the good guys. There's a broader cultural parallel there...
Nathalie, I don't know if you are aware of a particular line of research into human behaviour which draws on evolutionary psychology. This Substack article goes into it, and it seems to me that it ties in with a lot of what you are saying about female groups:
I've recently been reading Careless People by a female Facebook insider. It's interesting for its description of the way that Sheryl Sandberg behaved. The Lean In author turns out to have been a Queen Bee who showed no real interest in the welfare of her female staff and in fact controlled and bullied them by means of temper tantrums.
Her reputation for standing up for women and championing their presence in the workplace seems to have been mostly a PR thing. She treated her staff as minions who were just there to serve her every wish. Extreme power imbalance, I guess.
I just wrote five paragraphs and erased them because this is my real question:
What if you try to have the conversation and tell the truth, but still get hung up and don’t handle it well, and then the moment passes and it would be awkward to revisit it?
I have these couple of weird dynamics with people who push my buttons but I know I’ve acted on that in subtle ways and, even when trying to make it right, have still left it a mess.
Thanks for your questions Sarah. This is something I've struggled with in the past (if I understood your questions right). I like to clear the air but if I haven't fully examined my grievance to discover how I contributed to the issue and how the other contributed to the issue, I'll go into a truth telling session with unresolved material (ie resentment) that will unfortunately come out in the conversation and make things worse. It's hard to clear the air when the other party doesn't make it easy to be honest because their insecurity is at play. The thing that helped me get a handle on these issues is to resolve it myself first by exploring how my shame, envy, anger etc is informing my current state. If I can gain insight and clarity about how my feeling are contributing to my grievance vs their behaviour, then I feel more accepting about the current situation and either don't need to talk about it with the person, or feel clearer and grounded when I do.
Does that address your questions or did I interpret it wrong?
Yes. I think that is it. The more clear I get on what the truth is and how I could have handled it better, the less of a need I have to try to get understood, which is just the ego wanting some vindication and closure, and not mine to demand.
Yes. I think that is it. The more clear I get on what the truth is and how I could have handled it better, the less of a need I have to try to get understood, which is just the ego wanting some vindication and closure, and not mine to demand.
This is a fascinating deep dive into modern online communication dynamics.
I think one of the big issues is that NO ONE WANTS TO ADMIT THAT THEY SCAPEGOAT, FEEL ENVY, MANIPULATE, OR ENGAGE IN NARCISSISTIC ABUSE. If we’re being honest with ourselves we ALL do these things from time to time.
The people rushing to place emergent social behaviors (like scapegoating) into a neat little box are precisely the people who should be looking carefully at themselves. If you think that you’re chill, honest, never abusive or dramatic or passive aggressive - then you might be the problem!
I communicate with young women every day who make sweeping claims about themselves: “I hate drama”; “I keep it real”; “I just want you to be honest with me”. Would it surprise you to learn that these rarely turn out to be completely accurate? When people have a mental image of themselves it becomes almost impossible for them to self-correct; instead, they discredit or attack or undermine the person who’s calling their self-image into question.
Back to the original point: do YOU do this, ever? A better question is, when have you done this? Doing these things doesn’t make you bad or a ‘narcissist.’ They make you human. The badness comes in when you refuse to examine the darker elements of your personality and social behavior.
Getting people to admit that they too can be the asshole is tough work. I feel the spectrum of human emotions and at times, act on them immaturely. What's the big deal about acknowledging it. Some people's fear of tarnished image drives their sense of superiority and emotional bypassing behaviour. What they don't realise is that it will all catch up with them eventually and the mask will be forced to come off.
Love your comment and thank you for your honesty and ability to call a spade a spade.
Brilliant as always. You have a way of taking apart your core narrative and then put it back together in a way that is relatable, easily digested and profound. I keep running into these issues as I am sure the rest of us do. Some people take language that isn’t “friendly” in their minds as if it’s an attack or somehow minimizing them and their identity. It’s a jungle out there…
You're very generous Karina - thank you! Social media culture has seriously eroded our humanity and enhanced antisocial behaviour. The things we get away with now that would have gotten me slapped back as a teen is beyond!
There is a huge physical element of communication that is missing in online chatter. Eye contact and body language have so many micro signals that help tie together meaning that behind a keyboard is often assumed without curiosity or any assessment. It got lazy.
Fully agree - without that nonverbal input, it's hard to discern whether someone is being sincere or an asshole sometimes. I think that's one of the reasons why I'm decoding and analysing language so people can pick up on the emotional drivers and patterns instead of taking text at face value.
