
What It’s Like Living As a Diagnosed Psychopath - lnguyen
https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/my-life-as-a-psychopath.html
======
Toine
There have been many, many articles like this, and I think they have little
value except the glorification of psychopaths. The term "psychopath" is
fascinating to many, due to the cultural references linked to it. However
psychopathy has never been clearly defined in the DSM. Maybe it's just a
combination of other disorders (autism + NPD ?), maybe it's a separate
disorder waiting to be discovered. Either way, nothing to be fascinated about.

~~~
mjfl
The whole concept of psychopathy depends on the premise that normal humans act
with empathy towards each other, which is laughably false.

~~~
slv77
Oxytocin fosters empathy towards people in the same in-group and reduces
empathy for those outside the in-group. Oxytocin is the reason that a mob can
be moved to avenge an injustice which requires both empathy and callousness
towards another persons suffering at the same time.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-love-hate-
relat...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-love-hate-
relationship/)

Even feeling empathy for someone in pain doesn’t naturally lead to compassion.
Empathy is just the ability to mirror someone else’s emotions and is a
neurotypical response. If your happy, I’m happy. If you hurt, I hurt.

If I’m hurting because you hurt my natural response is to stop my pain. In
some cases that mirrored pain can result in acts of compassion but can also
result in lashing out, victim blaming or fleeing. These are all normal
responses for someone feeling pain.

Empathy is a “normal” response but compassion is a choice. Few people have the
emotional regulation skills and patience to see someone in pain, feel their
pain and sit with them in their pain.

------
piazz
The bits of the transcript about having to wear a mask in order to function,
having to internalize algorithms of human behavior that are totally
unintuitive, and realizing that one’s deepest interpersonal instincts are out
of sync with the rest of your kin remind me strongly of some individuals I’ve
known with Aspergers/severe ADHD.

Additionally, her descriptions of not feeling fear, processing emotions at a
lower intensity level than others, needing constant stimulation, and having a
cognitive, but not truly emotional, understanding of romantic love and empathy
ring true to my experience knowing these people.

I wonder if there is a legitimate grey zone at which these disorders overlap.

Or, alternatively, maybe my friend is just a psychopath.

~~~
LaurieKoudstaal
Simon Baron-Cohen's book Zero Degrees of Empathy explores this very idea.
Might be worth a read if you're curious.

~~~
DanBC
He's wrong though. Alexithymia is more common in autistic people, but it's
neither suffient nor required for an ASD diagnosis.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-with-
autis...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-with-autism-can-
read-emotions-feel-empathy1/)

This linking of alexithymia to autism has caused harm by making it harder to
get the diagnosis for people who can recognise emotion within themselves and
others.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
We need better constructs for this. Alexithymia is typically defined entirely
in terms of whether someone can _identify_ emotions, regardless of the
underlying failure mode. In particular, some clinicians seem to think that
everyone has the same baseline interoceptive experience and that any problem
with identifying emotions is therefore purely a problem of attention or
vocabulary.

------
goatlover
Makes me wonder if a society of 100% psychopaths could function or would fall
apart. In that society, there would be no reason to wear a mask and pretend.
Everyone feels (or fails to feel) basically the same way. If you knew that
anyone would take advantage of you given the opportunity, then how does
society function?

Kind of like how the Dark Mirror Universe in Star Trek managed to get so far.

~~~
Moodles
This seems like the hawks and doves Nash equilibrium in game theory:
[http://college.holycross.edu/faculty/kprestwi/behavior/ESS/H...](http://college.holycross.edu/faculty/kprestwi/behavior/ESS/HvD_intro.html)

On one hand you want some doves because they work together well and society is
nice, but on the other hand if there’s too doves then hawks will thrive. But
if everyone is hawks, then society as a whole doesn’t work as well together.
So there’s push and pull of both and in the end the natural equilibrium is
mostly doves with some hawks. I suspect this is how it works for psycopaths in
society.

~~~
AmericanChopper
I’ve worked in teams comprised entirely of “hawks” that were entirely
functional, and incredibly effective. As long as you all share a mission and
respect each other then it can be great and involve almost no conflict.

~~~
Moodles
Probably disagreeing over the meaning of hawk then.

