Are you insufferable, Bob ?
Santoculto perfectly fit this definition.
I agree that Santoculto could definitely be an insufferable ass. But he also had some nice, concise and brilliant views on a lot of things, particularly human psychology.
Recall that he is gay. Gay Politics won’t let us talk about this, but many gay men are narcissistic. That is one of the reasons they used to think it is a mental illness. No one quite knows why they are like that. If you think about the very shallow gay male scene in the US with its emphasis like good looks, youth, polymorphous perversion, out of control promiscuity, endless brief, near anonymous and loveless relationships, you can see how it would create a lot of narcissists. Of course it’s horribly homophobic to bring this up, so I guess I will be a big fat homophobe and share this with you all right now.
The gay novelist John Rechy is profoundly narcissistic.
Novelists Jerzy Kozhinski and Philip Roth are notoriously narcissistic. Kozhinski actually made a vast phony history for himself full of many things that never happened. He didn’t get called out on it for a long time, and when he finally was, he simply denied it. His books are good, but he is a bit of a literary fraud as he plagiarized and made up lies about his life. In fact, his entire life could be accurately described as a gigantic fraud.
VS Naipaul in a recent biography comes across extremely narcissistic and it is generally agreed that he was a perfectly awful person.
Kiss frontman Gene Simmons is one of the most insufferable narcissistic asses in all rock and roll, and he has a lot of competition. He is probably one of the most hated people in rock music and for very good reason. Salvador Dali was extremely narcissistic, but he was so weird that it never bothered anyone. Pablo Picasso was a huge asshole, whether he was a narcissist I am not sure, but he probably was. He had a massive ego and treated a lot of his female models like crap. He had a habit of screwing his young female models, making babies with them and abandoning the girl. He did this over and over. He was a great painter, but a lot of people who knew him well said he was an awful human being.
Many actors are narcissistic. If you think about it all of the performing arts, especially film, lend themselves to narcissism. They attract narcissists and then the nature of being a performer on a stage of some sort in and of itself drives a lot more narcissism. If they get famous, that drives even more narcissism. At some point it is probably an endless feedback loop. My mother said all actors are narcissists and she said you have to be narcissistic to be an actor. There is an old joke where the journalist has been interviewing the actor. It has gone on for 45 minutes of the actor going and on about himself enjoying the sound of his own voice. At some point, he realizes his violation and tries to rectify it.
After 45 minutes:
“But anyway, enough about me. Let’s talk about you now. What did you think of my latest movie?”
Get it?
Am I insufferable? God no! I am not an NPD! I don’t even think I am all that narcissistic. I cannot stand pathological narcissists. The idea that I might be one of these people I hate so much pisses me off. I have a not of problems, but that ain’t one of them. Nobody calls me that. I used to get called arrogant, but I have been working on that one really hard. I have to work on that a part of the time when I am around people, but I cannot manage it pretty well by faking it and getting underneath people.
I do not have a lot of disdain for the people I meet in day to day stuff. Most of them seem like decent enough people even if I do not wish to make personal friends of them. There are some lowlife ghetto types around here who I dislike, but they deserve to be hated, and I do not waste time thinking about them anyway.
I have been called a lot of things, but insufferable is not one of them. However, people do remark that I have a big ego, that I have have some egotism, etc. I have had some complaints that I am vain, conceited, self-impressed, etc., but that is just a vibe you will get from my mind. You will not find me talking like that because I am not a braggart and a showoff and I hate people like that. If I do have some impressive accomplishment I wish to divulge, I have the art of false modesty down to a T, so I can relate things that would normally seem like bragging, but nobody gets upset because it seems like I am embarrassed or ashamed of this accomplishment of mine. It’s an act, but so what?
I do not care if people dislike the vain, conceited, self-impressed vibes I give off. As far as I am concerned, they should feel that way too! Everyone should think they’re great! Start being great today! What are you waiting for?
I hate insufferable people. They are often quite impressed with the sound of their own voices too and they can be downright soporific when they go on one of their endless narcissistic monologues. It’s all just too much, the whole thing. It’s way over the top and typically even offensive. You often want to leave the room when they are going on and on. Of course they cannot see anything wrong with their behavior and they will barely even notice if you walk out. You’re not part of the Me Show anyway. You’re the audience. Some of the audience is leaving before the performance is over. No big, this happens all the time. They have for all intents and purposes little to no insight into their behavior.
I think narcissism is a tendency a lot of us have to watch out for. Just go look at some pathological narcissists, figure out why you can’t stand them and use that as a model for how not to be. Watch yourself on a regular basis to make sure you are not falling into that lousy mindset. Narcissists suck, and a lot of people hate them for good reason. Do you want to suck? Do you want to be widely hated for being an insufferable ass? That’s terrible! I would be ashamed and embarrassed if I acted like that.