Hey, this is a really good exchange, I'm impressed!
I'm old, but I like emojis for precisely the reason we were meant to have all the non-verbal cues in our communication, but they are missing from this “at a distance” stuff. I would guess there are MANY signals passing back and forth in face-to-face conversations that are below our concious level of perception. I text a lot with someone a lot younger than me, that got me into the habit. They aren't perfect, even a little silly at times, but they do help with understanding!
Of course, when I send someone a penguin 🐧, that's not as helpful. You know? 🤔🙄🤦♂️😏🤣
I like them too except I wish there was a good one for envy!
Omg, I have to comment just on the first paragraph—excuse me for that, I will read the whole thing. But I just want to say: René Girard certainly does not discount envy as a motive for scapegoating. In fact, his whole theory of mimetic desire is based on it—we imitate others because we want what they have. That’s at the core of how scapegoating works. I love this, and I’m so glad you posted it. Such a strong example of control tactics rooted in envy. Woot! Can’t wait to read further and hear more of your wisdom on this topic!
It was a bonkers comment. This person is known to bring his issues to life in his parasocial relationships (at least the linkedin ones). This sort of thing doesn't happen often but when it does, it leaves a lasting impression.
Thank you for your enthusiasm and solidarity Kelly!!
P.S. I see you pointed that out as I read further. 👌🏼
If I had more character allowance, I would have been more specific about his errors and hubris!
This is absolute gold. Subscribing to your Substack is better than any money I ever spent on a counselor.
Just today I had to deal with a colleague whom I do not know well, but who approached me years ago for support with a legal matter. She went on and on about how she'd admired my accomplishments in a male dominated industry and was so happy to talk to me. We've never met, we simply work in the same industry. I supported her with hours long phone calls and legal advice.
Flash forward a year or two. When I had cancer and an absolute wreck of a professional crises, not one phone call. I got maybe two scant emails of "Thinking of you!" in a two year period.
Flash forward to today. I got called out by her for not putting anything about GAZA on my social media. Which I don't do, because it's inappropriate and I have major media clients: my public face could reflect on those around me.
Apparently, I don't care about Arabs, though I've done work with refugees. I just don't make it a public thing.
I was tempted to call her out for doing nothing for people in Somalia, or Chad, or Nigeria or the Yemenis. But I know she just did what her sort sets out to do: she ate up my day.
I was so angry about the cruelty and manipulation of what she'd one. Well, she got my attention.
She got to tell me she "loves" me but no longer admires me. It was such manipulative bullshit.
She sounds like a typical sanctimonious asshole, signalling her virtue while imposing her will on others.
Thank you for illustrating her character so clearly, and why people like this should stay far away from humanitarian work. I'm also glad you've been able to get through cancer and its impact on your professional life, no thanks to that woman.
She sounds like she's a master in the art of Soft Control. If you haven't read about it, this article might have you nodding along in agreement:
https://www.hackingnarcissism.com/p/softcontrol
Thank you as well for supporting my Substack with your enthusiasm for the content. It's heartwarming to read how helpful it is for you and others in describing everyday bs!
Excellent piece and educational moment with your response!
Thank you so much Shana! May each of us always see bs for what it is and respond to it with finesse!
Might not that writer have deep problems with your paradigm, overall? That is, staking everything that is "metaphysical-social" on a paradigm that is essentially "individual-communal" (a shortened polarity) might not cover the whole ethical field. I am an Aristotelian and a Natural Law thinker, for instance. I sense that the hermeneutic of power/narcissism/cult, and the like, doesn't really cover the transcendental character of soul and society. What you do seems to explain too much and too little at the same time.
I am intensely interested in "workplace" and "interpersonal" dynamics, but these are not the whole of society. And what about the concept of Law? So, I really do think that there is something missing in your paradigm, at least if thinking is supposed to aim at "wholes". I am very interested in what you write because I want to *use* it in assessing my institutional context, but I cannot see how what you write provides a telos for sociality, for mission and the like. Nor can I see that it deals with the soul as a transcendental locus of exchange with the logos.
Another way of saying it might be that modern psychology has a metaphysical deficit.
Last note: someone like Girard makes *divine agency* a normative part of the world. Modern psychology brackets it. Girard would think Christ would be the necessary and explicit standard for consideration of scapegoating. That is to say, something is known about scapegoating, in Christ, that cannot be accounted for otherwise.