~~~
AmericanChopper
I’m pretty sure we’re not. They can work very well together as long as they
all see each other as competent.

~~~
TuringTest
Probably. But knowing human condition, that arrangement seems particularly
unstable. If there's no emotional bonding, any stumble in competence can throw
trust off, and then things may spiral down very fast.

~~~
dasmoth
I’m not convinced it requires empathy to recognise that the occasional stumble
from someone with a solid track record doesn’t mean they’re not going to
perform well again tomorrow.

~~~
TuringTest
No, but it erodes trust, and may start a quarrel. Then, without empathy it
will be harder for people to deescalate tensions, or want to collaborate with
someone they've had a confrontation with and are angry with.

~~~
AmericanChopper
This particular group of people pretty much never fought about anything. They
practiced a very extreme version of candor which prevented tension from
developing to begin with.

------
ivoras
Judging by how many people in this comment thread identify with the traits
described in the article, it probably just shows that those traits are pretty
ordinary, just a facet of the normal diversity of humanity, and have probably
been with us forever.

The true problems of recent societies might in fact be overdiagnosis and
Hollywood-style oversimplifications, not the traits themselves. Not everyone
needs to be hyper emphatic (though we probably need a great number of such
individual to keep our societies cohesive).

In other words, don't judge, do live and let live, defend yourself and people
around you if attacked. Don't watch TV.

~~~
philipov
I think people imagine that mental pathologies are differences of kind, but
they're actually differences of degree. Every mental pathology exists in a
less intense form as a personality disorder, and even weaker as non-
pathological personality traits. When we stop demonizing mental illness, it's
easy to see those traits in ourselves, but the difference is in how intensely
those traits negatively affect our lives.

Many people get anxious, and this causes them to look at people with anxiety
disorders and think "That's like what I've got. Why don't you just pull
yourself out of it?" but what they don't consider is that the difference is
one of degree, not of kind.

~~~
RobertRoberts
> _" When we stop demonizing mental illness, it's easy to see those traits in
> ourselves, but the difference is in how intensely those traits negatively
> affect our lives."_

Are all mental traits that affect our lives negatively mental illness? I think
it's quite a leap to say that just because you have negative effect in your
life from a mental perspective/problem/limitation/etc... doesn't mean it's
"illness" that requires a cure.

Sometimes it really is "just get over it", if not, then every person I know
needs emergency therapy and drugs right now cause they are all ill.

If you want to say it's a matter of degree, sure, a valid a argument, but who
lets who decide what the degree is? What if the person that says "pull
yourself out of it" was affected many hundreds of times worse than the person
hearing that advice? Now is degrees a purely personal and relative matter?

How many people have heard stories of spoiled rich brats scream bloody murder
and acted like they were dying because they didn't get the exact color they
wanted in their designer luggage? (replace in the nouns for different
scenarios)

And conversely, the poor child with nothing, is happy and grateful just to
have a little more food at mealtime? "Just get over it" _is_ the answer to the
rich brat who wants to wallow when you put it in perspective of others. But
from their own perspective, it's the end of the world. (lots of personal
experience seeing both sides of this issue)

~~~
roflc0ptic
My household has a similar debate around the usefulness of kindness and
empathy for changing other people's behavior. My household has several
empathetic and caring members, who frequently (and effectively) use those
traits to guide other people into better behavior patterns, often just by
existing in the same space.

On the other hand, sometimes there are dudes whose bad behavior is
intractable, and the only halfway effective intervention is when I tell them
forcefully to stop. Not viciously, but mercilessly direct, and little
concession made for their comfort.

Although as I write that out, it looks like maybe the issue is that the
framing is wrong - it's not empathy vs force, it's more like empathy and
force. A question of choosing the right communication strategy for the person
and situation.

I have no doubt when entitlement is the issue, getting (metaphorically?)
punched in the face a couple of times is an important "teaching moment". It's
probably not the case that all lessons are best taught like that.

~~~
btrettel
I've come to similar conclusions from talking to people parked in the bike
lane, of all things.

Some people do care once you tell them that blocking the bike lane is rude and
a real safety problem for cyclists. Others don't care at all that a cyclist
has a problem with this. Those people tend to respond best to me threatening
to call the police to ticket their car. Once I recognize which category the
driver is in, I know which approach to take.

