That's so specific there has to be a yiddish word for it. IIRC a "schlemiel" is a guy who goes to a fancy dinner and spills his soup, and a "schlamazel" is the guy he spills it on. There has to be a word for somebody who uses scapegoats.
this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
101 points (99.0% liked)
No Stupid Questions
48275 readers
672 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Republican
Asshole?
Deflection: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/deflection
The act of attacking or blaming another person rather than accepting criticism or blame for your own actions: Deflection is a psychological defense mechanism.
Ya definitely deflection, is there a word for people who chronically do this?
I've often thought the word "asshole" fits..
For general purposes yes, but if somebody is looking for the name of a certain kind of cabinet they want more than "furniture".
I don't disagree. But seeing as OP specifically asked for a word, I'm inclined to offer the most specific, most descriptive word I can muster that is germane to what they've described.
IMO, precision of language is paramount when it comes to addressing other people's problematic behavior, because it closes the door on excuses like "it's just a simple misunderstanding" or "that's just their opinion".
The most poignant example I've heard of are from parents that make absolutely certain that their children learn the proper names for their body parts. As in, not "hoo-hah" or "privates" but the actual, unambiguous clinical names. This is a marked improvement than the TV trope of "where on the doll did the bad man touch you".
Ah, yes.. then narcissist is the one.
"Victim blamers" works
Sociopath
Psychopath
Narcissist
All three of those personality disorders could characterize that type of behavior.
They do something wrong but it's never their fault. It's always someone else's fault.
A Narcissist's Prayer
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
I've read something very much like that but it was called something else, like stages of rationalization maybe.
Is this a real thing? It's pretty funny
Oh I can assure you it's real. But it's easy to see, even trump follows (followed - now he doesn't need to anymore) this logic.
Its not funny if you have a pathological narcissist in your vicinity.
Oh yeah. Trump. Thanks
Hm, I have the feeling I said something wrong? In any case, no offense was intended.
It was written by someone called Dayna Craig IIRC.
It's a perfect distillation of narcissist psychology IMO.
Spot on.
I think what she's doing is called externalization. She's not able to recognize and/or tolerate her own internal state and is projecting onto you. Maybe she feels shame for what happened and can't tolerate feeling shame, so she's treating you like you should feel ashamed. All this is arguable though
This was my surmise as well. Could stem from plain emotional immaturity, needn't be full-blown narcissism. It's the reaction of a child who can't process a negative emotion.
Sounds like DARVO
Republican
Reminds me of when we sent a tech out to someone's home to set up a workstation. The wife of the guy getting the workstation backed into his car, and drove off.
After seeing the damage to his car, our tech went to tell the husband, and before he could even say anything the husband said, "my wife hit your car, didn't she?"
It's happened often enough that this guy didn't even need to be told. He knew.
MAGA?
SLAM
💥GOT'EM
I hate how people use this word for everything nowadays, but it could actually be narcissism.
Very much behavior shown by narcissists, as I understand it.
A narcissist would often do it at an unconscious level. But it could also be psychopathy, where the psychopath completely deliberately lies to gain advantage. In the specific case cited by OP, the mom has no rational advantage of her behavior, so it would be narcissism and not psychopathy.
It's also one of my personal triggers because my mom always did this. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume it was unconscious guilty avoidance as opposed to intentionally lying, but still, I could describe the situation accurately back to her and point out what she did that was wrong (we're not talking about a mistake or accident here, I only brought it up if it was an intentional action that hurt other members of my family) she would always have, "but they did this", or "I thought I was helping, excuse me for caring!"
I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume it was unconscious guilty avoidance as opposed to intentionally lying,
As I understand it, that is pretty much the definition of narcissism. Narcissism is defined by an underlying inferiority complex, which gives the narcissist a mental block preventing them from consciously realizing (and acting on) their own imperfections.
Lack of accountability is one of the hallmarks, for sure.
Narcissist
Christ, that's something my SO would do. And then later deny that the event ever occurred.
That's... Not normal. At all.
ex-SO I hope?
It sounds like your mom's a bitch
Darvo? Not really a word but it’s a thing.
Asshole
Trump
And of course Trump = sociopath & psychopath & narcissist.
That's poor emotional regulation/lashing out. Anger issues. Short-tempered, belligerent, possible mental health disorder.
Isn't that the definition of "gaslighting"?
"Gaslighting" is a lie told where the victim knows it is a lie. So could be.
But with one subtlety: If the "liar" is a narcissist, then the "lie" is often believed by the narcissist themselves, making it not a lie as such - since "lie" implies they know it is untrue.
Narcissist. Just ask, what would Trump do? That's narcissism.