Read this: The journalist who covered Martin Shkreli's arrest ended up falling in love with him
Aux Features Martin Shkreli
When hearing about people who got conned into unsavory organizations or relationships—NXIVM, anyone?—it’s easy to pat one’s self on the back for not being susceptible to such manipulation. But a recent Elle article about the budding romance between pharma-douche Martin Shkreli and Christie Smythe—a Brooklyn journalist who wrote about his downfall for Bloomberg—is a reminder that even the most intelligent and self-aware of us can be vulnerable to predatory criminals.
In 2015, Smythe broke the news that Shkreli was under federal investigation for violating security laws, then was more or less on the Shkreli beat for Bloomberg, covering his arrest and eventual court trial. While she was initially skeptical of Shkreli’s motivations and tactics, he began to garner sympathy from her when, during a routine phone call for a comment, he expressed worry for his future and asked her for legal advice.
As remembered by Smythe, everything snowballed from there. In-person meetings led to her writing a book about her subject, followed by a friendship, her journalistic integrity being compromised, a divorce from her husband, her resignation from Bloomberg, and an unconventional romance with Shkreli. The article is filled with twists as bizarre as you’d expect from anything having to do with the pharma-douche saga, such as the aroma of chicken wings in the air when Smythe and Shkreli shared their first kiss during a prison visit and a Tweet of her holding that Wu-Tang Clan album he bought a while back.
What’s most heartbreaking is that, even from early on, Smythe seemed to be aware of Shkreli’s game—how someone can just keep feeding you lies to get what they want. One of her professors for a prestigious journalism fellowship at Columbia remembers how, as early as 2016, she wrote “quite candidly about how [Shkreli] had so successfully drawn her in.” Elsewhere, Smythe describes Shkreli as “toying” with her, and identifies him as someone who likely “trolls because he’s anxious. She adds: “He really, really wants to be somebody.”
And yet, even to this day, she still has feelings for Shkreli, despite him having cut off communication with her after finding out about the Elle article. Stephanie Clifford, who wrote the feature, posits in the final graf that the whole interview may even be a ploy on Smythe’s part to give her more power and recognition in hers and Shkreli’s increasingly strange romance.
Check out the whole thing over at Elle.
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202 Comments
This makes me wonder: is Trump capable of being charming?
overt narcissism has its own weird attractive qualities. human chemistry is weird, wild stuff.
It also attracts others overt narcissists and this is a good example of that. Let’s forego denying this journalist agency and lumping them in with brainwashed cult members.
I mean, the dude is horrible, but he did somehow get married numerous times and pop out some awful spawn. They can’t all be mail-order brides.
“So Debbie, what first attracted you to the millionaire, Paul Daniels.”
I mean, that played a factor to be certain, but I think it’s more than a little cynical to say all of the women in his life were just gold diggers who didn’t care for him. Again, I’m not trying to say he’s a good person or that he’s to be admired or anything, but that just like the Shkreli example this article’s about, he was probably able to charm at least one woman sheerly through charisma.
They can’t all be mail-order brides.No, but they can all be gold diggers.
I’m sure it was his RICH personality and WEALTH of kindness.
People often want people who don’t want them back, which explains Trump’s base. That said, he’s always been charming, the way even a dirtbag saleman can be charming: “he can’t really believe that, so how impressive it is that he really seems to believe that.”
Narrator: It did not in fact explain Trump’s base.
Trump’s aspirational for his base, and Trump famously, obviously hates them on a personal level. I think part of the explanation for Trump’s base is unrequited love. Same with most Republicans, and some Democrats, but Trump’s got the je ne sais. And is still a horrible person.
I agree there’s an aspirational thing here and also that’s he’s a piece of shit and shit president. But the real dyed in the wool full on Trumpers suffer from a surfeit of self esteem (a perfect e.g. is the aspiration) not an insecurity that leads to wanting someone who clearly hates them.
