My name is Sam Vaknin, I am the author of Malignan Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, and Other Books. I'm also a professor of psychology. The next two lectures are going to deal with very, very touchy and sensitive subjects, subjects that fly in the face of political correctness and taboos. So stay tuned and enjoy the bumpy ride in Sam Vaknin's theme park. I am the last person to invalidate the harrowing experience of victimhood. I was the first person to describe in great detail narcissistic abuse in 1995. Actually, I coined the phrases narcissistic abuse and victims of narcissistic abuse in the same year.  Such victims turn into abusers actually. They are obsessed with power, celebrity, perfection and money. And if it sounds familiar, it's because it's a very good encapsulation of grandiose narcissism. The only way out of victimhood is to assume full personal responsibility. To own your life, your choices and the consequences of the choices you have made.  And should you immediately start owning up to your responsibilities and choices? Yes, you shouldn't spend even one day in a state of victimhood. It's bad for you. Of course, there are many people out there who tell you exactly the opposite while they take your money and love all the way to the bank. So today we're going to try to inject some science into all this. And we start by something called the martyr complex. The martyr complex is an excellent description of these group of individuals online who self-style as empaths. Not to mention super empaths, supernova empaths and other infantile renditions of empaths. Clinically, there's no such thing as an empath. I have said it a million times, but much worse than this. Describing yourself as an empath and then adhering to the ideology of the empath movement of covert narcissists is very bad for your mental health. In psychology, we have something called a martyr complex, also known as the victim complex. It's the feeling of being a martyr and wanting to be a martyr, wanting to be a victim. Seeking out suffering or persecution because it fulfills some psychological need or some desire to avoid responsibility for your actions and choices. Sometimes the martyr complex is used as a gaslight form. It's used to shift the blame onto the victim. When you say to someone, you are a martyr, you are underestimating, devaluing and invalidating their experience as a victim. And we will discuss what is a real victim, what is victimhood and how you exit this state. But there is definitely a group of people who love, adore, desire to be victims. And they feel that they are, when they are persecuted, they are singled out because they are exceptionally in some way. Exceptionally empathic, exceptionally nice people, exceptionally, exceptionally good people, exceptionally able or with outstanding integrity. There was a theologian, Paul Johnson, and he was the first to point out that such beliefs about oneself are signs of mental health pathology. And so willful suffering is one aspect and being emotionally invested in a state of victimhood, being a perpetual victim, a professional victim, deriding the sense of self-worth, self-esteem and self-confidence from being a victim. This, my dears, is sick. And if you are one of these people, you need help. It's a form of masochism combined with narcissism. I've been discussing the schizoid narcissism in previous videos. There's also a variant of masochistic narcissists. Ellen Berger described the masochistic narcissistic elements of asceticism and penance in times gone by. Later on, in the second lecture, we will discuss the Carpman drama triangle. Carpman drama triangle and how it fits into all this. Now, don't misunderstand me. Many abusers are abusing, misusing the martyr complex to shift blame and guilt onto the victims. I said it. And it is known as Darvo, D-A-R-V-O. Deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. So you deny, you attack, then you reverse the rules. It's a manipulation strategy of psychological abusers. They deny that there has been any abuse. Then they attack the victim when the victim tries to hold them accountable or at least to obtain some closure. And then they claim that they, the abusers, were actually the victims and reversing the reality of victim and offender. It's a form of gaslighting. It's not only playing the victim. It's also blaming the victim. And sometimes Darvo leads to self-delusion and these abusers really believe themselves to have been victimized and they act as victims do. And many, and some of the people online who present themselves as victims, they are actually the abusers, but they had convinced themselves. They are in a delusional disorder. They had convinced themselves that they were the victims. And so this is based on psychologist Jennifer Frieds, F-R-E-Y-D. And she was the first to explain Darvo as a part of gaslighting. And she wrote, I have observed that actual abusers threaten, bully and make a nightmare for anyone who holds them accountable or asks them to change their abusive behavior. This attack intended to chill and terrify, typically includes threats of lawsuits, overt and covert attacks on the whistleblower's credibility and so on. The attack will often take the form of focusing on ridiculing the person who attempts to hold the offender accountable. The offender rapidly creates the impression that the abuser is the wronged one, while the victim or concerned observer is the offender. Figure and ground are completely reversed. The offender is on the offence, and the person attempting to hold the offender accountable is put on the defense. And this calls for a clarification of what it is to be a victim. How do we define a victim? So, of course, intuitively, the first thing we do is we go to criminology and criminal law. And there, the victim of a crime is an identifiable person who has been harmed individually and directly by a perpetrator, not by society at large, not by an institution, but by a perpetrator. This is the classic definition of victim. Now, starting in the 60s and later, we had expanded this definition, and now someone who has been harmed by an institution, by society, by a group or collective and so on, they are also victims. But it started with one-on-one relationships. Victimology is the study of victimization, including, of course, psychological effects on victims and relationships between victims and offenders. And these relationships are very, very complex. They're not simple morality plays. Someone is all good and someone is all bad. When you go online and you see the victim movements, including above all the empath movement, casting themselves as all good and the victim and the offender or the abuser is all bad, that is splitting. That is an infantile defense mechanism, which is very typical of narcissists, actually. So no one is all good or all bad and no relationship is unidirectional. There's always feedback. There are always complexities which accumulate over time. There are various theories of how victims are created. There's the environmental theory. There is even something called victim facilitation. Victim facilitation says that some people are prone to become victims. I'm referring you to the writings by Marvin Wolfgang. Marvin Wolfgang, yeah, the right name. He suggested that victim facilitation was a subspecies of victim proneness. And it's not blaming the victim. It's rather the interactions of the victim that make them vulnerable to being victimized. It seems that their behavioral modalities, their behavioral modes, choices they typically make or are prone to make render them more victimizable than most people. And Wolfgang and others call for the study of external elements that make the victim more accessible or vulnerable to an attack. There's an article by Schneider and he uses victim facilitation as a model to describe the misinterpretation by offenders. Offenders misinterpret victim behavior. Sometimes part of the victimization is because of miscommunication. And the miscommunication is, of course, heavily influenced by the abusers, psychological makeup and mental health problems. No question about it. But it's still a question of miscommunication. There's no bad intention or malice involved in a minority of cases. The majority of cases, the abusers are actually malicious and or end or goal oriented. So you see that the field is very, very rich. And there are various angles. For example, there's been a very controversial concept called the penal couple. The penal couple is a relationship between perpetrator and victim. Both of them are involved in the event. The penal couple as a phrase was invented in 1963 and many sociologists are using it right now. It essentially says that when the crime, I'm quoting, when a crime takes place, it has two partners. One is the offender and the second is the victim who is providing an opportunity to the criminal to commit in committing the crime. So the victim is a kind of participant in the penal couple. He bears what they call functional responsibility for the crime. And of course, it could be construed as blaming the victim. I personally don't agree with the penal couple approach at all. I think it's a very dangerous, slippery slope which could lead us to justifying abuse. Abuse is always reprehensible, vile and should be punished extremely severely, extricated and eliminated. End of story. That's my position. But I just want to show you that there are many, many ways of looking at interactions that on the face of it appear to be very simple. So here's a reading assignment and we move on to the topic itself. Manfred de Vries and Ketz, they wrote an article, Are you a victim of the victim syndrome? It was published in Mindful Leadership Coaching in London by Insead Pugrave McMillan. Sykes in 1992 wrote an article, A Nation of Victims, the Decay of American Character, was published by St. Martin's Press in New York. Koiko, C-O-I-C-A-U-D Koiko Jean-Marc in 2016 published Victim Mentality and Violence and Atomic of a Relationship, and it's in the book Rethinking Security in the 21st Century, a reader published again by Pugrave McMillan. Scott Barry Kaufman published The Unraveling of the Mindset of Victimhood in Scientific American. William de Lint wrote Narrating Injustice Survival, Self-Medication by Victims of Crime, published by Springer. In previous lectures, I have mentioned a very new study just published, I think in March 2020, and the title, it was published in the academic journal, Personality and Individual Difference. The study was titled, The Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood, the Personality Construct and its Consequences. It was co-authored by a group of OWLs, Israelis, Rahaf Gabbai, Boaz Amiri, Tami, Rubel Lipschitz and Aria Nadler. And they suggested a new personality construct, and they said that this personality construct, which is stable across the lifespan, starts in childhood, engendered by childhood experiences, childhood attachments, childhood bonding, childhood relationships, object relationships, but persists throughout life. So this new personality construct describes people who persistently see themselves as victims within interpersonal conflicts. These people tend to ruminate over slides, insults, abuse, and persistently paint themselves as victims. The authors say that this feeling of being constantly a victim is a novel personality construct. It influences how people make sense of the world around them. They call it the Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood, or TIV. And they define TIV as an ongoing feeling that the self is a victim, and this feeling is generalized across many kinds of relationships. They say there are four dimensions to Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood. Moral elitism, a lack of empathy, a lack of empathy, the need for recognition, all these three narcissistic traits and rumination. So someone with Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood, someone who would consider himself a victim in a variety of settings and relationships, this person is in all probability highly, highly narcissistic and also ruminative as elements of rumination. They say that this Tendency for Victimhood is linked to anxious attachment, feeling insecure in relationships. They suggest that this personality trait is rooted in early relationships with caregivers, caregivers, as I said. They found that it was a series of studies, by the way, not one, I think four. They found that people who scored