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China Elevator Stories
The One Kind of Person You Don't Want to Encounter At Night
Machiavellians are the most dangerous kind of people you can encounter.
26/05/2025
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
Machiavellians are among the worst kinds of people we can encounter as normal human beings. If you think a Machiavellian looks like a dangerous monster, you may be mistaken. Some look harmless, act harmless (in the beginning), and are social, nice, and seem like kind and generous people—not like a cruel, conscienceless person at all.
That’s why it’s hard to protect ourselves. Another reason is that there are so many of them on this earth that protecting ourselves completely is often not possible either.
Most people wouldn’t know they are dealing with a lot of Machiavellians daily. The Machiavellians I have encountered are all narcissists; some were sociopaths, and some were psychopaths. When you encounter someone with a personality disorder, it’s common for personality disorders within one person to overlap. So you may meet a psychopath who is Machiavellian, who also has sociopathic traits.
If you have encountered a lot of Machiavellians in your life, you may be more apt at making them out as a threat and a person you wouldn’t want to be around.
In the dark triad, Machiavellians are the most cruel of all people (the dark triad consists of narcissists, psychopaths and Machiavellians). They are only in it for their own gain, with no regard for another person’s rights, needs, survival, life, etc.
Though they may appear to have a conscience, and though many have learned good behavior in public, if you spend a little more time with them, you may experience their conscienceless and cruel behavior. They are usually sadistic and can’t always act kindly or as though they have a conscience, though they can keep up that mask for quite a long time if they are apt at acting in social settings.
Usually, a Machiavellian is either after money, power, or privilege and status.
While we may think all Machiavellians are after money as their first and only goal, not every Machiavellian is. Many lust after money or want to have lots of it, but some are also much more into power than they are into money and don’t care about money that much at all. Others are more into privilege and status. We may misdiagnose someone as not being Machiavellian, though they carry all the traits of the dark triad, if we think they are only after money, though they may be after something else, such as privilege and status.
Machiavellians are the most dangerous people to date, and I have encountered many men who were Machiavellian. Many women are Machiavellian as well, and some may be criminal, but with regards to Machiavellian men, those you commonly find in the Machiavellian category are those who threaten you with death (such as if you separate) and those who also take steps to kill you (such as my Chinese ex-husband), which is more commonly seen in men than in women, as far as I know.
Some of the traits of Machiavellians are:
They are manipulative. This manipulativeness shows in egotistic, selfish behavior, where other people’s needs aren’t considered, but only one’s own.
They may be so paranoid that they will treat you as the enemy that you aren’t (now, if you were gaslit into believing a person who isn’t dangerous to you is dangerous to you, you’re innocent—we’re only talking about those who weren’t gaslit but think this way with regards to anyone). They usually project their own traits of callousness and being dangerous onto others. They don’t trust in the good of people (those who are good), and even if a person has proven to be good and harmless, they will treat you like a person who is constantly thinking about doing evil, dangerous things to others. They may constantly accuse you of having cruel, manipulative thoughts, of being selfish, of only thinking of yourself selfishly. Usually, that’s what they are doing, but they are projecting this trait onto you and then often try to “put you out first.” They may try to have you killed if you talk about their abuse, or they’ll report you to the police for the things they have actually done to you, thinking that you’ll get them into prison if they don’t report you to the police first. Other kinds of paranoia exist as well. You’ll constantly be hearing some kind of paranoid stories about yourself, where you’re an extremely evil, dangerous, criminal woman. Now, if you aren’t a narcissist, Machiavellian, psychopath, etc., this is completely off, and it will put you into a position where you constantly have to justify your actions as having no evil intentions.
They like to deceive others. They aren’t usually working for the highest good of all involved; they are only working for their own selfish gains. They aren’t just lying from time to time (such as using a white lie); they usually lie so frequently your head will feel like mashed potatoes trying to figure out which sentence they say is the truth and which one is a lie.
They don’t adhere to normal rules, laws, and regulations that are meant to keep normal human beings safe and alive. They may care about not being found out or not being put into prison, but they won’t care if their behavior affects others or could lead to the death of another person. They are conscienceless and don’t feel regret when they are stealing from others, destroying other people’s lives, taking away children from their mother to grow up without a mother (such as in the case of a Machiavellian grandmother), or when they are killing others. Killing others actually makes them feel good and powerful (in the case of Machiavellian dictators such as Adolf Hitler).
They think only in terms of enemies. They may consider certain people to be good, but usually won’t be thinking this about the other person long-term, or they may be thinking someone is good in the beginning but later consider this person to be their enemy. If you’re actually a good person, they will paint you as the enemy, think you actually are their enemy, and anyone who may become dangerous to them in terms of bringing the truth about their abuse to light, for example, will be persecuted until they are either in prison or dead. For truth tellers, this is horrific, because we sometimes simply speak our mind without thinking much about lying about the truth.
They don’t usually help others for the sake of helping others. They only help others to gain something from them. This may be either helping so the other person will need to pay them back later, or helping to keep people around, since most people wouldn’t usually stay in the vicinity of a very abusive person (all Machiavellians I know are highly abusive) if they were abusive all the time. People stay in the vicinity of abusive people because they are usually love-bombed by that person in between episodes of horrific treatment and abuse, or because they aren’t able to leave a situation (once they have been able to see through the Machiavellian person’s motives and aren’t willing to keep this person in their life). Some don’t help other people at all. They think people should all be out for themselves in our society and that other people don’t need help. If they do help, you’ll have to pay them back horrifically. They usually only help with strings attached and may later demand that you now sleep with them regularly because they helped you one time, that you give them access to your home, let them live with you, let them abuse you horrifically on a daily basis, that you give them all your belongings and money, etc. Many aren’t mentally very healthy, but can seem so in the beginning.
Have you ever met a person who was Machiavellian?