The word I’d use to describe Trump is “sleazy”, which is a word that to my mind always implied a sort of unctuous, ingratiating charm. On one level you know it’s revolting, but on another, you kind of admire the brazenness to act so without decorum.
I’ve been wondering if a big part of Trump’s appeal might be that he’s so bad at concealing what a pathological liar he is that people think of it as a kind of honesty, as opposed to someone who’s actually good at lying and makes a strong effort to make you believe they’re honest.
“He says it how it is”
I vaguely remember one of his exes say he was the best sex she’d ever had, so try to think up that image for the long holiday weekend.
That was from a story in one of the New York tabloids that was planted there by, you guessed it, Donald Trump…
Oh, by his “publicist”, John Barron?
This has Mr. Trump’s…er, Barron’s fingerprints all over it…
Sounds so vague it probably never happened.
That was a NY Post headline attributed to Marla Maples, before she became Mrs. Trump #2, so I’d take it with a HUGE grain of salt.
Granted, all her prior sexual experiences involved one of the Rolling Stones passing out on top of her…
Can you make a comment without JAQing off?
Well, let me tell ya, that Donald Trump might be a charmer, but he ain’t no Martin Shkreli when it comes to the ladies!
He’s not exactly my type but I could see where some terrible person might have found him attractive in his much younger days (like, the 80s) if they could get past the awful hairstyles.
Well it was the 80s, the hair was on point for the decade. Which says a lot about the 80s.
If you didn’t know him and he wanted something from you possibly.
Trump is extremely charming in person. Even his lunatic rants are charming; when he first started running they were weirdly funny and cathartic for a lot of people. “Charming” doesn’t mean “good.”
Early on in his presidency people were telling tales of how he can be quite charming one-on-one, especially when you have something he wants. And it probably worked for him when he was isolated in his Trump Tower office. Of course, the whole world has seen him in action for the last five years and the vast majority of us know better than to fall for his shit anymore.Good luck with all your creditors and the Great State of New York on January 21 Donald.
some women view a man as a weapon, a meat-shield, a cheque-book, arm-candy, you name it, but if Trump falls into (in the opinion of a person who might be what you would think deranged) any of those categories, then yes, to them, he has charms.
There is some oddly alluring affect to Trump’s voice when he simply speaks (versus his complaining voice) and his charisma(dementia?) wholeheartedly embodies the “what happens next?” excitement people crave. He’s like a terrible drug, which is why we’ve all been addicted, knowingly or not.
Of course he is. He’s deeply unpleasant on many levels, but you don’t remain in the public eye for over forty years, become a reality TV star and get elected president if you don’t have at least some charm. It may be a kind of base, narcissistic and superficial charm, but it’s a form of charm.
If you don’t know anything about him, I guess. When he was younger? Yes.
He’s apparently capable of charming 74,216,747 people.
There are numerous accounts of him, in one-on-one settings, of actually being pretty affable. I assume it’s like Shkreli and all sort of some kind of psychotic power dynamic setup, but in person you do hear that he can be almost… charming. Like, he’d ask questions about YOU and YOUR concerns. It seems unbelievable, I know. Of course, that was all before he became president and thought he needed to pretend to care about other people.
I think some people unfortunately associate “screaming at someone so much that they become terrified to disobey you” with power.
Yes yes, true love stems from selling your story as a screenplay. Inspiring stuff.
I mean, people fall in love with serial killers, so…
Exactly what I was thinking.
There’s something intoxicating about the knowledge that “He probably won’t kill me…but he might…”
I think a lot of it is probably also “he probably won’t kill ME, just other people.” It’s like owning a rottweiler, or a gun – having something that you know is dangerous but feel in control of makes you feel powerful. Plus, “he treats all other women as meaningless flesh to be killed and eaten, but he loves me! I must be really special!”
Hybrostophilia is a thing.
Somebody I went to university with fell in love with a serial killer. He ended up killing her. Who knew?
I have questions. Did she know he was a serial killer and then fell in love with him? Or did she fall in love with someone who happened to be a serial killer?
