Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

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I liked Ramani until I realized that every other day she posts videos where she repeats the same material she's covered countless times in the past. I became convinced that you could watch her whole YouTube channel and conclude that everyone around you is a narcissist. This isn't to say that she hasn't made lots of good and valid content, but I find it ironic that she uses her own apparent charisma to exploit a topic and turn it into a catch-all for describing any cancerous individual. I wouldn't have much objection to this in isolation, except I presume her channel is monetized, which inherently changes my perception of her intention.

By contrast, Dr. Grande's channel has more varied psychological content and comes off as more neutral than Ramani. Although recently he's been doing a lot more analyses of individuals than of broader subjects.

Someone who wants to understand narcissistic personality disorder should probably look up its commonly accepted definition, then watch Dr. Ramani's videos and decide which ones matter and which ones really don't. That's just my opinion.

Dr Grande has a very good channel and it's hard to find a flaw in it. I guess it's relatively unexciting - until you hear him talk about guns.

In my opinion there's a narcissism epidemic going on. Charisma is seen not just as a trait but as a value. Everyone wants some. It's lumped together with good leadership, extroversion etc. Charismatic selfish people are praised as CEOs, celebrities, youtubers, politicians, actors. And enthralled people keep making excuses for them! And calling YOU crazy.

For many people it's true that narcissists are all around, and it's easy to explain! Kind, selfless, charitable people are narcissist magnets(They will keep making excuses). Also people from messed up families, who didn't develop healthy boundaries(Does fish know it's under water?). They are easy to impress and exploit. Narcissists and manipulators can sense weakness. By contrast, if you're assertive, you repel them without knowing and it may seem like the problem is overblown. Both earlier kinds of people end up being marginalized.

I have another issue with Dr Ramani and why she's not a complete source on narcissim. She's great for theory and the big picture but gives few examples of things narcissists actually say and how you might counteract it.

> In my opinion there's a narcissism epidemic going on. Charisma is seen not just as a trait but as a value. Everyone wants some. It's lumped together with good leadership, extroversion etc. Charismatic selfish people are praised as CEOs, celebrities, youtubers, politicians, actors. And enthralled people keep making excuses for them! And calling YOU crazy.

Without going into detail, I can very much relate to this. The grandiose narcissists are much easier to identify, most of the time, but vulnerable narcissism(which I think most narcissists are) is more socially acceptable and reliant on empathetic energy, making it harder to point out. On social media in particular, they can easily form cults of victims whom end up enabling the narcissist. I'm normally not that bothered by narcissists, but there have been a few times where I pointed out that a public figure is a narcissist, along with concrete details on their lies and misdirection, and got mostly backlash for it. What's funny is my predictions have always turned out to be right because narcissists really aren't that difficult to understand. Most of them aren't even good at keeping their stories straight.

I think she just focused on narcissism for a whole month, as well as it being somewhat of a specialty of hers. It's also a pretty big Youtube niche. If you watch the Med Circle content she is pretty succinct and well versed on other mental health issues as well.

Yup, I saw her comparing borderline to CPTSD. She talks about avoidant personality disorder, paranoia, antisocial, and obsessive-compulsive.

Don't look too closely at daily content creators... Most of them end up rehashing the same advice in slightly different ways. The information is fresh to new viewers and repeat viewers are not likely to watch their content every single day.

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