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Originally Posted by Hankphenom
Several years ago, I read that some 5% of people have a sociopathic personality. Suddenly, a great deal of human behavior was explained to me. These are not psychopaths, they will not become serial killers, although I'm sure they are responsible for most of the criminal behavior. Instead, they will live more or less normal lives and seem pretty much like everyone else, except they will be doing it without any feeling or caring for other people. That doesn't mean they won't do something that's in your best interests, but only because it's in their best interests, too. We live with these people, we work with these people, and they are in our hobby, too. They come to our notice most often on the roads and in chat rooms. They are the ones who, when seeing a lane shift up ahead, drive as fast as they can to get to the head of the line before merging, and they are the ones who taunt and jeer from behind the safety of a keyboard. They are cowards, mostly, and would never act like that in public for fear of the consequences. These are the jerks of the world, known colloquially as ***holes. But they could care less about what we think of them. In fact, they think the rest of us are stupid and weak, like Ray Liotta's character Henry Hill says in "Goodfellas." 5%--1 in 20. It really does explain a lot.
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Hank, I met one of these people about 8 years ago and we became good friends. There was something odd and disattached about him, but I didn't understand it until he told me that he was a 'social misanthrope'. As he went on to describe himself, very clinically, I thought he was joking. But he told me that because he doesn't care about anyone (what they think, how they feel, etc.), he has had to learn the proper social responses in various situations. He was in his '50s when I met him, so he had had years to practice.
Social misanthropes are a lot different from people who are actually @ssholes by nature. The care, just not in the correct direction.
Edited to add: actually, our friendship was a one-way friendship, as he had no need whatsoever for friends. If he got upset with someone, it wasn't really 'being upset' as much as it was being perturbed because he knew the other person wasn't following accepted social rules.