So, considering this is Lemmy I’ll clarify. I’m not talking about your neighbor who voted for Trump or your uncle who’s always been a dick. I’m talking about coming in contact with a deep down evil scary human. I’ve only met one that I can think of. When I was 12 or 13 I spent a ton of time at my best friends house. He lived on a big beautiful rural property with his dad, a few brothers and always one or two random dudes. His dad was a good electrician and a biker. So, he always had friends/associates hanging around. So one day I was staying over for a long weekend and we met a new guy his dad was housing for a week or two. Dude was a real full fledged nazi. Had a swastika under his eye and tats all over most of his body. He was from California I guess. He was “working” with my buddies dad for awhile. Anyway, the main interaction I had with him was when he pulled my friend and I in for a sermon. We were going to go hunt squirrels and do rural kid shit. He stopped us outside and had us sit on the porch. Spent about 20 minutes explaining all the things youd imagine a nazi explains. Moslty about catholics, jews and blacks. My friends dad came out after awhile and told him we didn’t need to hear that shit. He sent us away, but, I never forgot the look this dude had in his eyes. It was like the look of complete bordem mixed with extreme anger all the time.
As a psych nurse I’ve only met two people who actually unsettled me, both turned out to be serial murderers. I used to work forensics specifically (the “criminally insane”), so I’ve met lots of rapists, murderers, and a ton of pedophiles. Most of them are just either pathetic and trying to not go to prison where they’ll get their shit kicked in, or did something real stupid while not knowing their ass from a hole in the ground. As long as you follow some basic rules you’ll be fine (don’t be alone with them or within arms reach if you can help it, bring a buddy if you do, and never let them between you and the door, etc.) and honestly half of that is more for their safety than yours (you’d win the fight, but you’d be in a lot of trouble).
But both of these dudes just gave me an instant back of the neck prickle. All you can do is interact as little as possible, exit every situation as soon and as smoothly as you can, protect your newer workers who don’t know better, and hope the doctor discharges them ASAP. There’s no fixing that and all you can do is escape and hope they quickly go somewhere they can be contained properly (ideally a max security prison).
Funny, I was here to also tell a story except about a psych nurse. A “friend” of a friend. This actually happened recently. Dude was a cop, as was my friend(past tense is important here), they bonded over PTSD as well as both being on a psych unit. Well, dude tells a lot of stories about his copping days, and my buddy vouches for him as a date for a coworker. Turns out, guy is crazy, gets super possessive, crazy stuff like sending hundreds of texts a day, and violently rapes her. His whole backstory of being a cop was a lie, after digging, and finding close to double digits social media accounts, turns out he was separated for “administrative purposes” and moved here.
Most unsettling thing, for both me, and my friend, is, there weren’t really a ton of egregious red flags. Looking back, sure, but in the moment, absolutely not. He’s having a hard time trusting his judgment(insert quip about being a cop at one point). I truly believe that was the first psychopath I’ve met.
I met this disturbed user here on Lemmy a few days ago, username “blave”. He wrote a “weird” joke as a comment on a post, got called out for it, proceeded to tell everyone that interacted with him:
- they had shit for brains, in various different phrasings
- they ate shit from their ass, also in different phrasings
- they should kill themselves, and record it and send it to him.
- etc, more stuff like that, but those were the common themes
Really disturbed individual. He got banned from that community after I reported him. Hoping he’ll get banned from our instance as well.
Sounds like he was just a troll having fun. Getting him banned is the same behavior as calling the cops for a minor noise complaint.
You call the list of those offenses “fun”? If you saw what they typed to people, you would not consider that to be someone just “trolling”. That’s one hundred percent not what was going on.
They were retaliating against being called out for a bad joke. Completely and utterly unable to take calm criticism from anyone, saying we have shit for brains and eating shit and we should kill ourselves, and that he has “power” over us.
He’s just deranged. I am definitely going to keep reporting people that say to other people: “You should kill yourself and record it and send it to me.” I absolutely will do that. Doesn’t even matter that it was said to someone other than me.
You’re being weird for downplaying that offense as a “noise complaint”, let alone a “minor” one(!). That behavior has no business online. People were banned for that even on Reddit. Nah, man.
Sounds like he really bothered you and got under your skin. You let him win lmao. I asked if you’ve ever met someone truly evil. My example was a nazi Aryan brotherhood dude with multiple violent felonies. He tried converting two pre teens to his way of thinking. Your example of a truly evil person was someone shit posting on communist reddit, you’re the weird one.
You let him win lmao.