“happened to be a serial killer” really tickles me :)Like, it doesn’t define me, OK? I just do a little bit of serial killing when I’m not studying my true passion, Lepidopterology.
One should never be defined by just one thing! Like how Mitch McConnell is both a sadist *and* a turtle.
That’s like the motorcycle accident of relationships.
Him?
Look at the photo at the top of the article. Who could resist that?
He has the teenage Marv Alpert look. That’s kryptonite to all women.
He just has that face that says “I love to bite women!”
What, is he funny or something?
Just seen a journalist’s screenshot of his first conversation (via text) with Shkreli. Shkreli opens with “u talking shit”, and follows it up with “r u a pussy cause u acting like one right now”. When the journalist says that he personally feels that he isn’t a pussy, but it’s obviously a question open to debate, Shkreli retorts with the Wildean “You most definitely are a bitch”.So… yeah. Regular comedy genius is Martin. You can see how people would be charmed by his incisive wit and articulate erudition.
Christie, I’m sure that Price-Gouging is a very nice person. I just don’t want you spending all your money…
I’m going to assume pharma-douche dosed her with pharmaceuticals.
… or just gave her a peak at his checkbook …
Lots of people might have a peak at his checkbook, but if they peek at his face, the peak would quickly deflate.
*vomits uncontrollably*
Has it been definitively decided exactly when 2020 jumped the shark?
Pretty sure even this doesn’t beat the actual President of the United States of America suggesting on TV that people should inject disinfectant to protect themselves from Covid-19.
Clorox really missed out. They should of raised the price of a gallon of bleach from $1 to $1,000 when Trump announced it was a cure.
We are the country that willingly ate Tide Pods, so it really wasn’t much of a stretch that bleach could be considered medicine.
Or Drawing on a hurricane map with a sharpie… (Was that this year? The movement of time has left me somehow)
*attempting to muster sympathy for a woman who let herself get seduced by Martin Goddamn Shkreli*[SYMPATHY NOT FOUND: PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE]
where’s the anykey?
In principle, people making bad decisions is always heartbreaking. But ultimately she’s an adult, and it was her decision to pursue a career in journalism. (Rimshot)
in a year full of sad, twisted, downright batshit news stories, I don’t know if I’ve read anything else this year that just made me stop and stare up at the ceiling for a while.this woman blew up her whole life for that clown?????
seems like she, too, is a clown.
Fun to remind folks that Shkreli did not go to jail for the thing he is most infamous for – astronomically jacking up the price of live-saving HIV drugs. He went to jail for some run-of-the-mill, almost-boring ponzi scheme type securities fraud. It’s the kind of shit folks get nailed on every so often but they’re boring older dudes in suits so you typically don’t hear about it. That other shit he did that you hate him for – perfectly legal!
As a further indictment of the system, my favorite chapter from this whole weird saga is when he was hauled into Congress to explain why pharmaceutical costs are so high when, if Congress wanted to do something to fix pharma costs, Congress is the one with the power to cap and control costs, it is Congress that has not acted to fix those costs, and Congress is the reason those and other medical costs remain high.
“Why would you jack up the price of medications?!”“Because I could.”“Will you knock it off?”“No.”“We’ve done all we can do!”
bUt mAh AmEriCaN dReAm oF iNfiniTe RiCheS aT aNy cOsT tO sOcieTy!
“He defeated us with his infernal logic!”
“Hey you got any stock tips Shrecki?”
how can they expected to do the right thing when (1) the pharma lobbyists pay SO well and (2) the foundation of conservative politics is “I got mine, fuck you if you’re too weak or unlucky to have gotten yours”?
Please, will no one think of the lobbyists?
He’s not inaccurate, and the inability of the Congress to pass legislation is a huge national issue.
Sorry could you speak up it’s sort of hard to hear anything at the moment….I’m grinding a wu-tang album I bought on Auctions.gov for fifty cents down to powder.