higher on TIV were people who regarded themselves as victims. They were more likely to desire revenge against the person who had wrung them in their eyes. In study number four, this desire for revenge translated into behavior. So these high on TIV, the people who regard themselves as perpetual eternal victims were more likely to steal, to remove money from the opponent when given the chance, despite being told that this decision would not increase their own welfare, their own winnings. So just for spite, to spite the perceived abuser. And participants high on TIV reported experiencing more intense negative emotions and higher entitlement to more immoral behavior, exactly narcissists. And so the revenge process seems to unfold in the following way I'm quoting from the study. The higher the participants TIV, the more they consider themselves to be victims. The more they experience negative emotions and felt entitled to behave immorally. However, only the experience of negative emotions predicted behavioral revenge. Deeply rooted in the relationship with primary caregivers, this tendency affects how individuals feel, think and behave in what they perceive as hurtful situations throughout their lives. Before we go into carpments, drama triangle, victim mentality and all the recent discoveries that were made over the past two or three decades about victims and victimhood, many of these discoveries you're not going to like disclaimer. If you consider yourself to be a victim, let alone an empath, you're not going to like this because only a grandiose narcissistic and title defenses are going to be provoked and triggered. But this is the state of the art. That's what we know today. That's what we teach in universities. This is the psychology. Take it or leave it. Most of you leave it as I see. Because when I go online and I read your posts and so on, they have nothing to do with either reality or psychology. So before we go there, before we go there and I'm accused of victim shaming and victim blaming, I would like to talk about what is victim blaming? Victim blaming is when the victim of abuse, a crime, any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them, that happened to them. Now, you notice that the definition is neutral. They don't say if when the victim is wrongly accused of being partly responsible. They say whenever the victim is held entirely or partially at fault, that's victim blaming. Whether this is correct, whether this is incorrect. Sometimes the victim did contribute to his or her victimization. Sometimes, very often actually, he or she didn't. But whenever there is a hint that the victim is responsible somehow, it's called victim somehow or to some extent. It's called victim blaming. So there is a prejudice against victims. We don't want to believe that people are evil. We don't want to believe that there are monsters out there. Abusers, narcissists, psychopaths, people with no empathy, no emotions. We don't want to believe this. It's too threatening. It's too threatening. So we are trying to find mitigating circumstances in the abuse and the crime. You provoked him. You made it happen. You misbehaved. You must have done something. People are good. People don't react with abuse. People don't commit crimes and so on unless they are somehow provoked or couldn't help it. We're trying, this is malignant optimism. You know, so there's a prejudice, very strong prejudice against victim. And there is always the perception, the assumption that victims are somehow responsible for the actions of offenders. And this is bad. This is wrong. This is reprehensible. This should be rooted out. Victims are never to blame. Never to blame for what had happened to them as long as they are really victims. There are, however, sometimes a contributing factor. Sometimes they are responsible partly to what had happened to them. We'll come to it when we discuss the ideal victim. So there's a difference between blaming the victim, shaming the victim, holding the victim guilty and realizing that victim behavior contributes to abuse and crime. The second statement is accurate 100%. And so when we look at studies of domestic violence or more poignantly sex crimes, there's always a tendency to blame the victims of rape, the victims of domestic violence, the victim of domestic abuse. And this is partly gender, a form of gender bias because most of the victims of these crimes are women. And partly because these crimes are so heinous and they take place in familiar settings. They take place in families. They take place in hotel rooms. They take place in departments. And we are terrified to think that evil can invade these spaces because they are our own spaces. They are our comfort zones. We don't want to think that horrible things can happen in families or in someone's apartment. It's too much to contemplate. You can be mobbed in a dark alley. That's okay. But to be raped in your best friend's apartment by your best friend, that's inconceivable. So we blame the victim. Psychologist William Ryan coined the phrase blaming the victim in a book titled Blaming the Victim in 1971.  This is an example of blaming the victim. However, you should never blame the victim. You should never shame the victim. The victim is never guilty for being a victim. But victim behavior can be a contributing factor to the emergence of abuse and crime.   But would you say that you are not a contributing factor to the crime? Of course you are. You'll be leaving the car keys in the car is unwise.  And then you get raped.  Rape is a crime.  I agree fully. But would you really deny that you had a hand in what had happened to you? Of course you did. You were a contributing factor. The opposite side of abuse, the completion of crime, the yin of the yang is lack of wisdom, unwise behavior.  So many victims behave in ways and make choices that facilitate the crime, bring on the abuse. Now that does not detract an inch from the culpability of the abuser and the criminal. They should be punished as severely as the law allows. But it would be counterproductive for the victim to ignore her own misbehavior, her own contributions, her own bad choices, her own wrong decisions in the process. Because growing up, personal development and growth depend crucially on learning. And there's no learning by denying responsibility. There's no learning by not owning up to your wrong choices, bad decisions, stupidity, misbehavior. You need to face your contribution to what had happened to you. And if you deny that you have had any contribution, that is number one, counterfactual against the facts. It's not true. Simply, it's a lie. And number two, it's bad for you. Simply bad for you. And so in the 1980s, there was this concept of ideal victims. And at the time they gave two examples. An old woman who is attacked on her way home from visiting her family. That's an ideal victim. She couldn't have predicted it. She couldn't have done anything to prevent it. She doesn't know her attacker. That's an ideal victim. And a man who is attacked at a bar by someone he knows. That's not an ideal victim. He went to a bar, he's an associated with someone, and you could expect such things to happen. So an ideal victim goes hand in hand also with an ideal perpetrator. The ideal perpetrator doesn't know the victim. And he's a completely non-sympathetic figure, a monster, subhuman, individual lacking in morals, kind of an abstract concept because there's no such perpetrator or abuser. So we have this ideal victim and ideal perpetrator and we measure everything in comparison to ideal victim and ideal perpetrator. And here's the problem. Intimate partner abuse, intimate partner violence are never ideal because to start with the two people know each other. Number two, they have options which they decline to adopt. Number three, they make choices. Number four, they make decisions. Number five, they stay. Number six, the communication often provokes the abuse. Number seven, they are fully aware, they are full information. This is not an ideal victim. Arguably, it's not a victim, but the abuse is there and abuse is always condemnable and reprehensible. It's just that the victim role is badly defined. The problem when we treat victims and offenders simplistically is that we don't get it right. We get the dynamics wrong. So we can't stop it from happening and we can't help either the abuser who has his own mental health problems and the victim. Roy Baumeister, one of the most preeminent psychologists of the day and an expert on narcissism, is a social psychologist and a personality psychologist. He said that blaming the victim is not necessarily always fallacious. He was very brave to have said it. It was a very courageous act on his part. He argued that showing the victim's possible role in an altercation or abuse may be contrary to typical explanations of violence and cruelty which incorporate the trope of the innocent victim. He said no victim is innocent. According to Baumeister, in the classic telling of the myth of pure evil, the innocent, well-meaning victims are going about their business when they are suddenly assaulted by wicked malicious evil doers. Baumeister describes the situation as a possible distortion by both the perpetrator and the victim. The perpetrator minimizes the offense while the victim maximizes the offense. And so the accounts of the incident are not objective. The account of abuse are not objective. The victim tries to pretend that she could not have done anything differently. She was just walking on her way, getting about her business, and suddenly, unbeknownst to her, with no forewarning or disclaimer or advance notice, she was suddenly attacked, suddenly abused, which is absolute, unmitigated nonsense. And the perpetrator presented as nothing serious. He didn't mean to abuse. She misperceived the abuse. He is the victim. He was just reacting, reactive abuse. So both of them, one is minimizing, one is maximizing, and both of them deny the true nature of a typical abusive interaction. And in a typical abusive interaction, the victim makes choices and decisions which are an integral part of the abuse process. Baumeister refers to the common behavior of the aggressor seeing themselves as more of the victim than the abused, justifying a horrific act by way of moral complexity. This usually stems from excessive sensitivity to insults, which he finds as a consistent pattern in abusive husbands, for example. The abuse the perpetrator administers is excessive compared to the acts they claim to have provoked them. That is Baumeister. What about victim mentality? Victim mentality is actually a personality trait. It's when people tend to recognize or consider themselves as victim, victims, all the time. Victims of negative actions of others, negative intentions of others. So they are self-victimizing. These people are self-victimizing. They walk around, they are hyper-vigilant, and they scan the world. Is this guy about to victimize me? Is this person about to insult me? Is this woman going to steal my money? I mean, they are looking to be victimized. They are looking to reinterpret and reframe other people's actions and speech acts as a form of victimization. And they behave as if this were the case, even when they are presented with evidence to the contrary, or with evidence that people acted because of circumstances, or with evidence that people had acted with no collection to them, they still regard themselves as victim. So there is a clear cognitive bias here. A thought process which is skewed and problematic and wrong divorces the victim from the from reality testing. And there is a problem of attribution, which we will come to in a bit later. Now everyone, every human being alive has been subjected, had been subjected to abuse, had been insulted, had been mistreated, had lost things. I mean, everyone had been victimized. Every single human being who had ever lived had experienced being victimized. So even people with victim mentality probably had been victimized. They probably had been exposed to wrongdoing by others. They probably had suffered misfortune through no fault of their own. But the difference between regular people and people with victim mentality is that victimhood is the organizing and explanatory principle. It's a pervasive, it's pervasive and universal. So they interpret the world, they imbue their lives and the world and reality and other people with meaning, with direction, with purpose, by interpreting everything in terms of victimhood. Victimhood is the way they understand the world, and victimhood is the way they communicate to others. Victimhood is, in other words, an identity dimension. It's what defines them. They constantly or frequently perceive themselves as victims. And this is victim mentality. It's a tendency to blame your misfortunes, defeats, failures on someone else's misdeeds. And this is victimism. It's known as victimism or in Freud's terms, alloplastic defenses. Alloplastic defenses are very common. For example, in narcissism, the narcissism is always a victim. He has an external locus of control. People do things to him because they're envious. He's been discriminated against, he's been demoted, he's been insulted, he's been humiliated, everything.  