Really, dude? Why is it a bad thing that someone got under my skin? Like I explained, I found him to be a bad person. If he didn’t get under my skin, I wouldn’t have reacted. You’re acting like I shouldn’t have reacted. I’m allowed to react.
My example was [yadda yadda, something ]
Okay? Didn’t know there was a competition, ffs. Never mind then, I won’t reply to any more of your shit just in case I don’t measure up to your standards. Should I tell you to kill yourself for giggles as well? Wouldn’t that be “fun”?
… 🤦♂️
I’m convinced you’re one of the following, a 10-14 year old person, an AI or the most fragile adult I’ve read write something. No, its not a competition but I did have that whole bit in the beginning about your neighbor/uncle, to kind of set the expectation for contribution.
Then quit acting like it. Something didn’t meet your expectation on your post? Move on.
I’m convinced you’re one of the following, a 10-14 year old person, an AI or the most fragile adult I’ve read write something.
Well, you don’t seem like a very pleasant person. Good bye.
🙂
I’m not sure about pure evil so much as sociopathic. I worked briefly in door to door sales, got taken to some high performer award celebration nonsense and was standing in one of those group circles as people were recounting war stories. “Give her the discount? Hell no. And then I realized she was too old to read what I was writing so I just added an extra year on to the contract!” Huge round of laughter, light applause.
To make it more gross… The discount was standard, we got no extra commission for having or not having it, was purely a free promotion to grease the wheels. He just didn’t because, well, the old lady he’d scammed was too trusting.
I quit shortly after.
Yeah that type of sales in particular is filled with psychos. I did it very briefly when I was like 19. My trainer had a rule that if you get in the house, always piss in their toilet. Apparently he felt it gave him the image of control.
That’s messed up!
My rule, especially when I was working in South East Asian neighbourhoods, was something like “stop saying yes to the first dinner offer! There’ll be something amazing you haven’t had yet by door 5.” (Those folks were crazy friendly, really blew me away and opened my eyes to a whole range of delicious foods.)
GOD!
That is some Always Be Closing level shit right there!
Oh, best believe we used that line all the time, unironically. It’s like they’d all watched Glengarry Glen Ross and missed the entire point of the movie/play.
Yeah, there’s a good scene in the movie “Boiler Room” where all the top sales guys are watching “Wall Street”. They take turns quoting the characters in a really cringe but authentically obsessed way. It’s a pretty good movie and that scene is the best.
I did. A boomer guy, he must be in his late 70s, early 80s now. He owned a construction company that killed 20 people in the 1999 earthquakes in Turkey, including distant members of his extended family. The guy did shoddy construction work, did not use proper concrete and dressed up a damaged building to look ok. The result was 20 dead lives when the building came down on November 12, 1999. (the building was damaged in the first quake in august and collapsed in the second one in november) The name is Hamza Cebeci, and a quick internet search today shows that his family business is still in the construction business.
I met the guy almost 10 year after the earthquake (and almost 15 years ago from today) at an event where he spoke. From outside you would not guess that he has the blood of 20 people on his hands. It was the purest example of the ‘Banality of Evil’ that I have ever seen. I’m orginally from the same small town (Düzce) where all this happened and knew the story well.
News article from those days: https://postimg.cc/HctXCVFT
I ran into a curious individual.
He was bullying me because I was in his way (I did not move, the goal did). As soon as I was not in his way he would try to recruit me into bullying the next person who was.
I’d say he was a manipulative psycopath but he was so inept at what he was trying to do and calling him a psycopath would be an insult to psycopaths. He kept falling into the holes he dug for others.
It’s the only person I’ve felt joy when they suffered.
Side note: what do you call a person who is manipulative, no remorse, see people as something to step on to get where they want but are incredibly bad and keep getting caught, fired, dumped because of it? Psycopaths seems to be good at what they do, he was in his 30s and bad at it.
From what I’ve heard “psychopath” is in fact a disorder that makes a person worse at managing their own life, in addition to making things worse for the people around them.
Your perception of what a psychopath is colored by media portrayals and what notable psychopaths have done. Not all physicists are like Richard Feynman, and they’re all at least reasonably smart.
What you’re describing is a psychopath who is stupid. They do stupid things because they are stupid, and they do psychopath things because they’re a psychopath. They aren’t going to lead the police on a chase across the country after a string of murders. If they kill someone, they’ll probably be caught the very first time. The reason they will kill will be somewhat less nuanced than an intelligent psychopath’s reasons, but that’s the smart vs. stupid difference - they’re both psychopaths. Neither will feel remorse, neither will feel any compelling need to achieve their goals by not harming someone else, and both would do it again if they felt the circumstances warranted it. One will just do it in a way where he might not get caught and the other won’t think that far ahead or will do such a poor job of it that thinking ahead won’t help.
