I doubt it's a narcissist and I'm saying that as a narcissist myself.
That fragile ego basically means narcissists are afraid of humiliation. On top that, mentally everything is build around shoring up my ego to compensate for the low self esteem. My ego. Not someone else's ego. I'd have to do some really weird mental gymnastics to be satisfied with copying someone else's work, that would just lower my ego even more. I guess it's doable if I straight up believe I'm that other person? But now we're talking about something really special and uncommon. Not just a narcissist anymore. The narcissistic self deception is involuntary, I can't just say "well, I know I'm copying the work of that person, but now I believe that's me." It doesn't work like that.
The person doing this clearly knew there was considerable risk of getting caught and being exposed. That's someone that doesn't give a fuck about the social consequences.
So you were closer with the malignants, but it's probably just a sociopath (ASPD). A lot more rare in general and more willing to take risks.
I don’t quite understand the downvotes. Narcissists, psychopaths, autistic, etc are technical terms, not an abstract labeling for “smart person with completely inhuman thinking”.
Pointing at who seems to be an insane man and calling him a “narcissist” is like pointing at a Chrome window and saying “this folder on Desktop” and okay grandma I get it but that is technically wrong. OP is just explaining the situation.
The Internet when I grew up was abundant of horror stories around encounter with insane person, and there were definitely multiple different modes of failure, like charging towards the storyteller with a knife in hand, the person leaving the identity behind as if it was nothing, storyteller being the unreliable narrator, etc etc. Usually the best response seemed to be either to display a skill that the imposter can’t replicate, or applying hard rules that allows no alternate interpretations so that they cannot elongate the drama.
I don’t know which cliche suggests which diagnosis and armchair diagnosis is at best useless, but it is true that there are types, and if OP thinks it’s not the same type as his own, that is at least an anecdatapoint.
e: ok I didn’t read the top comment. Clinical distinction don’t matter, you just have to know how to defend against. And it’s documented. That is right. I’ll keep this comment as a shame to myself.
Mm, no, I think I agree with your original assessment. You and the top comment both seem correct.
(Also, no need to think of it as a shame game. It's more interesting to learn something.)
Let's put it this way. If you're mistaken, then I don't understand it either, so hopefully someone will explain.
More concretely, reading the list of how to defend against narcissism, it felt like lots of people tend to have some of these traits, but usually not all of them. If it's a partial match, how should you interpret it? Is there some sort of narcissistic meter that goes up as you accumulate points?
I'd say it's fairly rare. Most therapists often won't diagnose patients, because it's considered not helpful to the trust relationship and trying to make someone that's narcissistic understand that they are narcissistic is... Hard, because of the splitting and the disconnect between the internal self image and the external presentation.
They'll often mirror or turn it back on you and there's not much you can say at that point ("I'm a narcissist? No! You are a narcissist!"). It's a tricky disorder.
That fragile ego basically means narcissists are afraid of humiliation. On top that, mentally everything is build around shoring up my ego to compensate for the low self esteem. My ego. Not someone else's ego. I'd have to do some really weird mental gymnastics to be satisfied with copying someone else's work, that would just lower my ego even more. I guess it's doable if I straight up believe I'm that other person? But now we're talking about something really special and uncommon. Not just a narcissist anymore. The narcissistic self deception is involuntary, I can't just say "well, I know I'm copying the work of that person, but now I believe that's me." It doesn't work like that.
The person doing this clearly knew there was considerable risk of getting caught and being exposed. That's someone that doesn't give a fuck about the social consequences.
So you were closer with the malignants, but it's probably just a sociopath (ASPD). A lot more rare in general and more willing to take risks.