------
okket
Similar discussion from 5 months ago about an 2014 article:

"Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath (2014)"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16584565](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16584565)
(122 comments)

~~~
Fnoord
I can recommend Athena Walker's (pseudonym of a psychopath) answers to Quora
questions. [1] However, one must always be careful with the writings of a
psychopath. These people are cunningly manipulative.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/profile/Athena-
Walker](https://www.quora.com/profile/Athena-Walker)

~~~
obituary_latte
I was wondering if she was the interviewee.

~~~
Fnoord
Me too for a moment, but ultimately I don't care. You could send her a PM on
Quora. I've send her PMs with questions about her and psychopathy in general
in the past and she's always been helpful and informative.

------
didibus
> they’re convinced their ex is a psychopath, when really their ex was just a
> toxic, awful person. There are millions of those, and they’re everywhere,
> and they come from every neurotype.

That's the most interesting quote I find. It poses a paradox. What makes a
person awful and toxic? Are there common personality traits to this? Are there
biological causes?

Do we need a new pathology for this? Toxipath?

She later mentions this:

> I think it’s important to hold people responsible for their actions, not
> brain formation. People make choices. Psychopathy is not an excuse, and it’s
> definitely not a reason why someone does bad things.

So what are those reasons then? And what are those bad things? And what
mechanism governs one's choices?

It does seem to me like psychopaths, by definition, lack all natural controls
which would allow them to know what the bad things are and that they shouldn't
choose to do them.

Thus, they need social controls instead. Like, society has to make it easier
to achieve her goals through good means, and make it very hard to do so
through bad means. Otherwise she has no means of containment. She does not
fear, she does not rejoice. She does not regret or feel guilt. She does not
hope and dream.

That said, what are her goals? What drives a psychopath? Adrenaline rush
alone? That's what she hints at.

Finally, I noticed the quoted doctor goes out of his way to mention a
spectrum. And that he'd only classify of psychopath the more extreme cases, at
the far end of it. For those, he says all four traits must be clearly
demonstrated. And those by definition mention:

> take pleasure in hurting others

> are physically aggressive

Which are arguably at the top of the list for "bad things".

So purely from the quoted doctor, if she does not have those traits, she's
probably not high enough on the spectrum to be labeled a psychopath. At least
not based on the quoted doctor's diagnostic model.

------
perakojotgenije
> I have no comprehenion of why people enjoy opioids. We also can’t get
> addicted to things because of the way our brain works. There are psychopaths
> that use drugs, but you can cut them off cold turkey and they will not have
> any withdrawal. They don’t have any cravings, and they can just go on with
> their day like it was nothing.

This is the first time I've seen it explained by someone else but it's how I
feel all the time. Makes me wonder...

~~~
SpecialistEMT
To me it sounds like an addicted user talking on a manic day

------
placebo
I find the concept of not being able to feel fear quite interesting. I've
always seen fear/anxiety as an emotion that is automatically bundled with the
ability to imagine a possibly bad outcome for a given situation someone is in.
If that is true, then not being able to feel fear would mean not being able to
imagine this outcome, or not caring about the outcome - neither of which seem
to be the case for psychopaths. The outcomes they want might be totally
different than what might be considered normal, but they still desire them -
why doesn't the thought of not being able to get what they want generate at
least some degree of fear? It could be that I'm totally mistaken about the
origins of the emotion of fear, in which case it would be refreshing to view
another take on it.

~~~
textor
You're going too far generalizing from your experience. They can imagine just
fine, as their cognition is unimpaired. But humans are learning and planning
largely on emotional basis. Their amygdala is less functional, so their
imagination is decoupled from negative emotion: when they imagine some bad
outcome, they process it in the detached way most people process heat death of
the Universe or hunger in Africa, i.e. something that is maybe significant but
has little bearing on actual choices. It doesn't generate aversion. What does
generate it, though, is deprivation of positive stimulus, so when "bad
outcome" means "being put in a small concrete cage with no entertainment and
bland food", they'll strategize rationally and do their best to avoid being
caught. When it means merely being shunned, reviled, disowned, demoted,
physically hurt, it doesn't affect the strategy very much. They don't want
being hurt in the present moment, theoretically, but they can't feel enough to
factor this into their planning.

It's kind of like how overeating people struggle to curb their craving now
with thoughts of seeing their weight increase later. Some succeed, and some
can't do it at all. They'll feel negative emotions when they look at the
scales, not when they get the ice cream and imagine the numbers. Except
psychopaths don't even want to fight this tendency of theirs.

To be fair, positive reinforcement works for them about as well as for others.

------
ggm
I liked this. It offers hope. Bleak hope, but hope. But I can't stop thinking
.. yea but maybe she isn't. Still.. the lack of fear and addiction risk in
opioids bears thinking about. It suggests some brain chemistry difference.

Definitely not a sociopath either. She cares enough not to want to cause pain
even if she can't always read the symptoms of emotions. So.. if you have
psychopathy but care enough to work around it, do you really have it?

