Written by Shahida Arabi, MA, psychopathology expert and researcher
Social media has often been labeled the culprit for breeding narcissists, but narcissists have always existed in one form or another prior to the digital age; social media platforms have just given them an extra, impactful tool to try to provoke people, even in ways that defy the limits of distance and go beyond our immediate social circles.
Here are five common ways narcissists – those without empathy and with an excessive sense of entitlement – use social media to exploit, gaslight, manipulate, and emotionally destabilize their victims:
1. To create love triangles and gaslight you.
Social media is a veritable playground and hunting ground, especially for malignant narcissists. It gives them easy access to multiple victims and the ability to manufacture love triangles in covert, insidious ways. In order to understand how and exactly why narcissists use these platforms for such petty power plays, it’s essential that we remember that they tend to be insatiable in their attention-seeking and their desire to create “harems” and cults of people who adore them. They will, of course, deny that they are doing this – and it’s easy to convince anyone who is suspicious of their behavior that such a focus on their online behavior is “crazy.”
For example, observe what a self-confessed gaslighter told BBC news when asked about the role his gaslighting played in covering his tracks on social media:
“Paula was extremely intelligent, but I was aware that I was leaving traces of infidelity in the digital world, on social media,” says Greg. He said he made jokes over a period of time pointing to her ‘obsession’ with social media, making her feel that she was suspicious in an unhealthy, even ‘crazy’ way. “I deliberately used demeaning language to make her lose confidence in her reading of the situation, of my infidelity. She was ‘paranoid’, she was ‘crazy’, she was ‘full of drama’. I’d say this all as jokes. But they would build over time, and she then started to believe…”