Self-entitled people suck.
They believe life owes them something in return for nothing. They expect to be rewarded for existing. They view other people as mindless, emotionless automatons who exist for the sole purpose of accommodating their wants and needs.
Self-entitled people are masters of manipulation.
Since their delusional beliefs contradict reality, they use all kinds of tactics and strategies in order to bridge the enormous gap between how the world actually works and how they believe it should work.
They know that showing their true colors hurts their chances of getting what they want so they put up a fake front to gaslight their victims into thinking they are decent people.
Their act is often believable since they’ve been practicing manipulation for a lifetime so they’re are excellently skilled at it.
But make no mistake. A self-entitled individual can turn your life into a living hell so it’s crucial to know how to spot them so that you can either avoid them or cut them off before they ruin your life.
Why You Should Avoid Self-Entitled People
Hell is other people.
― Jean-Paul Sartre
Most of your problems in life will come from other people.
Since you can’t isolate yourself from people and socialization has many benefits, you must be meticulous about the people you take into your life.
There are two types of people:
- Assets
- Liabilities
People who are assets add value to your life while people who are liabilities subtract value.
Self-entitled people are liabilities. All they know is take, take, and take more without bringing anything of value to the table.
Any kind of relationship with a self-entitled individual is a one-sided one where you can’t win. They not only have zero value to offer but they are also hellbent on exploiting value.
Self-entitled people use other people remorselessly. Other people are just tools to get what they want out of life. They don’t care about how much harm or inconvenience they cause to others because they feel entitled to whatever is given to them.
Moreover, self-entitled people are insatiable. They never stop demanding. Even if you get good at denying them what they want, you’ll get tired of saying “no” but they won’t get tired of making demands.
Giving them what they want so that they leave you alone doesn’t work either. They’ll repeatedly come up with novel demands.
Cut Self-Entitled People Off Of Your Life
Of all the thirty-six ways to get out of trouble, the best way is to leave.
— Chinese proverb
After all, entitlement is a big mistake that hurts the self-entitled individual more than it hurts anyone else. But if you aren’t their parent, it’s not your job to save them. Life is already hard enough. Don’t make it harder by paying the price for the mistakes other people make.
Let the self-entitled people pay the price for their own mistakes. If they’re the ones paying the price, they’ll maybe learn to stop being entitled and start earning what they want out of life.
Learn how to spot them and run for the hills if you encounter one.
If you already have self-entitled people in your life, cut them off. Just like a balloon soars when it drops the dead weight, you’ll soar when you cut self-entitled people off of your life.
15 Signs Of A Sense Of Entitlement
Here are the signs of entitlement to look out for:
1. Self-Entitled People Are Parasitic
There are 2 ways people get what they want out of life:
- By earning it
- By exploiting others
A mature individual’s strategy is to earn what they need or want.
A self-entitled individual’s strategy is to exploit others, usually through manipulation.
To spot a self-entitled individual, look for signs of manipulation.
Watch if someone is willing to bring value to the table in exchange for the value they receive.
A fair exchange occurs when an adult brings something of equal value to the table in exchange for the value they get. Self-entitled people take without giving back. They feel entitled to value.
Also, watch for parasitic behavior where they exploit others. They often can’t help but brag about how they screw other people off.
They are often the people who:
- Ask for refunds for the goods and services they impulsively buy,
- Pirate content even when they can afford it,
- Travel the world on their fathers’ dime despite being of adult age,
- Are reluctant to chip in for their part of the bill when they participate in a group activity.
Any type of value exchange where someone is reluctant to reciprocate value should set your alarm bells on.
2. Self-Entitled People Pretend To Be Victims
A common tactic self-entitled people use in order to get what they want is playing the victim card.
It’s simple yet effective: They announce themselves as victims and demand their grievances redressed.
Of course, their victimhood is fake. For example, a self-entitled individual doesn’t necessarily need to be poor to ask for money, handouts, or other favors. Their socioeconomic status doesn’t make the slightest difference because they always demand more no matter how much they already have.
Nothing is enough for a self-entitled individual. There’s no limit to what they think they deserve.
Many self-entitled people come from affluent families or environments. Many of them are employed with high salaries mostly thanks to their affluent connections.
However, it doesn’t matter the slightest if a self-entitled individual is one of the most privileged people in the world. They’ll still have the temerity to shamelessly play the victim card.
This is also why self-entitled people are often drawn to politics. Politics is an arena where resource allocations of massive scale take place.
Normal people don’t care about politics. They vote once in a while and forget about it until the next election. When regular people aren’t looking, many self-entitled people are working in the background to skew the resource allocation in their favor.
Politicians are more likely to grant self-entitled people the privileges and the money they demand because politicians love to spend other people’s money in exchange for votes and whatever else they need in order to be elected or stay in office.
Needless to say, self-entitled people can’t care less about the genuine victims the credibility of whom they tarnish, and the opportunities of whom they usurp.
3. Self-Entitled People Are Ungrateful
Self-entitled people take what’s given to them for granted because, after all, they’re entitled. Since they believe they deserve whatever they get, it’s no surprise they’re ungrateful.
