What kind of people allow themselves to become a narcissist's 'flying monkeys'?

The narcissist is akin to the drug pusher. The flying monkey is akin to someone who hooks up with the drug pusher to score.

• Flying monkeys think like narcissists (splitting black and white, exaggerations, never letting the truth get in the way of a good story, painting twisted stories and interpretations, word salad for thoughts)

• Flying monkeys are addicted to the same emotional states as narcissists (the epic mindset, drama, crazymaking, chaos for emotions, excruciating boredom, black dog, love-bombing highs, sadism, schadenfreude, malicious envy, they’re haters) 

• Flying monkeys suffer the same character deficits as narcissists (low compassion, low truthfulness, low conscientiousness, callousness for character) 

• Flying monkeys are as twisted as narcissists (compassion for the narcissist, rapist, murderer, thug, and conveniently forget about the victim or their family, dark empathy, dark triad type personality characteristics for moral values. 

But there is one difference between flying monkeys and narcissists. Narcissists know how to obtain what they both seek, flying monkeys don’t. Narcissists are in direct communion with the realm that flying monkeys only fleetingly receive but crave.

So narcissists have better imaginations than flying monkeys to invent clever stories that paint a delightfully twisted morality, more chutzpah to violate boundaries that flying monkeys wished they had, and more violently high and low emotional states that drive them to action.

Flying monkeys admire and envy narcissists because they look up to them. They don’t see narcissism as a bad thing. In fact they don’t see narcissism the way we see it at all, they see it as a package with good traits they wished they themselves had. The drama that narcissists create are works of art to the flying monkeys, highly entertaining distractions that offset their own sordid and dull lives. Narcissists are often the centerpiece in their gossip and tales. Of course, they don’t call them narcissists, more like heroes.

Narcissists are like the novelist, director, artist. Flying monkeys are like their eager fans hungering for the next book, movie, or artwork. They can’t get enough of it because the work speaks to them like nothing else does, but they cannot produce any of it themselves. Actually flying monkeys produce abuse and twisted gaslighting in their daily lives, they just do not produce works of art of the caliber of their adored narcissist. Narcissists create the smut that flying monkeys consume. In return, flying monkeys pay obeisance.

Narcissists are like the powerfully delusional cult leader. Flying monkeys are like their delusional followers. Only someone capable of a sufficient degree of the right kind of delusion would find that cult’s doctrines enticing, otherwise, they would simply find it disturbing, twisted, or repulsive.

Only people who don’t find the things narcissists say or do disturbing, crooked, or repellant can stand them.

Being fooled by a narcissist and getting roped into their schemes to support their agendas and campaigns to ruin others for a season or two doesn’t count, it doesn’t make you a flying monkey. Narcissists are good at fooling others, and so all naive people will initially believe the narcissist is the hero, the good person, the injured party. We all have to go through the same thing to eventually learn about narcissists and their ways.

What makes someone a flying monkey is someone who sticks with the narcissist’s story despite evidence to the contrary, and manages to do so for a protracted period of time. The flying monkey agrees with the narcissist on a fundamental level, their core is similar to the narcissist. They agree with the tendencies of the narcissist, the compulsions, and most importantly the justification philosophies of the narcissist. 

They agree with the ruin they see the narcissist wreak, they agree with the narcissist’s justifications for bringing ruin to others, and they agree with the narcissist that despite all that, the narcissist is still the hero and the victim, not the villain.

If someone can keep that up for years, through watching the narcissist keep ruining and ruining, they really have to be a flying monkey, because only someone with no heart can keep that up for so long.

Veronica Welles