That makes a lot of sense.
My older brother used to run around with a young man that was raised by racist bikers. The guy killed someone during a house robbery. And still I’m not sure that that person was irredeemably evil.
But I’ve also done time in prison. And was celled up with an old man that hurt a little girl. No acknowledgement, no remorse. Smiling, outgoing. But at the time I had no idea what he had done. And I had no idea that he was a sociopath until he opened up to me about cutting crow’s tongues when he was young, because he had seen a talking crow at a circus. No empathy. As ‘nice’ as he seemed.
Looking back, he had that same look in his eyes that you can see in cult leaders and other sociopaths. When I watched the Nixium documentary with my partner, it was like that. A charismatic predator.
To me, evil is when you know the thing you’re doing is morally wrong, you have the option to do anything else (including doing nothing at all) and you do it anyway.
I can make space for people who were trained on bad behavior.
I can make space for people doing the best they can in bad situations.
But I have met people who looked “normal” and could have easily not done the bad thing they were doing to someone else.
When you call them out, some will get defensive. They still have shame.
But the evil ones had this look like a child who knew they were getting away with something. And the something was hurting someone else.
Duper’s delight. It’s almost like they’re surprised to find they’re revelling in getting caught too. At least maybe the first time. Afterwards they might do something wrong expecting to feel that way again, and that’s all kinds of messed up.
Just learned that term the other night! Was watching a video on how to tell when people are lying and she gave examples of the little smile they give.
I have a couple of examples, but here’s one that’s close to my heart (and that, sadly, hurts my heart).
I know someone who overheard the following conversation in a workshop on global policy. In one of the tables, there was a prominent doctor and one of the richest people on Earth.
The workshop went on as normal, until at some point the discussion turned to poverty and malnutrition. The rich person asked “What do you mean, malnutrition?” and the doctor politely explained the basics of acute hunger and chronic malnutrition. At the end of the explanation, the rich person asked “How can you believe any of that?” and explained that malnutrition was made up by “envious leftists” to steal from the rich.
The doctor tried to explain that malnutrition was real, and even pulled up their phone to search for a picture of a malnourished child. When the rich person saw the picture, they said “Well, I don’t know about this, but if you’re hungry, wouldn’t you just go to a store and buy food? If someone can’t figure that out, they’re just not cut out to survive”.
At that point, the conversation was cut short because the workshop organizers required them to move on.
You might be wondering who this rich person was. Here’s what I’ll tell you: their family extracted a lot of wealth in colonial times and, since then, they have used their power and wealth to remain powerful and wealthy.
A couple of them.
One, I met when we were both five years old, and I knew then he would end up in prison. He helped beat someone to death when he was 19 and went to prison.
Another I met when I was a child and he was an adult. I knew he wasn’t quite right, but I had no idea how bad it was. As a teenager, I had an encounter with him that almost turned violent. He later raped both his daughters and went to prison.
I knew a guy in grad school who was a hard-core Trumper back in 2015/16 who thought I was too because we both owned guns and were white I guess.
Anyway - I was talking to him one day about an epidemiological analysis I was leading a team on for HHS. I’m a geographer, and our group was analyzing the demographic, spatial, socioeconomic, and temporal distribution of cases of gonorrhea in a major metropolitan area.
I explain that we’re doing multivariate analysis on the demographic stuff because of all the issues caused by covariance showing “fake” correlation between gonorrhea and other variables. I explained that while the strongest indicator of gonorrhea in univariate analysis was whether or not you were black, that was actually an artifact from the fact that being black had a strong covariance with other variables like low income status, low employment rate, low education level, high population density, poor access to preventative healthcare, etc, and that when you took all the covariance into account there was no actual statistically significant correlation between gonorrhea and being black.
He then said something that was etched into my memory:
“It’s just you and me here, [chilie]. You don’t have to be all PC about thisbshit with me. We both know that just like how there’s stupid breeds of dogs, there are stupid breeds of people, and it’s a fucking disgrace that you can’t study that honestly here.”
That racist motherfucker has a Master’s degree.
There’s definitely subsets of idiots but they come from all cultures loool
There are smart people and stupid people but it has more to do with education and experience rather than breeding.
yeah i dated a woman who was a Art professor at a liberal arts school. She was native Korean. I stupidly assumed she was liberal and progressive…
She was incredibly fucking racist. She would talk about how all asian men should be rounded up and shot. She hated black and hispanic people.