Thank you for your thoughtful reflection. I recognize that my focus on interpersonal and workplace dynamics presents a more specific lens on scapegoating. While this may feel narrow compared to broader philosophical or metaphysical perspectives, it is intentional and suited to the aims of this article.
I’m not a psychologist, nor do I draw on modern psychology as my foundational tool for understanding relationships and how the world works. Instead, my approach arises from rigorous observation and analysis of real-world dynamics, grounded in personal and interpersonal experience.
The central purpose of this article is to illuminate how covert social dynamics, including bad faith behaviours such as subtle discrediting and covert envy, function in everyday interactions, especially in professional and institutional contexts. These patterns often appear polite or intellectual on the surface but serve to undermine and control beneath.
My intent was to provide a practical, grounded analysis of these covert behaviors that often go unnoticed, rather than an exhaustive exploration of scapegoating’s full ethical or transcendental dimensions.
By attempting to address every possible dimension, philosophical, metaphysical, psychological, we risk spreading ourselves too thin and not providing sufficient depth or clarity on any one aspect. Focusing on a specific slice of the experience allows for a more thorough and impactful exploration, which can then be complemented by other perspectives in different contexts. The purpose is to remain relatable and actionable, not only theoretical or philosophical.
I appreciate the invitation to consider wider contexts, and I do explore these in other works. My next piece on envy will delve more deeply into the spiritual, divine, and metaphysical dimensions that complement the interpersonal and social dynamics I focus on here. For this article, the emphasis remains tightly on revealing how envy and control manifest subtly in everyday social interactions.
Thank you, in turn, for your reply. What was your Ph. D. in? I had assumed it was psychology, but no? I guess some of this was the focus of your degree? Maybe not. Now, isn't the whole idea of narcissism and BPD and all that, nonetheless, modern psychology?
I answer some of those questions in the first section of this article. It has a link to my professional background if you're interested:
https://www.hackingnarcissism.com/p/envy
"Cluster B behaviour attacks have a way of snapping my focus to where it needs to be." Well nothing grabs attention more than manipulative viciousness. It's a kind of factory setting in humans - if someone is abusing or exploiting us, that becomes the much salient psychological reality for us. It's fascinating how the people who launch these attacks always have an internal narrative which positions them as the good guys. There's a broader cultural parallel there...
It's fun to write about and expose these tactics to those who believe they are above them.
Nathalie, I don't know if you are aware of a particular line of research into human behaviour which draws on evolutionary psychology. This Substack article goes into it, and it seems to me that it ties in with a lot of what you are saying about female groups:
https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/women-as-worriers-who-exclude
The linked article is about woman. This article is about my interaction with a man.
Yes, I was aware of that.
I've recently been reading Careless People by a female Facebook insider. It's interesting for its description of the way that Sheryl Sandberg behaved. The Lean In author turns out to have been a Queen Bee who showed no real interest in the welfare of her female staff and in fact controlled and bullied them by means of temper tantrums.
Her reputation for standing up for women and championing their presence in the workplace seems to have been mostly a PR thing. She treated her staff as minions who were just there to serve her every wish. Extreme power imbalance, I guess.
I just wrote five paragraphs and erased them because this is my real question:
What if you try to have the conversation and tell the truth, but still get hung up and don’t handle it well, and then the moment passes and it would be awkward to revisit it?
I have these couple of weird dynamics with people who push my buttons but I know I’ve acted on that in subtle ways and, even when trying to make it right, have still left it a mess.
Thanks for your questions Sarah. This is something I've struggled with in the past (if I understood your questions right). I like to clear the air but if I haven't fully examined my grievance to discover how I contributed to the issue and how the other contributed to the issue, I'll go into a truth telling session with unresolved material (ie resentment) that will unfortunately come out in the conversation and make things worse. It's hard to clear the air when the other party doesn't make it easy to be honest because their insecurity is at play. The thing that helped me get a handle on these issues is to resolve it myself first by exploring how my shame, envy, anger etc is informing my current state. If I can gain insight and clarity about how my feeling are contributing to my grievance vs their behaviour, then I feel more accepting about the current situation and either don't need to talk about it with the person, or feel clearer and grounded when I do.
Does that address your questions or did I interpret it wrong?
Yes. I think that is it. The more clear I get on what the truth is and how I could have handled it better, the less of a need I have to try to get understood, which is just the ego wanting some vindication and closure, and not mine to demand.
Yes. I think that is it. The more clear I get on what the truth is and how I could have handled it better, the less of a need I have to try to get understood, which is just the ego wanting some vindication and closure, and not mine to demand.