He has alloplastic defenses. If things go wrong, if he had failed, if he did something wrong, I mean, it's not his fault. He was forced to do this, or he was led to do this, or he was misled to do this. This is victim mentality. In the most general sense, a victim is anyone who experiences injury, loss, misfortune. As a result of events or some series of events, these events can be impersonal. You can be a victim of natural disaster. But when you're a victim of another individual, that's when the classic sense of victimhood kicks in. But even if you had been victimized by a specific abuser and so on, if you think of yourself as a victim, that's not healthy. That is wrong. That is sick. It retards your growth. It's unhealthy for you. It will make you very ill mentally.  The longer you're in a state of victimhood, the more you pay for seminars and DVDs and retreats and lectures and books and I don't know what else, and counseling and so on. They want you to remain victims for as long as possible. They don't care about your mental health. They care about your wallets. They care to empty your wallets, to be more precise. And you're blind because you want to feel like victims.  It's not your fault you did nothing wrong. You're perfect. You're angelic. You're blameless. You're blemishless. It's an appeal to grandiosity and removes all feelings of blame and shame and guilt from you.    It just happened to you. You're passive. You're in a passive role.  Magnets can't help it. They attract iron. You attract narcissists. You're magnet. You're passive. You're just there. You don't do anything. This passive role is pacified. You're pacified by passivity. And there are numerous peddlers, con artists, with and without academic titles, who are delighted to tell you what you want to hear and take your money in the process. Wake up. So, victim mentality is an illness. It's a problem. Individuals identify as victims if they believe that they were harmed. They were not because of the occurrence of the harmful act. They didn't make it happen. They were under an obligation to prevent the harm. The harm constituted an injustice or violated their rights if it was inflicted by a person. Or they possessed qualities making them persons to whom that harm was attracted. So, like, you know, I'm empathic. That attracts narcissists. So, it aggrandizes you. You're empathic. You're compassionate. You're loving. You're caring.  You're good.  That's why the narcissist owned in on you.  Not because you're broken. Not because you're damaged. Not because you're vulnerable. Not because you have serious mental health issues that you need to take care of. Not because you make bad choices. Not for the first time. Sometimes five or six times.  Not because you come think rationally. Not because you are functionally illiterate sometimes. Not because you don't bother to do your homework because you're lazy. None of these things.  Poor victim. You know, you deserve sympathy. The desire for empathy is crucial because the mere experience of a harmful event is in itself insufficient for you to feel like a victim. We have amazing studies that show that people experience very bad situations, very bad events mistreated by people, mistreated abuse by people, insulted, humiliated, stolen from, beaten by people, and they don't feel like victims. They start to feel like victims when they are told that they are victims. When they come across empathic people, good people, who tell them that they are victims. When society tells them that they are victims, this was a discovery by Winnicott when he studied incest. He said that in a suppressed, in a study that was later hushed, he said that the majority of the damage inflicted on children and incest is because society terrifies them, frightens them into believing something horrible has happened. So, victimhood crucially depends on social messaging, on cues that you collect from friends and family and the environment, and your role is what we call emergent role. Your role as a victim emerges from all the information and feedback and input that you're getting. People are telling you, what are you not?  Don't you understand that he's abusing you? And suddenly you say, wow, now it all makes sense. Yes, I'm a victim, he's abusing me. Hooray, from now on that's my guiding principle. I have discovered the truth. I found the Holy Grail and that's it. So, victimhood is crucially dependent not only on objective events. And mind you, there are objective events of crime and abuse. Don't misunderstand me. But victim mentality, victim stance, pathological victimhood, TIV, all these aberrations of victimhood, they depend on feedback from the environment in order to have the sense of a victim. You need to perceive the harm as undeserved, unjust, immoral, antisocial, and something you could have not prevented and you contributed nothing to. In other words, you need to cast yourself as an ideal victim. And this is what society, online coaches and self-styled experts, friends, family, this is what society is helping you to do. It's helping you to idealize yourself. And this time, idealize yourself as a victim, blameless, guiltless victim. Something has happened to you. You just happened to be there. You had nothing to do with it. And the need to obtain empathy and understanding is self-reinforcing, self-perpetuating. The more you get this contextualization, the more you get this reframing of what had happened to you, the more you need these reinforcements, these positive reinforcements, the more you need people to tell you that you're a victim. In short, the more invested you are, the more affected you are, the more emotionally invested you are in being a victim, the more you need people to continue to tell you that you had been a victim. Because you're beginning to have doubts. As time passes, you gain perspective. You suddenly remember things. And many of these things are ego congruent, ego incongruent, ego discrepant. In other words, many of these things challenge your view of yourself as a victim. And you need people to tell you, no, no, no, forget that.  Individuals of victim mentality believe that their lives are a series of challenges, directly ended them. This is called referential ideation. They believe that most aspects of life are negative and beyond their control, external locus of control and negativism. They believe that because of the challenges in their lives, they deserve sympathy and empathy and support and saccour and help, entitlement. And they believe that they have little power to change things. Little actions should be taken to improve their problems. So they are like eternal fatalists, eternal pessimists. And victim mentality is most common when the abuse is really extreme and long term. In other words, it's an artifact. It's an element or dimension of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, complex trauma. And you have victim mentality among mental health disorders that imitate complex trauma or other outcome of complex trauma. For example, narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. Both narcissists and borderlines have victim mentality. They're eternal victims and many of the victims online are nothing but borderlines and narcissists. They're not innocent victims who had nothing to do with what had happened to them. They have contributed massively to their situation, either by choice and decision or by behavior and speech acts. So victim mentality is a method of avoiding responsibility, avoiding criticism and securing attention, compassion being the focus of attention is good. And evading feelings of genuine anger, especially self-hunger.  We want to avoid it at all costs. We want to restore egocintin and victim mentality does this. When you have a crisis, when you have a trauma, you need all your strength to cope with it. And you can't self-doubt and you can't question yourself and you feel that it's like propaganda during wartime. You can't see the good sides of the enemy. You need to demonize the enemy and you need to angelize yourself. And so this is a splitting based morality play of good versus evil, Satan versus the angels, God versus the devil. And the devil is, of course, your abuser, your God or the angels or whatever. Victim mentality manifests in a range of different behaviors, ways of thinking and talking. Identifying other people as the cause for an undesired situation, denying personal responsibility for your own life, circumstances, choices, decisions, exhibiting heightened attention levels, hypervigilance, when in the presence of other people, awareness of negative intentions of other people and believing that other people are generally more fortunate than you are, envy, pathological envy, and gaining relief from feeling pity for oneself or receiving sympathy from others in order to ameliorate anxiety that comes out of self-anger, self-directed aggression, in other words, depression. So you can see already that victim mentality, when victimhood had become your identity, is really, really sick. It's a real mental health problem. And it's characterized also by negativeistic, passive-aggressive attitudes like pessimism, self-pity, repressed anger. It begins, victim mentality resembles a lot, covert narcissism. And that's why I keep saying that most empaths that I've seen online are actually covert narcissists. People with victim mentality develop convincing and sophisticated explanations in support of their ideas. And they use these explanations to explain to themselves and to others what has happened to them.  The person with victim mentality, empaths, is a mirror image of the narcissist. They gaslight as well. So people with victim mentality are not necessarily these broken, wounded, tormented souls and so on. Sometimes they are pretty realistic. We found in studies that they have a tendency to realistically perceive a situation, but they lack awareness or curiosity about the root of actual powerlessness in situations. So it's not that they falsify the facts and the data, but they recast it in ways that prevent inquiry.  He was 100% abuser. What else do you need to know? No need to know anything. Studies show that people with victim mentality are introspective. They like to display entitlement. They're highly selfish. They're defensive, so in conversation. Or when you chat with them online or on forums and they read negative intentions into the most neutral, innocuous, innocent exchanges. And they usually accuse and they're very obstructive and they refuse, they're not team players. They refuse to collaborate to solve problems and to recognize inherent conflicts or disagreements. And so in this sense they're very much like noses. They tend to categorize. They divide people to good and bad, no gray zone between them.  