Well yeah.Fundamentally, “being a douchebag” isnt illegal.
The other irony?Uunlike most ponzu schemes where you get caught after it all goes wonky and you cant pay people back, he actually did pay everyone back. And the way he did it was by buying the pharma company and jacking up prices.He literally would have gotten away with it all if he just hadn’t been a douchebag about it.
Maybe she’s just a big Wu Tang Clan fan and is dating him purely to get a chance to listen to their private album that he has!
She did in fact listen to the album.
Turned out it was just a 70 minute sales pitch for Wu Tang Financial.
A quick visit to the Wu Tang name generator tells me that the Onion’s favorite accountz reeceevable supervisa Herbert Kornfeld is now named Authority Goosy.
Hey, you remember Kornfield! I used to love those recurring characters. Kornfield, the slacker Jim Anchower, the sad emotionally abused lower-class housewife Jean Teasdale, etc. You don’t really see any articles “by” them anymore.
“It Was Always About Tha Numbaz”.
It has been a long time since Anchower rapped at ya.
Anchower and Teasdale always left me kind of sad because I sort of knew people who could’ve been them. But Kornfeld was excellent and his office feuds always entertained.
And T. Herman Zweibel, the deranged millionaire publisher emeritus.
I completely forgot about him! He was like if Monty Burns were written by David Lynch.
Herbert Kornfeld has gone to the big accounting office in the sky.https://www.theonion.com/white-on-white-violence-claims-life-of-accounts-receiva-1819569088
Always carry the Letter Opener of Death.
Remember “what’s grosser than gross?” as a kid? … it’s THIS.
Martin Shkreli is the Pete Davidson of the Jack Abramoffs.
Also: Fuck Jack Abramoff
Eww, don’t!
What a dumdum.
“a woman can choose to do something with her life (which does not affect you) that you in no way approve of”Yep and I won’t judge her for it as long as I don’t know about it. As soon as it’s all over the news then I will judge as I please.Also: Dude is a grade A jackass lady, make better choices.
Ah, but if she’s *into* Grade-A jackasses, then he’s Jackpot!
Touche!
“Eva Braun can date whoever she wants!”
so telling that that first thing she does is defend him instead of herself.
Not really, it’s the same thing in this case.
Is saying “He doesn’t drown puppies” really a defense though? lol
“He doesn’t drown puppies! Those dogs were well into adulthood!”
I reject point 1.
He’s really more of a sociopath than a psychopath, but either way he’s a worthless pile of shit.
Concur. He’s not a psychopath, hrs a sociopath. That’s worse.
“It’s none of your business, that’s why I agreed to a lengthy interview!”This woman has a problem.
Exactly! Plus it all sounds really sad. The fact that the article says he is ghosting her now but she still loves him. This lady sounds like she needs some help
Yeah, this gets into a bigger frustration I have with how (some) stories are presented these days. She’s clearly doing this for attention/money (because why the fuck else would you do it), yet seems to think she should be free and clear of any criticism of her actions.While I’m sure there are plenty of dishonest actors at play here, just trying to drag her for being a woman (and they can rightly get fucked), there are also plenty of legitimate complaints about her professional conduct, questions about her decisions, and anger about her defense of an irredeemable monster.
That’s right, he’s not a psychopath.He’s a sociopath. Small difference.
He doesn’t actively try to murder people. He just doesn’t care if they die.
Bravo, that’s perfect!
Reading her counter-arguments (if you can call them that) to people telling her she fell for a classic sociopath… wow. She froze her eggs for him, and he essentially had his lawyer dump her on his behalf in a press release.I hope she is seeing or starts seeing a therapist.
Wow, turning her “fucking-a-legit-psycho-scumbag” into some kind of girlpower moment is some grade A trolling. I guess he’s rubbing off on/in her.
1. FFS, you should know better.2. Yeah, but you should know better.
There are tons of horrible, irredeemable people out there that aren’t psychopaths… the fact that THIS is her first line of defense for him is fascinating/horrifying.She is correct that no one should give a shit what she decides to do with her life, but she’s out of her mind if she thinks I don’t negatively judge people based on the partners they choose.
