evile

What does it mean if someone writes a long paragraph about themselves on their profile? Does this mean they are narcissistic or just confident?

Some people are just long-winded, or are trying very hard to be absolutely clear about something. One thing I’ve noticed about narcissistic folks is that they speak in absolutes and in generalities. They are the ‘best’ at this or that, they are ‘expert’ but then they don’t give any details about why they think they are the best, or how they earned their expertise. Or they may offer a correlation as a causation, saying something about having Y number of reviews on a certain site (that allows deletions of bad reviews) as ‘proof’ of their competence. I also tend to view people who repeat how ‘honest’ or ‘trustworthy’ or ‘loyal’ they are as probably having issues in those areas. People who are truly honest and trustworthy show it with behavior, they don’t need to repeat it so loudly and often.

And, you are right, one of the tools in the Narcissist playbook is a thing called “word salad” where they just spin out a lot of emotionally-charged buzzwords that are designed to confuse the reader/listener and provoke a response that is not logical or well thought-out. So it’s good to be cautious whenever you encounter a ‘wall o text’ in someone’s profile or social media presence.

Another thing they like to do is plagiarize quotes, paragraphs, or entire passages and pages from other authors—again, in a way that is designed to craft an image and promote a knee jerk emotional response from the reader/listener. This, too, can feel like ‘word salad’ because the narc is unable to distill the paragraphs and pages of ideas into his or her own words,. They just know that ‘this well respected author said some things that other people respond positively to, therefore I want to steal that positive response,” and since they are brain damaged, mentally ill people, they aren’t able to correctly identify or understand the original author’s ideas or identify the meaningful passages, so they just regurgitate them in big chunks for other people to respond to and hopefully assume the narc wrote it, or is quoting it due to some deep esoteric understanding between the original author and the oh-so ‘enlightened’ narc. Again, beware the ‘wall o text’! Especially if the person cannot condense or explain further the idea or philosophy once you start questioning them about it.

In general, be cautious whenever you go online and read people’s declarations about themselves; you have only their word about whatever their level of expertise or qualifications are. If your instincts tell you that the person is not being truthful, trust your gut. Don’t give anyone you don’t know access to your time and energy, or your finances. Watch and wait before you commit to anything with a person you’ve only met online. Read their posts, watch how they interact online with other people, watch how they deal with criticism and disagreements, watch how they respond to the word ‘no’.

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