~~~
kromem
You can not have empathy but not want your social structures crumbling around
you.

There are pure sociological benefits to socialization and relationships, and
it may be that the effort of going out of her way to foster those
relationships is evaluated as being worth the effort in the benefit it brings.

But yes, that aspect of the interview was extremely interesting, and I wish
the interviewer had asked about that directly (essential asked "what do you
get out of your relationships"?).

------
didibus
> Even people who are 16, 17, 18 on the PCL-R are nasty sons of bitches. Do
> they meet the diagnostic threshold of what we would call meeting a diagnosis
> of psychopathy? No.”

So apparently the PCL-R is a scale to measure how nasty a son of b one his.

I just don't get it. What happens at the 30 mark in the scale that makes it an
illness versus you just being a terrible human being?

------
limeblack
The book "The Psychopath Test" goes into how common some attributes are in
society and being cautious giving out such labels with out thoroughly
understanding the person. It gives a specific example about Tony being held in
a mental hospital for years against his own will.

------
ashildr
So even a person who only has very tuned down emotions, does not mirror other
people’s emotions and mostly reacts very rational comes to prefer the same
kind of relationships neurotypicals do. That’s interesting. I had a “commander
Data” Moment while reading this.

------
serversytem
I think an equal attention should be paid to the self defeating personality
disorder spectrum which seems to be the opposite of psychopathy, if the goal
is betterment of society.

------
tzakrajs
Today I "learned" psychopaths cannot become addicted to any drug.

~~~
zafka
Yes, I would call bullshit on that one too.

------
knuththetruth
>Do you think it’s something that people suspect about you? Or do you think
people’s perceptions are so off that they wouldn’t really know what
psychopathy looks like?

>No. Psychopaths use what we call a ‘mask.’ It’s basically an entire
affectation of being like everyone else. We learn at a really young age that
if we respond to things the way that we naturally respond to things, people
don’t like that. So you just learn how to affect the behavior and how to
appear like everyone else, and that’s just what you have to do.

Psychopaths always believe this to be true, and to their “credit,” it does
deceive many people. But it’s also symptomatic of their narcissistic
delusions.

It’s been my experience that people who have had the misfortune of spending a
lot of time around a psychopath can quite quickly identify others. It’s hard
to describe exactly, but psychopaths are very deterministic in their behavior
patterns. It’s as if the dulled emotions and fear response subtract some of
the randomness that makes people without this pathology actually
unpredictable. They can still be surprising in the moral thresholds and social
boundaries they’ll cross without hesitation, but in terms of what they pursue
(opportunities to deceive and manipulate, power over others), they’re dully
predictable.

So, many do actually see completely through them, it’s just that this
knowledge isn’t very useful. Social hierarchies and asymmetries of power do
more to preserve their capacity to cause damage than anything else, so without
the opportunity to fundamentally change the context you’re navigating, there’s
not much you can do. Your boss will, in most cases, still be your boss, even
if they’re transparently psychopathic. And their power to harm you is inherent
to their title, not the specifics of their personality.

This is why if you ever read a book about dealing with psychopaths, the first
thing they’ll almost all tell you is that nothing is gained by confronting
them and your best recourse is to disengage as completely as possible. It’s a
realpolitik approach to social dynamics, because only in rare and limited
circumstances does a deep understanding of the psychopathic mind allow you to
transcend them.

~~~
kromem
I think the thing most interesting in the interview was the S/O and friends.

What's the value in those relationships to a psychopath? I can't imagine
there's the same desire for consensual validation, etc that drives so many
normative relationships.