Looks at photo with the news story: Please Tell me David Tenant will play Shkreli when they get around to making the movie about all this.
Harry Melling already played Shkreli in the Old Guard.
Surely it has to be Jorma Taccone?
If she close enough to kiss him, then she was close enough to punch him. How can anyone resist punching that face? He is somehow a combination of smug middle-schooler and lecherous old man.
Apologies to Jorma Taccone but that’s who should play him.
I imagine their courtship went something like this
Im sorry but I don’t think I could fall in love with someone who purposely Jacks up prices and lets sick people die. Does this woman have no morals? Good thing Hitler isnt still around or she might have a rebound.
Didn’t we all, though?
Bill Hicks had a whole routine on hearing about all the women who wrote love letters to Charles Manson and Ted Bundy and thinking “And I’m not getting laid.”
“All the girls want to know / who’s the cutest boy on Death Row?”
I can’t not star that.
Kids in the Hall references ALWAYS GET A STAR.
You guys aren’t seeing the silver lining of this story: ANYONE is attractive. So if you’re morbidly obese or have zero self-esteem, don’t fret! You too will find a partner, because you’re better than Martin Shkreli, and he found love. And on top of his loathsome qualities as a human being, remember she fell in love with him after his arrest and conviction, while he was in prison. See: anybody will fall in love with anybody else—including you, yes you! So go out there!
No you’re missing the main point is that he’s rich.
The Elle article was fascinating, and maybe I missed it, but they never quite asked Smythe what she thought of the price-gouging. At one point, Smythe said his villainous persona was just “a mask” but…he really did jack up the price of life-saving medicine, for no reason other than profit.That’s not, like, a statement that got misinterpreted or a gesture that wasn’t properly understood. He did an action that was objectively bad, and Smythe never really addresses that, or how she feels about it, or whether or not that was a factor in their courtship.I’m less mystified by the whole potential of it than I am a bit let-down that we didn’t get some more insight into how her cognitive dissonance worked here.
Low/no self esteem.
Sure, we can only assume. Just curious as to how Smythe justifies it! Much the way some people are able to look past the murders someone has committed, I am somewhat morbidly curious as to how she was able to ignore that aspect of his personality. And even more curious how she would respond when confronted with those facts by someone like the author of the Elle profile.
I don’t think anyone with no self-esteem sets up a photo shoot for themselves in designer dresses, like the one she did for the article. In fact, the article indicates that she’s a lot more like Shkreli than you’d expect, in the way she’s angry at publishers and her former employer for not letting her tell her story, and the way she seems to have no empathy for anyone in the story except Shkreli.
Eh, not sure I’d agree with you there. Sometimes people with low self-esteem will do that kind of thing as over-compensation, trying to convince everyone (and themselves) that they are confident and popular and stylish.
You’re right, and I see where you’re coming from, but did you read the Elle article, and see the pictures? Because while the knee-jerk response to situations like this is to say that Smythe must be a victim with low self-esteem taken in by a savvy charmer, the story doesn’t read like that. The part of the story I found most chilling was when he invites her to this event thrown by a Princeton Corporate Finance club, where in her recounting Shkreli is greeted like a hero, and while he goes to the john, she (still married to her husband at this point) entertains the crowd like “a political wife.” And the pics that go with the article aren’t “ugly duckling overcompensating by trying to look glamorous” shots, they’re pictures of someone who wants to present herself to the world as a political wife in waiting, the partner of a great man. And that doesn’t sound like poor self-esteem, at all.
I think that depends, though. Lots of attention-seekers are just people with terrible self-esteem seeking validation from others.Edit: I see you addressed this below, but there doesn’t seem to be a delete button.