They are unadventurous. They are unwilling to take even small and calculated risks. They exaggerate the importance or likelihood of possible negative outcomes. And they exhibit something we will deal with in the next lecture, which is learned helplessness. They underestimate their ability or their influence in any given situation. They feel powerless. So consequently they are self-effacing, self-abasing. They put oneself down. They put themselves down even further than other people are doing. So if someone would tell them you are this, you don't know the half of it. I'm even much worse. When you go to incel communities, INCL communities, you see covert narcissism masquerading as victim. When you go to empath communities, you see covert narcissism masquerading as victim. Victim mentality has special linguistic markers. So if you see sentences starting with the word, I can't. I must. I had no choice. I didn't know. You know, I'm unable to do something. I don't have choices. Epistemological pseudo-humility. I didn't know. I couldn't recognize it was a good actor. He pulled the wound over my eyes. And victim mentality is strongly identified with many, many narcissistic traits, dimensions and behaviors. For example, there's a need for recognition. This is all based on studies. Everything I'm telling you is based on studies. So for example, we discovered that people with victim mentality, they have a need for recognition. They desire, they want other people to recognize their victimhood. They want other people to affirm their victimhood, not only just their victimhood, but how unprecedented what had happened to them was like they are the supernova victims. They're not just victims. What happened to them was amazing and unique and, you know, grandiosity. And so this recognition reaffirms positive basic assumptions that such people hold about themselves, about others, about the world in general. And it implies that the offenders, their offenders were equally special or unique, uniquely evil, uniquely wicked, uniquely manipulative, uniquely scheming, uniquely everything. Devilish. They demonize their abusers. But at the same time, it's like if everyone says you're drunk, go to sleep. If everyone says that the abuser was an abuser, he must have been an abuser. It's like they doubt themselves. They're not quite sure who was the victim and who was the abuser. And very often you see comments like, I'm beginning to think that I actually was the narcissist. Or I'm beginning to think that maybe I misbehaved in this relationship. You know, there is a constant nagging core of self-doubt and they need the voice of the multitudes to confirm to them that they are not the narcissist. They are not the abusers. They are the victims. It's like the victimhood by crowdsourcing, you know. It's like Wikipedia or victimhood.   At a collective level, this encourages people to have positive emotions regarding traumatic events. And so they can then restore egocintony. They can eliminate shame, blame, guilt, realization how unwise they acted. And this leads to moral elitism. People with victim mentality perceive themselves as morally superior. Everyone else is immoral or amoral at best. The offender, the abuser is definitely immoral. Anti-social, psychopath, monster, beast, inhuman, devilish, demonic, satanic. The victim is angelic, is morally, moral, is superior in his sanctimonious self-righteous morality. And this is of course covert narcissism. It's a black and white view of morality and the actions of individuals. It's extreme form of sick splitting. They deny their own aggressiveness and they regard themselves actually as weak lamp to the slaughter. They're the weak and they're persecuted and prosecuted and offended against by the morally impure. And the other person is threatening, persecuting, immoral. And so the more you blacken, the more you denigrate the other side, the abuser, the more by comparison and contrast and contradistinction you are elevated. They elevate by devaluing. Sounds familiar? Yes, classic narcissistic technique. They feel superior because they render the abuser inferior. The more he is inferior in whatever way, the more superior they are in the same way. Moral elitism emphasizes the harm inflicted on a saint. It's a state of sainthood. The empath is a saint. That's why these astrophysical references, super empath, super nova empath. It's utterly insane.  Not only narcissists, but they are divorced from reality to the point that they require medication. Really, I think the empath community is a group of exceedingly sick people. And so they see their own aggression, even violence sometimes, as justified and moral. But everyone else's aggression and so on is unjustified and morally wrong. And they totally lack empathy. On this we have numerous studies. Victims, pronounced, professional, perpetual, identity, politics, victims. They lack empathy. Recent studies in British Columbia even spotted psychopathy among these people. They're sometimes psychopaths. They lack empathy because they're so focused on their own suffering. Because they're so inward-directed. Because they are so affected, emotionally invested in their tribulations and vicissitudes. They're unwilling to consider anyone else's needs, interests, anyone else's suffering. They compete with suffering. Suffering is a badge of honor. And they compete. My suffering is greater than your suffering. Who are you? What are you? You've gone through nothing. They invalidate each other. They invalidate each other by competing. They ignore the suffering of others, act selfishly or denigrate and invalidate the suffering of others. And so being preoccupied with victimhoods, victimhood narrows, constricts your ability to see other people's perspectives. And of course your ability to exercise empathy. Everything is impaired, even cognitive empathy. They have less empathy than narcissists and psychopaths. They don't even have cold empathy. And they are less likely to accept responsibility when they misbehave. When they commit harm, when they abuse, it's egoism writ large, egotism writ large. And finally, there's the issue of rumination. These kind of victims tend to focus attention on their distress, on the causes of their distress, the abuse and the consequences. So they are focused, they are caught in a time warp. They are caught in the past. They keep analyzing the past, nitpicking. Who did what to whom and where and why and how and when, what preceded, what came after. They are totally obsessed with what had happened to them. And they put very little emphasis on solutions. At a certain point they get confused and they think that being a victim is the solution. If they just remain victims, that's the solution. It's total protection, especially protection from self-recrimination. This causes aggression. They become aggressive if they are criticized. If you disagree with them, if you try to point an alternative point of view or their own responsibility and contribution to what had happened to them. They become violent. They begin to insult you. They begin to threaten you. They never forgive. They hold grudges forever. They are vengeful. They are seething with toxic, the toxic brew of victimhood. And these dynamics are really bad for them. Forget now other people. It's bad for them because they are trapped. They are trapped in a self-image of victimization. The psychological profile that we teach in universities and textbooks of victimization includes a pervasive sense of helplessness, passivity, loss of control, pessimism, negative thinking, strong feelings, strong repressed feelings of guilt, shame, self-blame, which lead to depression because they are repressed. It's self-directed aggression. And this way of thinking leads to hopelessness and despair.  You had nothing to do with what had happened to you. And you feel good for these two years. And then you crash. Then you crash badly. And you act out.  And you had grown addicted to this feeling because it made you feel good for two years. You want to be abused again in order to again feel like a victim because it's a great feeling. You would become a junkie, a junkie or victim would.  Absolutely horrible.  Or would you forever be suspicious, paranoid, hyper-vigilant? These are the legacies of all these so-called experts. In 2005, there was a study by Charles Snyder, psychologist. Victim mentality, people with victim mentality, they never forgive themselves for what had happened actually. They pass on the buck to the abuser. They say the abuser did it to me and so on. But deep inside, they feel really, really bad because they were taken advantage of. They were so frail, so vulnerable, so broken that someone could just step in and do anything they wanted. And so this lack of forgiveness in an eternal victim state leads ultimately to PTSD or extreme hostility either. In other words, a psychopathic solution. These people gradually become psychopathic. Like this is the only way to cope with this world. Or they develop even more extreme post-traumatic conditions. And this is a Snyder study. Group support is helpful if the group does not foster victimhood.   And alcoholics are victims of alcohol and their own life circumstances. They could easily be described as victims, you know? And yet AA doesn't tell them you're victims. So there is group support, but as long as the group support is not focused on venting, on perpetuating a victimhood stance and a victimhood status, as long as the group emphasizes positive feelings, as long as the group counters learned hurtlessness, helps to practice assertiveness, then it's helpful to some extent, to some extent, by the way. But never when the main theme, the core, the pivot, is victimhood. So victim mentality is a huge problem, especially online. Because trauma, reacting to trauma with victimhood, with victim mentality undermines your assumptions about the world as a just and reasonable place. We have quite a few scientific studies that show that validation of trauma is important, but then you must transition immediately to a non-victim stance. It's normal for victim to want the abuser to take responsibility to provide closure to be punished even. And so the validation of trauma is crucial. And restoring justice is crucial. Victimization is bad. Putting yourself in the position of a victim. And then regarding it as a solution to all your trouble is bad. Delinthe and Marmo identify an anti-victimism mentality in society. Society will not help you to present yourself as a victim. But society does it in a way that invalidates your experiences, which is bad. So you're like between a rock and a hard place. You know, on the one hand society refuses to acknowledge what had happened to you as a victim. And on the other hand, unscrupulous con artists try to force you and perpetuate your victimhood's stance because it pays, it's profitable. It's a college industry, a cottage industry. So it's not good to say, I have not been victimized. It's not good to try to show fortitude, refuse to show pain, not communicate emotions, be a macho. Pain is not, displaying pain is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of strength. Being able to externalize and discuss your vulnerability shows you're strong and resilient. But don't make your vulnerabilities and pain the core of your identity. Create an environment where you can share without being judged, but not share in order to be elevated, to cater to your grandiosity. So we have this study, we have this branch of psychology called victimology. And we studied the perceptions of victims from sociological and psychological perspective. And there's a complicated relationship with the very label of victim. Some people say I'm not a victim, I'm a survivor. And they are right to a big extent because if you accept the label of victim, it's kind of Cain's mark. It's a kind of stigma. But on the other hand, if you want to avoid blame, victim blaming, you have to accept it. So here's this dilemma in daily life. You want to reject this label of victim. You want to avoid stigmatization. You want to give yourself a sense of agency. You want to get rid of learned helplessness. But you also want justice. You also want sympathy. And you also want to feel blameless. And you also want to aggrandize yourself sometimes.  You don't have to choose. Are you going to be a victim for life or are you going to be a survivor for life? If you're not a survivor, you give up. You renounce your rights as a victim.  So it seems like victims are zombies in limbo. They haven't survived. If you're a victim, you're not a survivor. You haven't survived. You're not fully alive. Victim, what is the suspension of life? Or is Cleckley called it a rejection of life? Or is Bromberg called it an unlived life? But Cleckley and Bromberg were referring to psychopaths and narcissists. Psychopaths and narcissists are victims. They had been abused as children. They're also victims. But they chose to remain victims for the rest of their lives. And this is what you should definitely try to avoid at all costs. You should try to acknowledge your agency. You should try to cultivate your self-efficacy and assertiveness. You should accept that other people's behavior causes harm and it's an integral part of life. And you should try to avoid these people and survive, and if necessary seek to punish. But you should never get stuck in the role of a victim because there your company is narcissists and psychopaths. And you don't want that. Trust me.