I really wish the interviewer dived a bit deeper into what her need
fulfillment was in her interpersonal relationships.

~~~
knuththetruth
It’s touched on obliquely, but psychopaths are impulsive and in constant need
of stimulation, which, because of their diminished emotional responses, they
largely derive from anti-social behavior. Its adrenaline inducing response is
one of the few ways they can “feel.” High functioning psychopaths will often
pursue long-term relationships because they provide a consistent source of
this kind of stimulation, while also allowing them to modulate and practice
the “masks” they use to deceive others.

The interviewee more or less admits this in speaking about how her “friend”
would frequently ask if she was unwelcome around the interviewee, despite her
not doing anything explicit to suggest this. It’s a typical psychopathic lapse
into bragging about one’s ability to manipulate or inspire fear in others,
albeit under the guise of the ability to “feel concern.” I guess it’s kind of
a clever manipulation within the context of the interview itself, if again, it
wasn’t so remarkably predictable. Few psychopaths can seem to go very long
without slipping in examples of their inherent superiority or delighting in
some prior act of sadism.

~~~
anothergoogler
The authoritative tone of your comments bothers me. What are they based on?
The claim that psychopaths pursue long-term relationships doesn't jive with
the antisocial nature of this condition. I'm also troubled by your view that
any engagement with a psychopath is wasted. Psychopathy does not exclude
reason. A premise of your views is that you are able to unambiguously diagnose
psychopathy in others, and that it is appropriate to treat those people
radically differently based on your casual diagnosis.

To be frank, I feel like I'm reading paraphrases of Pieter Hintjens' self-help
book "The Psychopath Code" which is quite popular with this website's users.
The book is no longer open source, but I read a fair bit of it when it was. It
struck me as a dangerous work that teaches how to perceive your foes as
psychopaths, and then to cut them out of your life. I can see how the practice
is empowering, but it irresponsibly elevates the armchair psychologist reader.

I think your comments should be be composed like the opinions they are, and
not made to sound like objective truth.

~~~
XorNot
The much more interesting version of this article was the neurology researcher
who scanned his own brain and found it matched exactly the structure of
criminal psychopaths who he was studying.

The guy otherwise had a wife, children and positive social environment, so it
was something of a surprise discovery to him. It was much more introspective
and informative on the possible nature of the condition -
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-
neuroscien...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-
neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/)

~~~
DanBC
He's mentioned in the submitted article, and there's some dispute about his
findings. There's a bunch of stuff that affects brain function, and
"psychopathy" is only one of them.

> Similarly, he takes issue with neuroscientist James Fallon’s calling himself
> a psychopath because his brain imaging profile matched that of psychopathic
> individuals.

> “Just because the amygdala shows hypoactivation does not make you a
> psychopath,” says Neumann. “This is a characteristic that’s associated with
> psychopathy, but biology is not destiny. We believe that the syndrome, the
> personality disorder, is a coming together of these four major domains.”

------
rootw0rm
as a psychopath I can usually spot them from a mile away. I invariably hate
them a lot.

my current gf is also a psychopath, if she wasn't in jail we probably would
have killed each other already.

~~~
shanghaiaway
How do you spot them?

~~~
rubatuga
Probably their demeanour, and if you realize that somebody is trying to use
you, alarm bells would start ringing.

~~~
icebraining
Non-psychopaths will also try to use you.

------
rubatuga
Maybe there is a good reason for psychopaths to exist. Maybe it keeps the
community from becoming too trusting, and then later having one person
completely take advantage over the whole community. Psychopaths could be a
vaccine to keep humans wary of the negative possibilities. It also reminds me
of the fact that having small amounts of disturbance (e.g. environmental) in a
biological ecosystem keeps biodiversity high.

~~~
textor
I have a similar hypothesis (which I don't believe, but still). Suppose there
are no psychopaths. As is well known, people's choices of leaders are heavily
influenced by biological biases such as height, social dominance and other
"alpha male" traits. If there is no need to suspect malice, communities could
suffer a runaway effect of increasingly biological selection of leadership,
the same way it seems to happen in most herd/pack animals (where a smaller
male basically can never become a leader, even though the correlation of size
and intelligence is less than 1). But psychopaths can "supersignal" beyond
even the most impressive neurotypicals. With some bad apples, we feel the need
to check if signals correspond at all to the substance, and correct for
personal behavior and long-term ability to deliver on promises.

