Provoking and Gaslighting

A few posts back, I commented on how a young relative would post things to provoke other people on social media, and then he would act bewildered that they were angry. He was doing this again, and I saw that he was gaslighting the other people, lying and saying he had never said things that you could clearly see he did say further up the conversation, and telling them they were the ones with the problem. I told him he should knock it off, and then he began gaslighting me, so I defriended him. Then I had a blinding insight: this is exactly how his father acts, and his mother before him. It’s so pervasive in our family that I had grown up thinking it was normal until seeing it done to other people on social media. Is this a mental illness of some sort? It seems maladaptive, because people don’t like being intentionally provoked, and so most people avoid these relatives of mine. Family might feel like they have to stick by their side (and as a minor child, I had no choice but to take the abuse), but friends do not like being belittled, told they’re too sensitive, or that they can’t take a joke. These people all complain about how they have no friends, and they really haven’t been too successful in the workaday world either. So why do they do it? It may work for the rare person (see: the current occupant of the White House), but most bosses and coworkers would not put up with this nonsense. I cut off a person who wanted to be my friend when she started showing this behavior. It does not seem like a path to success, so why would people indulge in this behavior? Is it genetic? Or is it learned? And is there any cure for it? And the biggest question of all: why are so many of these people on social media? They even have a name for them: “trolls.” I’m sure there’s a more scientific name for the problem. But how do we solve it?

Famous Hat