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Hey everybody, Matt here for Leighton Sports Cards Ripping, one box of 2023 Bowman Baseball Hobby. These are for C. Lou. Good luck. There he is. Atomic Refractor, first Bowman Auto to 100. Tommy Specht. Here he goes, C. Lou. Anthony Volpe, Sites on September. Lionel James. Priyas and Meyer. Justin Foske, you insert. Brock Jones. Jackson Holiday, Modern Prospects. Avina. Parazza. Chacon, Rafaela and Fernandez. Saverson-Artega, top 100. Blanco and Avdiastela Cruz. Atomic. Spencer Jones, Invicta. John Jorge. Jackson Churio, Sites on September. Heledela Cruz, Modern Prospects. Marschendrick Martinez. Kumar, top 100. Double check that last paper. Cedeno and Rodney Simon, Lunar Glow or Perez. Adley. Rookie of your favorites. Was that, that wasn't Jazz Chisholm, right? Or wait, no, what am I talking about? I'm just making words. Elijah Green. Was that Fonda? Riley Green. Rookie Spotlight. Oh, Jordan Bouchelot. There we go. That makes sense. Warming Bernabéle. Kyle Harrison. He hit a grand slam after a sale, and then we traded him in the off season. Christian Hernandez. Because we choked in the postseason. Picking grand. That's Jordan Walker, Sites on September. Daniel Montecino and Blu-ray wave. Henry Davis. That is 9 of 150. Zach Neto. Nothing but Neto. Nothing but Neto. Josh Young. Rookie Insert. Tamar Johnson. Modern Prospects. Andy Rodriguez. And Orange Paper to 25. Narwhillian Cedeno. There you go. C. Lew, Wilbur Sanchez and Ricardo Perez, Lunar Glow. I'll do it for your box. Appreciate it. We'll get these right out to you.


Hey everyone welcome back to Nintendo Prime. I'm wearing my glasses this morning. It's kind of funky.  You can see it glaring off my glasses. You don't see that in videos But whatever We're giving away a 99 dollar Nintendo Switch eShop gift card head on to the description or ping comment to enter What I wanted to do today is actually take a look at something that was put together by a user over on reddit called I eat dragons and Really what this is is a look at what we now know is the upcoming release slate for Nintendo Switch because After that Nintendo Direct I've seen a lot of reactions where people are saying they're disappointed There's nothing to play Skyward Sword HD is overpriced And a whole bunch of other things that I think is fair criticism on the surface Because we're all free to feel however we feel but I also think there is this now Ideology that we need to switch pro more than ever because third-party games are abandoning the platform so One it's not true that I can show you some sales data in another video if you would like to see how untrue that is But I actually want to look at the upcoming site of Nintendo Switch games So let's do that shall we so here you'll see on screen right now a Bunch of a bunch of games here all the way out through July because that's honestly how far we know and then including August Slash summertime because some of these are just announced for summer in January obviously we saw Scott Pilgrim We saw a hitman and then that are e game. It looks like it was Japan only in February Which by the way is our current month and all of these games aren't even out yet I mean look at that line up. I mean little nightmares to which is debuted very well in Japan Persona 5 strikers Bradley default 2. It's not here yet. Super Mario 3d world plus Bowser's Fury You know revenants etc. etc. like that's that's a really quality February but it gets even better when you look at March apex legends crash bandicoot for story of seasons Valin Wonderland or real for those that forgot that game even exist Harvest moon, which I know it's not the original developing team, but still it's a game that's coming We've got plans for zombies tails from the Borderlands and hey Monster Hunter Rise obviously a massive deal there next up in April. We have trails of Cold Steel 5 and then Was that solo frontier and new Pokemon snap? I know it sounds like three games There's more than three games coming out that month But those are kind of the big ones and I feel like that's what this list is because there's a whole bunch of indie games They could talk about but this is the I guess games Nintendo's kind of pushing in May Okay, May is the month. We're right now We're not really sure if there's gonna be a massive game coming out of me But we know about knockout city. We know about the the Famicom detective club games that are finally coming over Man those things were buried in Nintendo's history Me topia, which is probably what Nintendo's considering the big game for May and then worlds and club in June Legend of mana ninja master collection. Oh and look at that Mario golf super rush Pretty good there July the legend of Zelda skyward sword HD probably gonna sell past what the Wii version did for August or the rest of summer so could be June July August September I was somewhere in there. We have no more heroes three big game outer wilds fall guys You know samurai warriors 5 etc like this is actually a really really good list of games I mean all of this list here just going back through it. I'm gonna be picking up really to fall to this month It's just gonna happen. I don't know if it's gonna happen right on launch, but I really enjoyed at the pet traveler Obviously, we know about a new at the pet traveler game coming But bravely default to is something that's releasing really soon And I can't wait to actually play it not just a demo about the actual full game So I'm really excited about that one I just I really want to go hands-on and dive into some old-school RPG. Goodness Already have supermario 3d world post about this theory So we can kind of skip over that one not really interested in persona 5 strikers in March I am going to be getting apex legends on switch Maybe you don't care about that, but I do I care about apex legends I think you know some people are kind of sick of some of these games You know when you see that the apex legends of the world or the fort nights and all that I understand But honestly, I did they provide a lot of great entertainment So I'm really really looking forward to apex legends then Monster Hunter rise is coming out that month. Of course. I'm picking up Monster Hunter rise I don't know if I'm gonna sink as many hours into it as I liked, but I really enjoyed the demo So why the hell would I not pick up Monster Hunter rise? I guess that's the better question then you look at other games I'll consider bowlin wonder wonder world wonderland like I've seen some people Some early impressions weren't too favorable, but maybe the final release a little better. I'm unsure on Crash Bandicoot 4 right now That's another game. I'm leaning towards probably buying, but I'm just not quite sure yet Crash Bandicoot 4 obviously didn't perform very well in the other platforms doesn't mean it's a bad game So we'll see I'm kind of in a personal debate with that Maybe you guys will end up convincing me to pick it up April all about new Pokemon snap for me But waiting for Pokemon snap basically forever. I'm so excited for that one I just I don't really want to get into it too much for that I feel like we're gonna have a lot to talk about with it next week But yeah, I'm really excited about that and may me to be all I Literally and picking up me to be a just because it's crazy It's wacky and zany and it's exactly the weird crap I expect Nintendo to do and I'm curious why this game needed to come back off the Strangeness of the original release on 3ds. I'm very curious about that. So Yes, yes Next up Yeah, Mario Golf Super Rush and Legend of Mana. I will start with Legend of Mana I'm a huge Mana series fan. Secret of Mana is my second favorite game of all time Legend of Mana being here super stoked for it Can't wait to actually go die back into some old-school childhood memories I'm super excited about that. Don't really care about Ninja Gaiden too much But Mario Golf Super Rush what can be said here Mario Golf is everything I want Mario Golf to be over like the last 20 years So they have an RPG single-player mode again, we don't know if the modes any good So there's still that and I need to wait and actually play it to determine Probably end up doing some impressions of it, but still Mario Golf Super Rush is a thing That I'm stoked for in that dash mode, man. That dash will look sick Oh, and by the way, you know a little bit of a spoiler here It appears that Nintendo accidentally like leaked that, you know, the bomb guy is gonna be playable You know the boss from the Mario 64 is gonna be a playable character So Nintendo accidentally leaked that and then updated that that's something I was gonna make a video on but that that's it That's the story. There you go. You have it. Congratulations And then obviously Skyward Sword HG What else is there to say? Skyward Sword HG is Like everything I could ever want from a game Outside of the fact that 60 bucks big debate over 60 bucks gonna get into that a little later I have a separate video I'm gonna do on Zelda games this year because Man, there's actually quite a lot of news around the Zelda games coming this year and Nintendo That's just what we'll get into that in a video later today And then obviously for August summer. I'm picking up fall guys. I have yet to play fall guys I realize it's no longer super super popular and like the boat has sailed I don't even I think the boat is starting to sail on among us, too Isn't it I feel like people are starting to move on to a different indie multiplayer game now, but hey That's a game that I'll probably try it'll probably have like a little peek during its launch week on switch And then we'll see if it continues after that no more heroes 3 is definitely game. I'm considering I played the first two Played a little bit of Travis Strikes again. I I'm not like a massive fan of the no more hero series But I do see it's appeal and it is something that is exclusive on switch So just on that note like there's part of me that wants to own every exclusive game on switch Just because I'm a Nintendo enthusiast. I suppose you can call me a fanboy if you want I'm super critical of Nintendo all the time, but it is what it is That's that I mean That's a lot of games that I'm planning to pick up over if you think over like the next six seven months That's a lot of games. So hey, that's the lineup for switch what I plan to buy You guys go down in the comments and click clack away and let me know what on this list Are you planning to buy and are there games not on this list that are already announced for switch coming in the next six months that you plan to buy Because right now my wallet's looking pretty thin and that's before considering any giveaways I might be doing along the way including that $99 Nintendo Switch e-shop gift card description pin comment enter man Can't wait for one of you guys to be able to get that all right folks Also a side note It's been a struggle But I am this close to obtaining a PlayStation 5 from the channel I have had a PlayStation 5 in my shopping cart to check out both in person at target and also like Not like I didn't go in person but like you go online and then do online pick up in person and also on the PlayStation Direct and Both times before I could get my card information in Because I had a snafu with having to move some money around which I'm gonna make sure is not a problem moving forward I was unable to get it, but I will we will have a PlayStation 5 on this channel And I'll be able to do an impression video. I'll break down a tear down in Comparison my thoughts and honest opinions and obviously then we start diving into some PlayStation games on this channel I can't wait to do that as much as I guys. I'm a Nintendo guy I'll always be a Nintendo guy this channel will always have Nintendo in its name until Nintendo makes us not have it in our name But we technically cover everything That interests me and I am highly interested in everything going on the only reason you guys haven't been hearing much I want the Xbox series X is because there has it really hasn't been a lot happening that I'm interested in on that platform yet All right folks catch you guys in the next video