------
mindgam3
Yet another article with misleading information about “psychopathy”
(“sociopathy”, “antisocial personality disorder”, etc).

The fundamental pattern these terms are all trying to address is the same:
antisocial behavior, or a consistent pattern of behavior that harms others. Do
we all have it in us to act selfishly sometimes? Yes. Just like we all have it
in us to act altruistically. Psychopathy is a spectrum with Mother Theresa on
one end and Hitler on the other. (I realize Mother Theresa may not have
actually been all that saintly in real life, but bear with me for the sake of
argument.)

The major flaw in the article is how it focuses on someone who was eventually
diagnosed as a psychopath after seeking treatment. The issue here is that the
people who are actually dangerous, i.e. very high on the Hare psychopathy
checklist, i.e. true psychopaths, are never going to voluntarily be diagnosed.
Real psychopaths don’t seek treatment to change their behavior. If they get
caught, they try to destroy whoever exposed them, and if that doesn’t work,
they move on to new targets and start over.

My point is that we need a consistent way to refer to people who are dangerous
social predators. It doesn’t matter what the term is, sociopath, psychopath,
ASPD, whatever. What matters is that the term doesn’t get watered down or
confused with other so-called personality disorders which don’t share this
aspect of harm to others. For example, aspergers/autism has absolutely nothing
to do with psychopathy. If the term “psychopath” becomes meaningless, then it
becomes harder to talk about and expose the real predators in our midst. In
other words, the psychopaths win.

~~~
dnomad
You may actually be confusing and conflating several different "disorders."
Certainly it's not clear that psychopaths, sociopaths and ASPD are all just
"dangerous social predators." Some would consider psychopaths and sociopaths
to be polar opposites. This comment lays it out pretty well [1].

> 1\. Psychopaths do not have a conscience (e.g., they do not feel guilt) and
> do not bond or love like most people. Sociopaths do have a conscience,
> albeit a weak one, so they are able to feel some degree of guilt in certain
> situations. However, they usually quickly deflect that guilt and place blame
> on others for causing to do whatever they feel guilty about. Sociopaths are
> capable of love but it is usually a very dysfunctional form of love/bonding.

> 2\. Psychopaths tend to not take a lot things personally. They don't care if
> you don't like them. They are usually egotistical, though, so if you attack
> them personally, they will feel anger but not other forms of emotional
> hurt/wounding. Sociopaths will feel both and tend to take everything very
> personally, even stuff that isn't meant to be.

> 3\. High-functioning psychopaths tend to think things through and plan their
> actions/steps in a logical manner without emotions coming into play. Their
> thinking is very organized and it is about reaching whatever goal they have.
> If they hurt you in the process, well, that is because you were most likely
> an obstacle and you got run over for being in the way, but not because it
> was personal. Psychopaths typically inflict pain because it's a means to an
> end, not because they enjoy it.

> 4\. Sociopaths are basically the opposite: they tend to be very disorganized
> in their thinking and planning because they are much more subject to certain
> emotions such as vanity/narcissism, anger and jealously. If you get in their
> way, they will inflict pain to eliminate you, but will also likely enjoy it.
> Sociopaths will often seek to inflict pain because they enjoy inflicting it
> (psychopaths don't get that kind of rush) but will often feel mixed with
> their anger or violence a tinge of guilt, which their narcissism will
> require them to deflect as being caused by others (think of the killer who
> does something to their victims to show regret or respect, such as posing
> them in a certain manner. It doesn't mean they regret their actions, only
> that they regret that they were forced by someone or society to kill).

> 5\. Most sociopaths end up in jail and have lower than average IQs. Most
> high functioning psychopaths don't and end up in jobs that require turning
> down one's emotional reactions, such as a trauma surgeon, butcher or CEO.

[1]
[https://www.thecut.com/_pages/cjkmuv88b00500xy6u0morj7n@publ...](https://www.thecut.com/_pages/cjkmuv88b00500xy6u0morj7n@published.html?commentId=5f3287c1-dbb9-4d23-9436-7a2db3dcd0f7#comments)