She’s been essentially doing a version of “Ask Me Anything” on Twitter since this broke. Here’s are incredibly weaksauce answer
I don’t even know where to start with that. His actions were public knowledge…that she reported on. It’s not hearsay, or a gut feeling. And he wasn’t just a passive enabler on the sidelines, which is a lot easier to justify with the whole “everyone does it” line of reasoning. This guy chose to directly make it harder for sick people to not die. Anyway. Thank you for the additional link!
I was listening to something recently where they talked about how sociopaths/psychopaths can be spotted by their use of words… e.g., Say a guy breaks his wife’s nose during a violent argument. Later he’ll describe the occurrence not as ‘I broke my wife’s nose,’ but as ‘My wife’s nose got broken.’ In that Tweet, notice the words… it’s not “I wasn’t in his life when HE DID THAT,” it’s “I wasn’t in his life when THAT HAPPENED,” as if MS’s deeds were something that someone else fucking did to him.
“Attacking him for it won’t fix the problem.”Will too!
I mean, it certainly isn’t going to make it any worse… and it might make some of his victims feel better.
Her ex husband was in financial services. Her ability to justify professional cruelty isn’t new. She just leveled up to a more famous version of it.
“How can you love Ted Bundy, when you know he murdered all those women?”“Look, a lot of serial killers were operating in that timeframe – he’s certainly not the only one who was doing it. The sadistic murder of women is a pervasive, systemic issue in this country, and attacking Ted for it won’t fix the problem!”
The “attacking him for it won’t fix the problem,” is particularly amusing to me.
It’s not even like he denied it. He came out and said, “There was nothing to stop me jacking up the price, so I did.”
They published a follow-up interview with her, from a friend at ELLE, and her answer is basically: ‘Yeah, it was bad and I didn’t like it’Same answer for him harassing women journalists.And they just let her say that with NO FOLLOWUP QUESTIONS, lmao. You’re telling the world this man isn’t a monster, and then when we tell you how he’s a monster you just shrug and move on…. ffs, this woman is insufferable.
She dumb.
This was the bit that got me:“Mr. Shkreli wishes Ms. Smythe the best of luck in her future endeavors”
He broke up with his prison girlfriend the way WWE announces they’ve fired someone
Regards,Your Former Soulmate
Best regards(FIWY)
“He broke up with his prison girlfriend the way WWE announces they’ve fired someone”
The WWE fires people by taking them off TV tapings a month before their contracts end, quietly removing them from the WWE website and all WWE merchandising, never mentioning them again, and pretending they never worked for the WWE in the first place.
NY Mag did an interview with the article’s author, and it’s fascinating as well:You have this twist at the end, where Shkreli issues a statement totally, coldly repudiating Smythe. What was your reaction to that statement? One of his lawyers called me with that statement, and when she read it to me, I gasped because it seemed so cold. I remember screwing up my face because it seemed calculated to inflict maximum emotional damage on Christie, to upset her. I have to say when I called Christie and told her what the statement was, that was one of those calls where I felt like I was going to break her heart, and I felt terrible.
Or with what write on a good-bye card for someone in the office who leaves three days after you start and haven’t actually met but your boss is making you sign the card anyway.
“I will happily provide a positive reference to an future sexual and/or romantic partners you may wish to pursue.”
$10 says that that’s where he got it from.
A love story for our time (that time being 2020)
I understand some people think Freddy Krueger and Hannibal Lecter are hot as well. To each their morally and empirically wrong own.
So, almost a real life Harley Quinn story?
we REALLY need as a species to revisit and reassess and reconsider the long, hard looks we’ve taken at cult mentality and cultism in general because holy shit, just when I think things couldn’t get weirder or more inexplicable after the last 4 years, stuff like this happens. I know this is almost certainly her problem, but I can’t help thinking if some other susceptible person met him, they’d have the same issue too.
if you think about it, it’s kinda funny in a sick way to watch someone who has joined the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party but hasn’t attended the first party meeting, but is still quite enthused about having joined the party, because what’s the worst that could happen?