from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering AWS re-invent 2018.  And welcome back to Las Vegas. We're in the Sands Expo. We're in a hall D if you happen to be at the show or drive it in just to watch. Come on by and say hi to us. Love to see you here on theCUBE as we continue our coverage day two. And along with Justin Warren, I'm John Walls. And now we're joined by a couple of gents from Hub International. Seth Morel, who is the Vice President of Enterprise Architecture and Design. Seth, good morning to you. And Jeremy, rather in Balabala, who is the Director of Security Architecture and Engineering, also at Hub International. Good morning, Jeremy. Good morning. Seth, by the way, plain hurt. She had broken finger with a snowblower in Chicago on Monday. On Monday. Good luck with the winter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Started off well. All right, sorry to see that. But thanks for coming, regardless. No problem. Let's talk about Hub International a little bit about primary mission and then the two of you, what you're doing for them primarily. Right, right. So Hub International is an insurance brokerage, personal, commercial. We do employee benefits, retirement as well. We're based in the U.S. and Chicago. Operate in the U.S. and Canada. 500 plus locations, 12,000 employees. Okay, and then primary responsibilities between the two of you? Yeah, I'm the Director of Security Architecture, responsible for all things technical and regard to security, both on the architecture side, engineering and operations. All right, so yesterday we were talking about this earlier. You did a session. You're big Splunk guys, right? I mean, so let's talk about what you're doing with that, how that's working for you in general, if you would. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, so we're using Splunk Enterprise Security, the on-premise version. We actually, people always ask me, are you using Splunk Cloud or Splunk On-Prem? And I always joke, so we're using Splunk On-Prem in the cloud in AWS. But for us, we're really focused on Splunk as a SIM to enable our Security Operations Center to provide insights into our environment, help us detect and understand threats that are going on in the environment. So we have a managed partner that runs our Security Operations Center for us. They also manage our Splunk environment, but it helps us keep an eye on both our AWS environment that we have, our Azure environment, and our on-premise data center as well. All right, a few people have sort of gotten wary of the idea of a SIM.  Yeah, I really view a SIM as a cornerstone of a security program. Specifically, if you have a mature Security Operations Center, it's really hard to operate that without a SIM. SIMs are tricky. They're tricky to implement. They're generally very costly and they require a lot of tuning, a lot of love care and feeding in order to be effective. And quite frankly, if you don't get that right, they can actually be detrimental to your security program. But if you put the proper care and feeding into a SIM, it'd be very beneficial to your organization. Okay, so what's some of the things that you've been able to do now that you've got Splunk in there and is helping you manage this security? Because I saw some statistics earlier this morning where security is basically the second biggest, most popular term here at AWS and re-invent. It's clearly front of mind for a lot of enterprises. So what is it that Splunk is helping you to achieve that you wouldn't have been able to do otherwise? Yeah, so the biggest thing for us is the aggregation of all of our logs, our data sources in AWS, this was on-prem, our Windows file servers, our network traffic flow data, all that's aggregated in this Splunk. And that allows us to do some correlation with third-party threat intelligence feeds, take indicators of compromise that are streamed, that are observed out there in the real world, and apply those to data that we're seeing on our actual data sources in our environment. It allows us to detect threats that we wouldn't have been able to detect otherwise. Right, how does that translate through to what you're actually doing as a business?  So how does this investment in security translate into the business value? Well, one, it just gives us visibility into the environment. We can proactively identify potential threats and remediate them before they actually cause an impact to the business. Without these tools and without these capabilities, it would be a much riskier endeavor. And so it's helped us throughout, and we've been good partners with Splunk, they've been good partners with us, and coupled with all the other things that we're doing in the security space and in the cloud space, we're able to build a nice, secure environment for our customers and ourselves. We're also a very highly-regulated industry, so we have regulations that we have to comply with for security, and our customers also care about security very, very deeply. So it allows us to be able to protect our customers' data and really assure our customers that their data is safe with us, whether that data is hosted on-prem or it's in a cloud. What about that battle? At least there's often a battle between private enterprise regulation, just in general, right? It's making sure the policy makers understand capabilities and real threats as opposed to maybe perceptions or whatever. What do you see in terms of the federal regulatory environment and what you deal with in a Balkanized system such as where you're dealing with 50 states and Canada, so you've got your hands full, either, sir. So, we view security and compliance a little differently. Instead of trying to build security program and achieve compliance by aligning with all the regulations, we believe we do the right thing from a security perspective. We make the right investments, we build the right controls into our environment. When those new regulations come out for provincial law in Canada or different states or GDPR in Europe, that will be 95% of the way there by just building the right controls into our environment at a foundational level. Then we have to discipline our efforts just kind of aligning ourselves with the other 5% that vary from regulation to regulation. Was that a shift in management philosophy at all? Because quite often or maybe in the past, it's like, I'm only going to do something, I'm not saying, huh, but in general, when I have to, as opposed to, you appear to be preemptive, right? You're doing things because you should. So, there's a different mindset there, right? It sounds like a much more strategic view of security rather than a tactical, reactive kind of security. How long has that been the philosophy at home? Yeah, so we really built out a security program starting being of last year. There's all new leadership that came in, Seth came in, myself came in, all new leadership across the organization. And that's where that mindset came from and the need and recognition to make an investment in security. We view security as a driver of business, not just a cost center. That's a way that we can add to the bottom line, be able to generate revenue for the business by being able to show our customers that we really care about their data and we're going to do our best to take care of them. So with that mindset, we can actually help market, use that as a marketing tool to be able to help drive business. Brian. So what are some of the things that you've seen here at the show that you're thinking about? Well, actually that will support my strategy, some of the more longer term things. Is there anything that sort of stuck out to you that's going, oh, that's something that we should actually take back? Yeah, well, there's some tactical announcements that are very important to us. The announcement of Windows File Server Support. File Share Support is a big deal for us. We're a heavy file server organization and having that native within AWS is very interesting. There's been some other announcements with SFTP, other items that we're going to be trying to take advantage of in a fairly quick fashion. And we're excited about that. We've been on our journey to cloud since essentially the summer of 2017 through now. And we're kind of ready for the next steps, the next set of capabilities. And so at a conference like this and all these announcements, we're excited to take a look at the menu and start picking out what we want to eat. It's a great buffet. Yeah, yeah. In a city that's famous for it. Yeah, it's true, it's true. Oh, you can eat. Yeah. All right, so let's talk about the journey then. You said 2017, it's been so year-a-year plus into that. And you're excited about what's coming. Well, what do you need?  What do you need? What do you want the most, do you think, to service your clients? Right, so we spend most of our migration just essentially moving what we had over to the cloud. And so our next steps are, let's really understand our workloads. Let's be smarter about how we're running them. Let's take advantage of the appropriate technologies and menu items that are out there. Per workload, just to be smarter. We're going to be spending much more time this year looking at more automation, orchestration, and basically maturing our cloud capabilities so that we're ready for the next big thing. And as we acquire another company or there's a new business need, we're working to be more proactive in being able to anticipate those needs with building a platform that we can really extend and build upon. And I'm sorry, go ahead, Justin. Yeah, the question on the choosing of workloads then. So are you going to be moving everything to the cloud or do you think that there'll be some things that will actually remain on-prem or is it going to be a hybrid cloud? Our goal is to go from a data center to a network closet. Right. Yeah, so we've moved almost all of our application workloads out of our data center right now. We have a large VDI environment. We're looking to move as well. Once that's done, we'll be down to our phone system and a couple of other legacy applications that we're trying to determine what we actually want to do with strategically. Right, okay. That's a pretty common sort of story is there's a lot of people who are moving as much as they possibly can and then there's a few little bits that just sort of sit there that you need to decide, do we rewrite this? Do we actually need this at all? Maybe we just turn it off. Right. Yeah. And are there any capabilities specific to your industry that you need or that you'd like to have refined, something that would allow you to do your job specifically in the insurance space that would be unique to you? Anything floating out there that say, if we had that, that'll fine tune this to a better degree or greater degree. So for us, it's all about flexibility. We grow very, very rapidly through our mergers and acquisitions. We bought 52 companies last year that we're on pace to do almost 70 companies this year. So for us, Cloud really enables us to be able to absorb those organizations that we acquire, bring them in much, much faster. Part of the story of our Cloud migration, we were able to move the integration time from mergers and acquisitions from six months down to under 90 days because we're now able to move those workloads in much, much quicker with the Cloud. So for us, that's really a key capability. Well, you guys are used to writing checks, dinners on them tonight, right? Definitely. Seth, Jeremy, thanks for being with us. Hey, thank you. Appreciate your time. Good luck with the winter. Thank you. You might need it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, we'll be back with more from AWS. Reinvent, you're watching theCUBE from Las Vegas.


