Thread by @fozmeadows

This is an excellent thread

I’d also like to add that, in my experience of this type of person, one of the most important things to look for are the circumstances under which they accept responsibility for their mistakes.

Performative responsibility is when someone goes out of their way to tell people uninvolved in the original issue/error how sorry they are and how bad they feel, while never having expressed these sentiments sincerely to the people they actually hurt -

- or, if they do apologise, they make the apology all about their own feelings, to the point where they’re effectively guilt-tripping the other party for making THEM feel bad.

But otherwise? They don’t apologise, because there’s always a reason why they shouldn’t have to; why it wasn’t really their fault, or someone else was to blame, or they were being “hurt” by someone else in such a way as to void their responsibility and redirect sympathy.

This lack of personal responsibility becomes especially pointed in situations where both they AND the other party are at fault, because they will absolve themselves by framing the other party, not just being solely responsible, but as actively cruel to them.

Why? Because it’s the easiest way to ensure that their own failure to accept responsibility isn’t questioned. If the other party has been cast as monstrous, then only a monstrous, victim-blaming person would dare to question their account of things.

As @gaileyfrey said, it’s an exploitation of empathy. Even in cases where the person has managed to convince *themselves* that they’re a victim instead of being wholly cold-blooded, it’s still a manipulative deflection.