She was a white supremacist. Straight up told me how she loved how tall and pale my skin was. And how much she loved asian/white people because they had so much moeny and the other races were all poor pieces of shit. It was creepy as fuck.
Broke up with a few days later. She also threatened to beat the shit out of me when i broke up with her and I basically had to threaten her with violence… that shut her up real fast.
a lot of people we assume are not racist and ignorant… are deeply racist and ignorance. they just understand they can’t be public about it without ruining their careers. i’ve also dated other so called ‘progressive’ women who were racist as fuck towards black/brown people, but not of the white supremacist variety. most the ‘those people are scary’ variety. but they saw nothing wrong with their own fear/hate of minorities in their personal life, as long as they lectured other people about how oppressed they were. it was so weird.
I’ve lived in the southern USA almost my whole life. I am accustomed to racism, unfortunately, but Asian racism hits different. It’s wild.
It seems to me that racism is an easy thing for any human to fall into if they are not conditioned out of that from an early age by their family and by their social environment. Fear and hatred of others not like ourselves seems like it could be potentially be a “default” and may have even been an advantage early on when everyone outside your tribe was seen as an enemy. I haven’t read anything about this but is just my impression. Also, you’d be surprised by how racist many countries and cultures are, especially those that are very racially homogeneous and that have less contact with people of other races.
My parent told me of a family they knew who lived on a farm in their village. All of them were outright monsters. There were only brothers in that family. No daughters. They had barn cats and when they had kittens, they’d crush their skulls in their hands for fun. They loved torturing animals. They were pysically big and they imposed themselves on everyone and everyone was scared shitless of these dudes. One ended up in jail for killing someone early on for some banal reason, and another became a Hell’s Angel motorcycle gang hitman essentially.
In a different kind of pure evil, I’ve always been affraid of Dennis in It’s Always Sunny in Philadephia. He really scares me. No joke. The character is a real psychopath. I’ve met a few people like this in real life. They were the rich successful types. They gave me the fucking creeps. Manipulative, controlling, always working to get what the want and always have the advantage to have power over others.
Wild. That reminds me of this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy
It’s an amazing story (emphasis mine):
Kenneth Rex McElroy (June 16, 1934 – July 10, 1981) was an American criminal and convicted attempted murderer who resided in Skidmore, Missouri. He was known as “the town bully”,[3] and his unsolved killing became the focus of international attention. Over the course of his life, McElroy was accused of dozens of felonies, including assault, child molestation, statutory rape, arson, animal cruelty, hog and cattle rustling, and burglary.[4]
In all, he was indicted 21 times but escaped conviction each time, except for the last.[4][5] In 1981, McElroy was convicted of attempted murder in the shooting of the town’s 70-year-old grocer Ernest “Bo” Bowenkamp.[3] McElroy was released on bond pending an appeal, after which he engaged in an ongoing harassment campaign against Bowenkamp and others who were sympathetic to Bowenkamp, including the town’s Church of Christ minister.
On June 30, 1981, he appeared in a local bar, the D&G Tavern, armed with an M1 Garand rifle and bayonet, and later threatened to kill Bowenkamp.[3][6] The next week, McElroy was shot and killed in broad daylight as he sat with his wife Trena in his pickup truck on Skidmore’s main street.[4] He was struck by bullets from at least two different firearms, in front of a crowd of people estimated as numbering between 30 and 46.[3] Despite the many witnesses, nobody came forward to say who shot him. As of 2025, no one has been charged in connection with McElroy’s death.[3]
Haha wow. No one came forward to talk. He was that much of an asshole.
Exactly! 30 to 46 people apparently decided unanimously that he deserved it.
he’s a narcissist, not a psychopath. there is some overlap but dennis isn’t a psychopath.
I don’t know, psychopathic tendencies run all over the Reynolds family.
Lack of empathy, a pattern of manipulating others, persistent antisocial behaviors (the DENNIS system, most of the gang’s plans), an innate immunity to stress (like when he just willed his stress away in the ‘mental health day’ episode)
Man’s a psychopath
Worked with this quiet dude for a couple years. Other than an excessive amounts of tattoos all the way to his face and neck, seemed like a pretty normal machinist / mechanic working at the factory with us.
Later, someone found a local news article from about 5 or 6 years ago. The cops had gotten called to his place over a suicide attempt and when they got there they found like a treasure trove of Nazi and Aryan nation shit, guns, knives, swords, fucking bomb making materials like acetone paint thinner and gun powder, diaries and notebooks full of fantasies about killing robbing and torturing people including minorities, teddy bears he bled on, drugs and paraphernalia
I guess his dad is a state trooper and got him off the charges, go figure.