Hello, everyone. How's everyone doing? It's a really big crowd today. Not really used to that Thanks for being here. I'm going to talk about accessibility needs style design revolution Who am I? I am Mitchell. I am a digital designer at level level But I'd like to talk a little bit about my history first. I think Back in the days the earliest as far as I can remember I've always been a creative a creative person my earliest memories includes drawing with a pencil painting Making art projects at school name it everything and I think a lot of you people as a child were kind of the same like me Because who didn't love to draw as a kid Now the older you become most of the people lose that interest But to me it never really did actually my love for art only grew stronger as I got older I kept drawing I made beautiful portraits of people And I loved art to look at art architecture. You name it all around But as time flies by I was drawn to digital art and digital design technology advanced there arose new opportunities and My old traditional skills actually got lost because I did everything on a laptop or the computer But people still try to see me as a as an artist and I often got the question. Oh You're an artist, right? Can you draw me like one of the French girls? Okay, sure only to come up and let them down with something like this okay, anyway years later now I Find myself as I call myself a digital designer You could also call me a UX designer experience designer interaction designer visual designer web designer It depends on who's asking What are the most important thing is I try to create my designs with a mindset of an artist I Like to make designs that are functional Use a friendly accessible, but also aesthetically pleasing and visually compelling To me it's not enough to make something that simply works. I Really try to make it a piece of art But now I hear people say a web designer is not an artist a Designer is a problem solver in maniac. I Think people know who they are Of course, that's true But why can't we be both be the problem solver and be an artist and combine those two skills To come up with the best and most beautiful creations I Had a lot of animations, but it's not really working. That's okay But wait a minute if we look at the problem solver and the artist and I was talking about the professions a little bit before We could see the problem solver as a user experience designer and the artist as a user interface designer the user experience is about Experience and user interface is about making something a little bit more pretty So if you combine those professions you've got the user experience user interface designing Someone who can do both We should use the skills of both to come up with the best and beautiful designs So we should solve problem first make it accessible and user friendly And then make it visually appealing So go ahead and throw on throw throw all those artsy designs visuals on your designs Problem solved right Well, not really because more and more websites need to be accessible or Even by law it's becoming the standard But a lot of people still have a very black and white stance about Accessible design and especially as accessible websites Accessibility and aesthetics are often seen as conflicting goals You can't have them both so accessibility is more important one and they go with that one and aesthetics really gets neglected Some people say the more accessible an interface is the acclimate becomes and That kind of hurts my feelings But that's why I'm here today to show you that Accessible sites can be beautiful and creative on top of being user friendly There's no need to sacrifice aesthetics To create beautiful websites so Aesthetics and accessibility should go hand-in-hand and not fight together to create a best combination You just have to find the right balance between the two Now if we're talking about the balance, I created a very beautiful scale Which I'm really proud of not Let's try to talk about aesthetics first so let's pull down the scale to down and weigh down the aesthetics What are aesthetics anyway, and why is it important? It's really about the visual attractiveness of a product It's a visual or sensory qualities of a design that are intended to evoke an emotional or psychological response to the viewer You know that feeling you get when you look at a piece of art or an architecture or a website That's that's saying I I really like this or a piece of clothing or whatever that it really fits my feelings That's what we're talking about and in web design. It's more about look and feel So it's about using different colors spacing use of images Typography and different design elements so What makes a website or something beautiful or visually appealing to you guys? Could it be? bright colors or the use of Dark mode lots of white space lots of spacing bold and daring warm and calming There are a lot of different things Not everyone is the same That's really interesting because everyone have it has a different perspective and preferences and that's really influenced by our background our cultural background and our social social backgrounds as well as our personal experiences Because what I find pretty doesn't mean you have to find it pretty as well It's my personal taste that feeling that I was talking about Well, there's also something called generalized aesthetics and to make it a bit a bit more simple You could think of it about in trends as in fashion architecture design So I got some Examples for that in art. It's like Expressionism and this was actually my face when I heard I could give a talk at World Camp Europe on the main stage Oh my god And you got the Renaissance art work Mostly my process when designing something all those phases In architecture you've got like art deco beautiful shapes Ruralism really robust and bold buildings, but also in fashion With like the 70s with a lot of pastel colors and really daring polka dots Anyway, the trends come and go but common elements are often liked and pursued. I like that me too Let's wait a little bit Such a trendsetter But that's also in web design. We got like examples for minimalism with a lot of white space a lot of spacing mostly pure white and a few images Neomorphism not really sure how to pronounce this, but I hope I'm right This is actually not a really good example for accessible design because Is it a button what I'm seeing? Is it what kind of contrasts are here? Is it selected or not? Also brutalism in web design Really daring against the mainstream against the rules also not really accessible, but I like it And who doesn't remember the pretty little bookcase the realistic bookcase from Apple With the scale morphism That was like a trend to make things realistic last example as dark mode Which is actually a good one because it's accessible as well It reduces your eye strains when you're reading something like a long read and It's good for the environment because it uses less energy So you can really get that feeling that there that are different kind of Feelings with aesthetics that people can get But aesthetics are more than just superficial decoration and making things pretty They can serve a critical and crucial function because a well-designed website Can really help establish creativity with your visitors making them more likely to trust your brand differentiate you from your band from differentiate your brand from competitors and create a positive perception and Really communicate your identity But most importantly it really makes the visitor want to interact with the website Explore it and of course, hopefully make a conversion Early impressions matter The visitors from forum initial impressions within seconds. I think if you walk around here at the sponsor booth booths you could See attractive booths and you're really attracted to go to those booths. So this is also something with aesthetics They could really play a key role in shaping your impression If the impression doesn't stick you could lose your visitors and If a website looks on press on professional or outdated Visitors may assume that the business is not trustworthy or that the products or services are of poor quality But instead if a website looks sleek modern and visually appeasing Appealing visitors are more likely to view the business business as professional credible and trustworthy So I've Rattled on and on about aesthetics. I guess you can really see that I like this and I think this is really important but let's go back to the balance and the scale of accessibility versus Aesthetics and we really pull down the accessibility one That was a accessibility is really heavy Accessibility That's really about making sure that everyone including people with disabilities you can use a website or app I think a lot of you people know what accessibility is about This could mean things like easy to read texts good clickable buttons enough contrast between colors Images that should have alternative texts. So screen readers could read them And when I first heard about accessibility, I was quite skeptic about it Because I really thought Doesn't this limit my creativity or and prevented from creating stunning websites that would stand out from the rest and So goodbye creativity make boring websites. Yeah And I wasn't alone. There are a lot of people that still think this way It's a question I get asked a lot actually Even from businesses from how can you create stunning websites, but still follow the accessibility rules and be still creative But it's actually quite opposite because once you start working with it It could actually be really fun and challenging And it doesn't have to block your creativity It can really thrive your designs and it opens up really new possibilities It can expand your creative tool set your brains So you could approach designs in a more innovative and creative way Now you're really forced to think deeply about the user experience To innovative to create innovative and creative user-friendly designs Which would lead to new designs design elements and techniques, which you actually never even considered before a few examples For my architects we used high color contrast colors larger font sizes, which could really improve reliability and it still is bold and modern and gives the architectural vibe Which perfectly matches with my artist artistic views You can really think outside the box it encourages you to think outside the box to find new ways to solve problems For example, you shouldn't really rely on color alone for I hope you could see this For Almere, it's like a website that sells plots We used a agenda with Statuses of those plots if it's sold or if it's available or if it's soon available or if it's Reserved already. So we used colors icons and text to show the status of those plots You should really Optimize your website's navigation making important information easy to find which will improve Usability and functionality And alternative text for images makes your websites want More accessible and it really impuses SEO and I mean who doesn't want that These are just a few examples of what you can do But most importantly, it's just the right thing to do Everyone should have equal access to information and services online and By designing with accessibility in mind. We can really achieve this So now what we talked about aesthetics we talked about accessibility. How do we make a website? That's good-looking and how can we ensure that it's accessible for everyone? Let's go back to the balance We changed the Nails to to a frame We need to make sure to find a good balance between these two and Have them complement each other and not conflict with each other.  