Self-entitled people can temporarily get along with you as long as you give them what they want.
However, give them what they ask of you a thousand times but tell them “no” for once and they’ll hate you.
A self-entitled individual can gleefully squander your money and resources, and spit your face in return.
Don’t ever think you can placate them by giving them what they want. They might temporarily act as if they’re grateful but their charade will last only until you deny them just for once. Parasites don’t respect the people they exploit.
4. Self-Entitled People Love Shortcuts
As we’ve already established, the primary strategy of self-entitled people is to exploit others in order to get what they want or need.
But what about the things they want but can’t be bought, inherited, rented, or stolen; such as a great physique, knowledge, spirituality, attention, and in many cases wealth?
Since the beautiful word “earning” doesn’t exist in their vocabulary, they seek shortcuts.
Self-entitled people can:
- Abuse steroids to quickly build a muscular body,
- Buy pills or other stuff that promise quick fat loss,
- Subscribe to get-rich-quick schemes,
- Use psychedelics for enlightenment and spirituality,
- Create drama out of thin air, cause trouble, and do things that would embarrass a decent individual, just to attract attention,
- Gamble, or play the lottery to attain wealth. (They would remorselessly steal if it wasn’t illegal but they don’t want to go to jail.)
They are also the ones who cut into the line in queues, demand special treatment due to having affluent family members, etc.
Self-entitled people are drawn to shortcuts like moths to a flame.
5. Self-Entitled People Are Impulsive
A self-entitled individual wants everything yesterday. Just as it is with the word “earning”, another beautiful word “patience” doesn’t exist in their vocabulary.
They are the ones who:
- Squander money to buy useless stuff on a whim, only to throw them away after a few days of use and never look at it again,
- Jump on the bandwagon of fads,
- Buy products that are marketed with the line “you deserve the best”,
- Quit their jobs to “follow their passion” or to “go after their dreams.”
Countless examples can be given but you get the point.
6. Self-Entitled People Love To Wallow In Self-Pity
Self-entitled people don’t only believe they’re unique in a flattering way. They also believe their problems and suffering are unique as well.
It’s not uncommon for self-entitled individuals to feel sorry for themselves for run-off-the-mill problems most people have.
They’re too self-absorbed to see that millions of others share the same problems, which in turn blinds them to solutions. They endlessly complain instead of looking for solutions.
Self-entitled people are “unlucky”. “Other people have it easier than them.”
Depression is God’s gift to self-entitled people. Since stress and depression are prevalent in the modern age, self-entitled people use it as a smokescreen so that they can continue to be parasites.
They can declare themselves “depressed” for the slightest inconvenience they encounter. They often receive the compassion they are after because depression is a disease that’s taken very seriously in our times.
Today, there are many people who claim depression isn’t real because of the inordinate number of self-entitled parasites who claim to be depressed; hurting the credibility of genuinely depressed people who need help and compassion.
7. Self-Entitled People Can’t Handle Rejection
A self-entitled individual’s sense of superiority is fake.
Deep down they know they aren’t superior so they go through enormous mental gymnastics to convince themselves of their superiority. They need to do this because without this process they can’t convince themselves that they deserve the best.
But an instance of rejection, however minor, is the anathema that causes this delusion to collapse. This is why they throw tantrums and hissy fits against the person or institution who rejects them.
They are often mistaken to be egoistic for their inability to handle rejection but in reality, they have weak and fragile egos for they’ve never bothered to go through the struggle of cultivating a strong ego.
8. Self-Entitled People Are Incapable Of Empathy
Self-entitled people are only capable of viewing the world from their own center of gravity so they can’t relate to the pains and struggles of others.
If they are genuinely sad about something bad that happened to someone else, they’re only sad if there’s a possibility that the same bad thing can also happen to them.
9. Self-Entitled People Are Immoral
Self-entitled people feel zero shame for lying, cheating, breaking their promises, and being immoral and unethical in general especially if it means they get what they want. They are remorselessly immoral because they believe they deserve whatever they happen to want or need.
The only thing that prevents them from being more immoral is the possibility of getting caught and/or punished. And when they get caught, they’re never sorry they behaved immorally. They are sorry they got caught.
For example, calling them out for their lies won’t make them regret lying or even deter them from lying. It only drives them to cover their lies better next time.
Also, since they lack empathy, they couldn’t care less about the inconvenience their immorality causes to other people.
10. Self-Entitled People Are Vindictive
Inevitably, there’s an enormous gap between what self-entitled people want out of life (everything) and what they actually get.
Since they never take personal responsibility for what they don’t have, they blame others whenever they fail to get what they want.
- They can lash out at their friends or family members for the crime of rejecting their demands or standing in the way between them and what they want,
- They can lash out at you if you don’t promptly answer their calls or reply to their texts,
- They have zero care for the inconvenience they cause to other people but they can hold grudges for decades against people who caused them the slightest of inconveniences.
Self-entitled people have to carefully construct a grandiose self-image where the world revolves around them and they deserve everything they want.
Destroying this delusional self-image is a punishable offense. They lash out. They hate you. They throw tantrums.