Everytime I see this guy, he has a look on his face like he just nailed the neighbors cat.
It’s entirely possible that he did.
He has such a punchable face. I was never a bully growing up, but I would punch him in the face just for the hell of it. Also, I saw Wu Tang in concert while he was in prison.
The world just literally emulated an episode of Batman the Animated Series. What fucking timeline is this?
Yikes.
She ran all the ethical red lights before realizing she fucked up.
Everyone was warning her along the way and she continued down her path. Even her professor in her journalism fellowship at Columbia Shapiro felt that the journalist/source relationship was already muddy, and cautioned Smythe against writing a book on someone “so manipulative.” Smythe remembers Shapiro telling her, “You’re going to ruin your life.”
“even the most intelligent and self-aware of us can be vulnerable to predatory criminals”This makes her sound like a victim and not a consenting adult who also happens to be very, very stupid and have horrible judgement.
“even the most intelligent and self-aware of us can be vulnerable to predatory criminals”This makes her sound like a victim and not a consenting adult who also happens to be very, very stupid and have horrible judgement.
Hard to explain, but I actually feel slightly oilier every time I look at his face.
Hey Charles Manson got married in jail to a 26 year old. The Boston Bomber got a group raging fan girls who deny his guilt. What’s new? Some women love crazy men.
is a reminder that even the most intelligent and self-aware of us can be vulnerable to predatory criminals.
Or… maybe she wasn’t THAT smart in the first place?Maybe 90% of “self-aware” and intelligent ppl aren’t aware or intelligent enough to see their own dumbness?
You think there’s a “1 bride per customer limit?”
What in the name of Harley Quinn…?
Oh lordy, I have such intense second-hand embarrassment just reading about the article. I don’t think I could handle actually reading it. I’m hiding my face in shame just imaging the lurid details.
I might as well resign myself to the fact that he’s gonna be president eventually.
Shkreli’s existence makes me ask the question, where was Donald Trump in July of 1982….and, was he grabbing the pussy of some Albanian beauty pageant contestant and explaining to her that it’s good luck to raw dog an American millionaire?
Now you should see her love ham!
You know when people talk about “relatable content”?This … this is not that.
Most toxic relationship patterns go back to an issue with a parent and I suspect in this case there was a sense of shared outsider status.Women like Smythe want to see a heart of gold in a terrible man because it will prove that their magical love can repair the irredeemable, it will compensate for Dad’s rejection, it will heal an old wound. It may prove that unlike all the women he harassed, she was special and managed to tame him. It sounds like Shkreli triggered something in her that she still doesn’t understand about herself.She reminds me of a couple of otherwise rational people I know who are incapable of accepting that their poor adorable rescue dogs are violent, it’s not the fault of the kid they sent to the hospital or the chihuahua they killed. Those dog owners blame those of us who identify the dog as dangerous for not seeing its true soul. What else could this behavior speak to, if not some old emotional wound?
How self-hating do you have to be to fall in love with that smug turd?
Maybe there’s some truth to the old addage:“You can’t judge a douche until you’ve taken a wash with his nozzle”… No wait… that’s not quite… um. Never mind.
This is so not cash money.
he has the kind of face you wanna punch the second you see it
Gross.
Ew.
Gross.
As someone who was once on the losing side of a toxic relationship with a sociopath, I do feel a bit of empathy and compassion for Christie Smythe. On the other hand, I’ve also been in therapy and done some amount of honest soul-searching to admit that I wasn’t a helpless victim through it all and kind of doomed myself through my own lack of self-awareness and neediness. I’ve no doubt that Smythe’s statement “he’s anxious… and he really, really wants to be somebody” applies just as much to herself as it did to Shkreli. Being in a relationship with a sociopath can be exciting, not just because you get showered with attention but because you can flatter yourself that somehow your relationship is different, deeper and more complex than just a run of the mill b.f. / g.f. “I realized that I had become part of the story” — that’s the moment she drank the Kool-Aid and the lynchpin to it all. She wasn’t a mere faceless financial reporter anymore, she was a player in a major news story! I still do feel sorry for her, but I think her own narcissism shows through a bit as well.