I like you too But let's make it simple We could also see accessibility and aesthetics is something different Accessibility could also be the functional elements of your website and aesthetics could also be the decorative elements of your website Now what are functional elements? Elements that are essentials to the functionality of the interface Which must be fully accessible to all users these It's like the core of your website. This just has to work These elements could include colors accessible of course Typography and the right use of headings the heading structure Good clickable buttons Also contrasting buttons and to me it's important to show the hover states as well Perfect input fields for for forms even with labels. That's really important and Easy to use navigations These are just a few examples, which just have to work If a button isn't easy to click or a form isn't easy to fill out Users will get frustrated and may leave your website Which could be a job for a problem solver? This this is really the essence of functional elements So what are decorative elements? These are elements that are purely aesthetic in nature and do not have service specific function within the interface It's important for your identity and recognition But your site can work without it a few examples background images and elements For nature today we used those cute swirls and colorful blobs For a podcast platform listen we use the audio Elements to get the feeling that you really can listen to something and even the word camp Athens website right now uses a lot of those visual elements that I'm talking about Icons could really help For example, these are some tasks that you could use and people could really see how this is a task I could do Also here these just add like a visual cue from you can do something like this but also animations for Amsterdam Sinfonietta, we created a Really snow slow animation on the background And some come content elements that slowly appear when you scroll through the website Which perfectly fits their branding But animations is a difficult one Slow and moving animations can be used as long as they are not the primary way of conveying Important information and do not interfere with the user's ability to navigate the website We can provide users with the ability to turn off those animations Or just adjust the speed or we could use the reduced motion function Don't you know how it's better to create still elements To get the same effect or you could ask a developer for help Decorative elements add really visual interests But are not essential to your website and can be removed or simplified without impacting the user experience We can have more flexibility to make those elements accessible and Experiment with different styles and techniques without worrying about compromising the accessibility these styles may not Meet the WCAG guidelines, but we could still find a way to seamlessly integrate aesthetics with functionality So again aesthetics and functionality should work harmoniously together Instead of clashing with each other Let's put it all together with all the things I've said and quickly build a website from scratch This is Pip Creative photographer. He loves colors, but he's also a little bit mysterious and he asked us to create him a portfolio He gave us some elements like a logo colors images Typography that he loves and we started with a simple navigation easy to find things like Good title a subtitle Maybe a search bar so people could really see his portfolio search for his portfolio items add a few blocks of Portfolio items add some images This actually could be it But we want to make it a little bit more visual appealing. So the text will go over the Images add a background with it to make it accessible I changed the font type You could really see a different kind of vibe already already Now we can add more style elements That he was talking about with the colorful colorfulness, but this is a little bit too bold for Pip So let's tone it a little bit down and change the font because he really didn't like the font anywhere anywhere This almost feels perfect It just doesn't really give that mysterious vibe that he was going for So let's make it dark That's with This really gets the mood going Last but not least we could also add some Animations, I hope this one will start. I hope you guys could see it. It's a little bit dark but there are some elements that are slowly moving and The use of hover animations is gives a really different dynamic and Not that static feeling. I think this video is And this really fits his identity and feeling he was going for. Yeah This was just a super fast example of a website and we could do so much more even with WordPress templates or things So let's conclude Accessibility really is important. It should be the default But we really can't neglect all aesthetics altogether We can go full accessibility mode and copy and paste popular designs or themes that work And it will be way easier from the design perspective Which is okay, of course But it could be a disaster for your business You don't really have an identity or personality to convey that identity to your users To beat your competition, of course You will be just one of those in a million. I think maybe you also Images and websites like this Which is okay, of course again, but is that really what you want? So it's really time to put a Renault nude focus on creating websites that are both both functional and visually stunning By preserving and finding a balance between accessibility and aesthetics. We can really revolutionize Design and create exceptional websites that truly stand out Parkals fire. This takes the wrong and That's really a win-win for everyone And that's kind of my wrap-up. Thank you so much for listening Thanks, Mitchell That was a really great reminder of how in limitation spark creativity rather than like limiting them So I thought it was really wonderful talk. Thank you. Thank you So we've got about 10 minutes for questions if anybody's got a question if you go up to one of the mics And we'll fit in as many as we can That's okay. I have a question. Yeah, sure so I'm interested and Do you still feel that you have to convince businesses of the benefits of accessibility or is that something? You know with level levels reputation. Do they come to you for accessible websites? So do you are you trying to convince them of it? At level ever me. Yeah, we don't really have to convince the businesses anymore because we are known for accessible websites What advice would you have for I said other businesses here who are Trying to make the case to our clients that they should Well, you should really focus on the mindset of the business Of course business is king the business owner is king But you should really teach them that it's really important to make an accessible website as well And it's even good for business because if you are one of the few who have a Accessible website you could get so many more visitors even people with disabilities I think that's one of the tips I could give it. Thanks. Any more questions if we go on here. Yes. Yes You have a lot of ready-made tools that you can install on the website that have accessibility functions So how do you think about that? And is that not the solution for us who don't want to do accessibility? It could be like plugins you mean or plugins. Yeah, there are a lot of accessible plugins You could use them especially if you use WordPress templates, but you could also start with a blank accessible theme and Then add the visual elements Later on if you need those Yeah, but you also have the external services said that you can just plug into a website and then certainly they have some accessibility Then I should Maybe this question should be given to one of my colleagues. I'm not really a developer or a plugin user Is that okay? Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any more questions? If there are any questions that you're maybe afraid to ask on the microphone, you could always just Tap me on the shoulder and ask them. Great All right. Thank you so much for your talk. Thank you


Hi everyone, Shawn with jaspyscasebreaks.com here doing a one-pack break of 1996-1997 SP basketball. Random team where we're giving away 10 spots in a jersey slash team-all mixer break. So 30 spots when we get to random team in the NBA at the end of the break we'll take all 30 customers names, randomize them and top 10 names each when a spot in the hoops team-all slash hit parade jersey break. There you go. Hopefully chasing Kobe Bryant rookie cards and on top of that maybe you win a spot in the jersey team-all. So here is the list of customers from Ben Butler down to Sean O'Leary with last spot mojo times a bunch and the teams from the Hawks down to the Wizards. Separate dice roll, separate randomizer at the end of the break to give away the spots. This dice roll here for the one-pack break itself one and a two three times. Good luck everybody from Sean O'Leary down to Tom Lee three times on the randomizer and three times on the teams from the Pacers down to the Nets. Just large enough for everybody to see. No trade window since this is a filler break but we'll look at some of the highlights. Sons, potential Steve Nash rookies for Tom Lee. Ray Allen I believe is bucks in this. I'm almost positive Sean O'Leary, Ray Allen rookies. Where are the Lakers? Where are they at? Right there Sean O'Leary. Chances that Kobe rookies as well. Where's Allen Iverson? 76ers right? Sean O'Leary as well. And here's our pack. 1996-1997 SPX basketball or SP basketball. There you go right on front. Ray Allen rookie for the Milwaukee Bucks. So Milwaukee Bucks was Sean O'Leary with that Ray Allen. Roy Rogers, old Vancouver Grizzlies. KG, is that second or third here KG? Second year KG right? Cliff Robinson. So we got one of the good rookies in there. Second year KG as well. Jesus Shuttleworth right? Timberwolves on that one. Sean O'Leary as well. No AI, no Steve Nash, no uh no Kobe. But now let's pop back over here and give away those 10 spots. So here's that team customer list again from Sean O'Leary with last spot mojo back up to Ben Butler. Remember it's the top 10 names after four and a two six times. Top 10 after six four and a two. Good luck. Sixth and final time from spots 11 down to 30. Thank you guys very much for getting in on the break. Hopefully I can do better for you on a future filler. Next one of these is in the store if you want to chance at Kobe rookies and or spots in the break. But top 10 Kevin Miyakawa, Tom Lee, Sean O'Leary, Sean O'Leary, Sean O'Leary, Shane Thornton, Sean O'Leary, Sean O'Leary, Sean O'Leary and Tom Lee. There's your top 10. You guys just won spots in the jersey slash team all break. And there you go. That was 1996 1997 SP basketball one pack break random team number one with 10 spots given away in the jersey slash team all mixer. I'm Sean, jaspyscasebreaks.com. Next filler is in the store jaspyscasebreaks.com. Thanks for hanging out. We'll see you next time.