“Rude & racist are not the same”

I’d agree with you if they we’re both over 30 when it started. But she was 21 when they met and he was in a mentorship position over her during a competition that would determine if she became famous for a music career. Not saying it absolutely can’t have been a healthily developed relationship, but I am saying there…

Even if the Joker were real, I’d find Shkreli more odious than the Joker. I realize the Joker is a cruel and depraved mass murderer, but somehow Shkreli is worse.

Yeah, it’s a really strange disorder (that I managed to misspell, because tired brain). Some theories about it are pretty stupid, and ascribe it to women wanting an ultimate “alpha male”, but the most convincing explanations are definitely rooted in a combination of poor self-esteem, poor relationship skills, and a…

Women are especially adept at turning crumbs into an imaginary banquet, but that was really something else.

Thank you for teaching me the term hybristophelia.
I’ve been scrolling through her twitter feed and it’s... painful. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Particularly telling is that when asked about his history of price gouging she responds “I wasn’t in his life when that happened” as though the power of her…

In a weird way though, I find this so much more strange and hard to understand than women who get obsessed with serial killers. Like, those women are obviously very deranged, but I can see the thread to the twisted sort of titillation that would lead someone there. I cannot see the thread to being titillated by…

Later, when she showed Shkreli an essay she wrote about him for a class at Columbia—about how adept he was at manipulating reporters—he encouraged her to write a book about him. Despite being aware on some level of how fraught their relationship had become, Smythe, whose childhood dream it was to be a published…

The “psycho killer groupie” stereotype didn’t come from nowhere.

she says, “That’s sweet,” quietly, not convincingly

On that first point, the part that made me breaky out and scream at the screen was where Smythe explained that she wanted the public to understand that Shkreli’s villainy was just a public mask. The way you get a villaneous public mask is if you behave like a villain in public. Which is usually the requirement for…

No. Shkreli’s own lawyers referred to a fiancee when they petitioned to get him out of prison this spring. (And Elle almost certainly would require some kind of proof that she’s not just fully inventing it.)

That’s EXACTLY what this is.

It’s possible she is having a complete break with reality, and it is more possible that she has exaggerated in her own mind certain aspects of the relationship. But the simplest explanation, to me, is that a manipulative asshole who is in jail for fraud saw someone he could manipulate to his own ends, i.e. receiving…

Yeah, at the very least, they do not seem to be on the same page about planning a future together.

This suggests that — at least now — it may be not at all mutual.

Is it at all possible that the whole “planning a future together” thing (and perhaps even the “sharing a kiss” thing) was all in Smythe’s imagination? I’m not trying to defend Shkreli, but even assholes (especially famous assholes) can have stalkers. And even journalists can turn into stalkers.

This is, honestly, just classic hybristophelia. She “sees the real him”; she is involved with someone who cannot currently cheat on her, but she doesn’t need to actually do difficult relationship work; she’s the only one he really cares about, &etc...it’s sad, but really not that unusual.

There’s so much to unpack in that article.

Pretty sure this is one of those relationships that happen when you romanticize the joker and harley quinn.