I’ve met women who are always looking for the guy they can “save”…the “fixer upper”.But, the problem in this particular scenario is that Shkreli is the actual devil…a perma-broken, unrepentant scumbag who enjoys, and profits from, the misery of others.
As a former colleague of mine over in New York snarked when she read this, “well, your first clue as to why she wanted to fuck him is that she’s from Brooklyn.” Secondly, he’s got that great American aphrodisiac which any basic Karen or Shonda drops their knickers faster than a Christians morals for: money and power. Let’s face facts here – a great number of us find this man utterly and ridiculously repellent but money and power is a greater and far more effective lubricant than KY jelly. Look at all the great vaginal-desert-makers in American culture, be it Donald Trump or Mark Zuckerberg or those godfuckingawfulwhywon’ttheyfuckingdie Property Brothers – as fucking evil and disgusting as they may be to the vast majority of society, money and power gives them that little bit of Vaseline for the cultural lens. It smoothes out the edges and grafts a bit of gravitas and seductive allure onto their weak chins. And let’s not forget something, you pack of basics. We all know you read Fifty Shades of Shite, sorry, Gray. You want someone morally bankrupt to do unmentionable things to you with a candy cane. You slaaaags.Meanwhile, look at our Prime Minister, Blowjob Johnson. For some fucking reason this fucker has an unknown number of bastard children scampering around London. Women drop their knickers for that. Seriously. That. Shkreli is like a GQ model compared to that trainwreck-in-a-nursery-school of a man. There’s no logic as to why women abandon rationale and logic and fuck these aborted clown foetuses.
Stop dumping on people and call your mom and tell her how much you love her.
I recall my time spent in the corporate world. The most noticeable thing was how the worst sociopath a-holes in the company would invariably have a pretty young woman hanging on their arm like an ornament.
Honestly, the only real surprise to me is that he didn’t already have a trophy “ex-model” girlfriend with an instagram account.
I just got done reading the latest ELLE piece about this, with a follow-up interview of Smythe by a former colleague.All I’ll say is that the follow-up definitely feels like a “Hey, let me try to help you out here” article, complete with a blanket defense against criticism where they imply that criticizing her is somehow sexist. They also let her completely gloss over the most glaring problems with Skreli (What about the insulin price hike? “Oh, I don’t agree with it…” What about him treating women journalists like shit and harassing them “Yeah, I don’t like that he does that”) but letting her go on about how he’s such an intellectual and so easy to talk to blah blah blah.That said, I honestly have no idea why this is even a story. A journalist quit her job because she got too close to her story… good. She acted unprofessionally and probably can’t be trusted to give unbiased accounts about anything going forward, so kudos on making the right move I guess.My biggest takeaway at this point is that I have no interest in reading anything from ELLE ever again. I’m pissed that I have to see Skreli’s face again for any fucking reason, and it’s currently all over the damn place thanks to their shit journalistic practices.
The media and many people in general can’t process that some women genuinely desire self-centered, type-A, cruel, misogynistic assholes. They are wired to find those men “powerful” and it turns them on. Those type of guys know those type of women are out there and can work it. I know a 70 year-old guy, asshole Trumper, fat and out of shape, just pretty gross in general to most people, but he has some money and likes to party. He is still married to his wife, had a live-in girlfriend, cheated on her with two on the side (friends) and eventually hooked up with a liberal woman while still living with the the live in girlfriend. The liberal woman has been with him about two years now. They are all about twenty years younger than him and decent looking too. None are similarly out of shape or generally unappealing. Most are college educated. He is not. All of them knew he’s a cheater, but they all get off on servicing him like some Grandpa/ Daddy fixation. When he cheats on THEM they get all pissed off. He just collects another. Gross.
Most fans of this site are resentful lonely sad sacks so I guess reading this makes you explode.