If you happen to destroy this self-image (accidentally or not), they will never forgive you because of the inconvenience you caused them.
Now, they’ll have to go through the ordeal of re-constructing the same delusional self-image because that image is necessary as without it they can’t live with themselves.
11. Self-Entitled People Consistently Manufacture Conflict And Drama
There are two reasons why self-entitled people consistently resort to manufacturing conflict and drama:
a) Manufacturing conflict is a strategy to coerce other people into accommodating the self-entitled individual
Most people are conflict-avoidant. Their natural response is to make the conflict go away as soon as possible so that life goes back to normal.
Self-entitled people exploit this conflict avoidance by deliberately manufacturing conflict. Of course, their demands have to be met for the conflict to go away.
The conflict-avoidant victim fends off the conflict by giving the self-entitled individual whatever they want but this is a poor choice to make.
Since the self-entitled individual ends up getting rewarded for creating conflict, this dynamic repeats itself forever unless the exploited victim wises up and refuses to give in to manipulation.
b) Manufacturing drama is a way to attract attention
Self-entitled people rely on other people to survive. They instinctively panic in the face of a lack of attention so they have to regularly attract attention just to feel safe.
They’re unable to merit attention by any type of superior traits (which they don’t have) so they must resort to manufacturing drama.
Since people stop paying attention after the drama eventually fades out, a self-entitled individual has to consistently manufacture drama to keep the attention flowing in.
This dynamic also repeats itself forever as long as manufacturing drama reliably attracts them the attention they crave.
12. Self-Entitled People Hate Self-Entitled People
Ironically, there’s no one a self-entitled individual hates more than another self-entitled individual.
Two self-entitled people can never get along because:
- They are both conditioned to exploit others so they have nothing of value to offer each other,
- Self-entitled people often compete for the same set of resources.
Since strong people avoid self-entitled people and self-entitled people avoid other self-entitled people, self-entitled individuals usually end up settling for doormats as significant others.
Now that they’re left with weak, meek, timid partners and blame others for it, they endlessly complain about their partners as they have zero respect for them, never realizing that they had no other realistic options of better partners.
13. Self-Entitled People Expect To Be Loved Unconditionally
Self-entitled people are subconsciously aware that they can never meet the conditions to be loved so they endlessly complain about how nobody loves them. They always crave the elusive “unconditional love.”
They are actually right when they say “nobody loves me” because nobody really loves self-entitled people. Even their parents secretly resent them.
14. Self-Entitled People Are Envious
Self-entitled people believe they deserve the best so they seethe with envy if someone else has more than they have.
Be careful if you’re successful in their vicinity. Since they are too lazy to raise themselves up to your level, they will try to bring you down.
15. Self-Entitled People Are Solipsistic, Not Selfish
Self-entitled people are dime a dozen. Since they behave as if the world revolves around them, they are often mistaken to be selfish. Hence, selfishness gets a bad rap.
Many people who are terrified by the attitudes of self-entitled people start to believe it’s wrong to be selfish. They mistake solipsism for selfishness.
In fact, what the conventional advice “don’t be selfish” actually means is “don’t be a solipsist” which is tantamount to saying “don’t be self-entitled.”
Selfishness isn’t bad. It’s normal. It’s how we evolved.
Solipsism is normal too… if you’re a child. Kids are solipsists because they can’t “deserve” what they need. They need to be taken care of.
Kids can’t afford to stop to think “do I really deserve what I am asking for?” because kids can’t survive without adults taking care of them.
Normally this kind of solipsistic attitude must be left behind when someone reaches adulthood.
Self-entitled people are, in a way, grown-up children. The older they get, the harder it is for them to mature because maturity requires effort.
Conclusion
As it is with all that is humane, there are degrees to self-entitlement.
Look out for the above signs an individual exhibits. The more items check out, the more self-entitled an individual is.
At the end of the day, those who are harmed the most by entitlement are the self-entitled people themselves. Their lives are wasted after an endless effort to exploit others.
It’s actually easier to fend for yourself than to exploit others but self-entitled people rarely recover from their pathology.
Saving self-entitled people is hard but possible, but why bother? If you’re not their parent it’s not your fault that someone is self-entitled. Neither it’s your responsibility to save them. It’s a lot easier to avoid them so your best bet is to do just that.
If you are a parent and your child is self-entitled, you are probably responsible for their entitlement because self-entitled people are usually the children of parents who spoil them.
If that’s the case, you must probably try to save them from their misery not by placating to their demands but by nudging them in the way of maturing up and becoming self-sufficient. Your job is tough.
If you notice you exhibit some of the signs above in yourself, do your best to correct them. It sucks to be self-entitled but it rocks to be completely self-reliant.
Be sure to read:
- How to Be a Superior Man, Chapter 2: What Makes A Man A Superior Man
- Do You Really Take Responsibility For Your Life?
- 10 Unrealistic Expectations About Life That Will Destroy You
- How Discipline Saves You From Stress, Anxiety, And Depression
- How to Cultivate A Can-Do Attitude Without Being Delusional