Why did you say “not your neighbor who voted for Trump” and then provide an example who absolutely [would have] voted for Trump?
Well, all my uncles are dead. I figured having a dickhead uncle would resonate with some people.
Idiots and people with lead poisoning aren’t inherently evil. They’re just fucking stupid.
Voting for Trump is not adequately explained by stupidity.
Malicious ignornace is malicious. Hell, ignorance implies access to information and refusal to engage with it. Ignorance is malicious.
Not sure why people try to justify shitty people, just accept that theyre shitty and move on, no need for labels. Do you really need to know the difference between hitler and your local catholic priest, or do you need to know theyre both dangers to society and should be treated as such?
hold on now, let’s not conflate “ignorance” with “willful ignorance”
having access to information and refusing to use it is clearly terrible and a clear sign of some unhealthy mindset, but being ignorant about something doesn’t automatically mean that ignorance was sought out or valued
for example, I would say I am ignorant about more things than not by sheer quantity of information in the world, but I would be glad to learn if presented the opportunity, that doesn’t make me any less ignorant
there’s nothing wrong with being ignorant, only with trying to stay ignorant
Well, I get along well with my catholic priest. In fact the church is the reason we had heating oil two winters growing up and the food bank kept us from missing meals.
Well, I get along with my local catholic priest
My condolences
Edit:/jk, see below
if thats how you feel about catholic priests helping someone not starve or freeze id hate to hear your opinions on muslims or jews. good lord
Aight, thats on me i suppose. I figured my tone combined with the absurd reductionism of his statement wouldve indicated joking sarcasm, but I may have made an error in judgement. Ill add a /jk
It doesnt seem like it needs to be said that charity is good. But for one, the implication I was making was referring to child molestation, which is well documented amongst the group i refered to. Hence why I made a reductionist joke about the phrasing of their words.
For two, it would seem to me that the important thing there would be the charity, not specifically that it came from a catholic priest. Would that same charity from a local charity, organization, or individual not carry the same weight? Hence it seems quite pointless to bring up that priests do charity. So do a lot of other people. Its not their entire job either. The distinction lies in the fact that other charity groups arent known to engage in child molestation, nor have a systemic issues with covering up and protecting child molestors.
I’ll just make some statements and I’d bet we find common ground.
Catholic priests who molest children should be castrated then killed, as with any pedophile. Full stop.
The catholic church is the largest charitable organization in the world and has done a tremendous amount of good. They operate thousands of schools, hospitals and care facilities without incident.
Anyone who assisted in silencing victims or maneuvering offenders should lose whatever position they have and potentially be castrated and killed depending on circumstance.
Instances of horrific abuse (not strictly molestation) happen in MOST institutions at some point, especially ones that involve all ages. These should never be ignored.
I’ve never met a Catholic or general person who agreed with how the greater organization handled cases of abuse. It’s a horrible stain on an already stained institution and I hate that for everyone.
OP is saying voting for Trump is insufficient to qualify as an example. However, it’s not disqualifying.
Never met what I’d describe as a truly evil person, but definitely a lot of narcissistic people whose selfishness and lack of self awareness have caused numerous instances of wondering if they were in fact just evil people.
I find these people evil (like my ex wife) because they are aware when they want something. When they don’t you are nothing to them.
However, it’s not like they are clubbing baby seals or killing infants at the border. They just have opinions on life that clash with mine in a huge way. They generally don’t DO anything different than I do. They go to their jobs and take care of themselves and don’t hurt other people other than the occasional stupid opinion.
As much as I think the psychology is evil their actions are totally normal.
I think it blends the line a bit the more you know someone. There are selfish things that you can do without it being narcissistic and everyone can get to a point where from the outside it looks selfish, but context changes that calculation.
Whenever someone is selfish and throws me under the bus or asks for far more than what they give I try my best to come up with excuses for them. Usually this is the right approach and saves me from making an ass out of myself and allows me to “be there” for more people who truly need it, but sometimes I’m searching for that excuse so long or gaslight myself into thinking up a good excuse and I end up as a narcissist’s host for a while.
Personally, evil has to be clear, even when devoid of nuance or context.
This dude:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RM_Broadcasting
Makes Trump look like Gandhi. His kids won’t talk to him. Sued his son-in-law. Sued all of his partners. Grade A narcissist.
How did you meet him?
Through family.
Probably tinder
