Everyone has been amazing. Thank you to the organizers and also to the very trusting people who have allowed me to hold a talk with such a ridiculous name. Really do appreciate that. So today I want to chat with you all about the importance of building diversity within our community and in general among those who build the web and some practical steps to walk alongside those who are different from you. So if we're being honest with ourselves, we're all different from each other, right? We're going to talk about neurodivergence, poverty, trauma, and then after I've thoroughly freaked everyone out, I'm going to provide a few practical steps to work with others. So I want you to, oops, I think I advanced one too many, or I didn't. I deleted my own slides. So okay, I want you to quickly consider what's called your positionality. So I had definition of positionality. Positionality is basically the situation that you grew up in and how that upbringing has created your own identity. So it is usually a social and political context.  So since we all grew up differently, we all have a different world view. For my positionality, I am a white, US-born, small town Iowa, heterosexual or straight cis female whose first language is English. A few limiting injuries aside, I have no physical injuries or impediments that would be noticeable in my day-to-day life or my work. I grew up within the Presbyterian or PCUSA Christian Denomination that focused heavily on economic opportunities for low income individuals. I have two parents that are teachers and at a very young age, I am a household run by a single mother where we experienced significant economic barriers. These social and political contexts that I grew up in created my identity either through acceptance, modification or rejection of these ideas and the situations I have experienced. So due to this positionality, my experiences, I have a certain epistemology or view of the world. Because not a single person in this world has the same positionality, all have varying epistemologies. This makes our interactions tricky, exciting, and at times exciting. So before I go any farther, I do want to make crystal clear that simply being born white and in the United States gives me a certain level of privilege. Any topic that I discuss here that is not part of my positionality or my actual experiences comes from the ability to access literature on the topic or from very generous friends who are of a different positionality and have taken the time and had the patience to share their experiences with me. Forewarning, I do get very passionate at times and if I feel like a word is above like the PG-14, I will randomly use the word bunnies. So if you hear references to bunnies, there's probably another word in my head, just forewarned. So going forward, designing the internet, is the internet the great hope or is the great divide? How many people in the 90s and early 2000s remember reading information about the internet as being the great hope for challenging poverty? Does anyone remember that? Okay. During that time, all these articles were released about how the internet could be the great equalizer especially in low income areas in developing countries. The idea was with the ability to disperse information throughout the world, disadvantaged communities would be able to access information and even jobs like never before. However, around 2006, 2010, people realized that those glorious hopes were not being realized. Those able to afford technology watched their opportunities flourish while poor communities, in particular communities of color, were kept from the tools necessary to access the web and therefore to access the opportunities that the web provides. So not only is access to the internet creating a divide, those who have been designing the internet or the web, I guess is probably the more accurate way to say it, so all of us in the room, we're not always closely linked to each other because we span across the globe with hugely different positionalities and barriers and experiences that are invisible and less divulged. In other words, even if we do not necessarily connect to people who are in poverty, do we even connect to people that we think we are connecting to? The first group of individuals, oh, hey, there's my positionality slide, quick lance there. So the very first group I want to discuss is those who have a unique yet invisible trait, those of you who are in the neurodivergent community. So those who are neurodivergent have a special brain chemistry that imbues them with unique abilities but can also make it very difficult to follow cultural norms. So there is both biological neurodivergence and acquired neurodivergence. So many are more familiar with biological neurodivergence, predominantly ADHD and if you are on the spectrum. Our work in creating the web, a world within a world, often attracts those who are neurodivergent. The thrill of problem solving, creativity can be especially fascinating to the neurodivergent community. At the same time, the neurodivergent community is not well understood by neurotypical brains. Neurodivergence often requires very clear answers, sometimes even a yes or no, and certain social cues might get lost, especially over the written word. Acquired neurodivergence is a little less known, so it occurs in two main ways. A medical situation or an emotional experience that alters the pathways of the brain. Acquired neurodivergence can be permanent or it can heal partially or fully over time. A great medical example would be a brain injury. I want to focus however on emotional acquired neurodivergence, especially around the topic of trauma. I will go into general trauma later and why it's so important to understand trauma in our communication during this time of the COVID recovery, but I want to touch first on post-traumatic stress disorder, which is more commonly known as PTSD. It is estimated that six out of a hundred people in the United States have PTSD based on reports alone, meaning that only those who have come forth and been diagnosed are counted in this number. Many people who have PTSD are never able to seek assistance. An estimated 3.6 percent of adults in the United States have acquired PTSD in the last year alone. It affects women more often than men, with an estimated 5.2 percent versus 1.8 percent. The effects of PTSD vary greatly from individual to individual, but in general, having PTSD means experiencing moments that seemingly hijack your brain. Being unable to process memories, difficulties in focus, and trusting others. It's not uncommon to be scared most if not all the time, and it's very easy to doubt every interaction that you have. PTSD is invisible and certainly makes communication difficult. So what can neurodivergence look like in an everyday interaction? So I'm going to draw on my personal experiences here. In terms of biological neurodivergence, I am going to share an experience with a coworker and friend who I spoke to and got permission to share this experience with you all. I'm a project manager. I work with the most wonderful diverse group of developers. I'm a better person for knowing each and every one of them. They are very patient with me about my lack of technical knowledge. They teach me and sometimes they even call me down when stressed. So shout out to Chris, my colleague, who is always just like, breathe Cassandra, breathe. Their steadiness and clarity balances my passion and straight up giddiness. And while I truly love them as friends and colleagues, and I'm sure they care for me as well, we annoy the absolute bunnies out of each other sometimes. Some of them might be neurodivergent. I don't know. And it really isn't important that I know. I know that we communicate differently and that sometimes it gets messy. So my department is pretty consistently 150% over capacity. One time we had an employee from another team assist us project managers part time. She was on a particularly difficult task of mine. And I saw a comment from my developer teammate from whom I got permission to share this. I am good friends with him. He is the uncle to my kittens, right? So very truly one of the kindest guys I have ever known. I was not thrilled at his comment though. And I sent him a message that was like, hey, why are you being so rude here? She's helping out. And he said, I'm just laying out facts. How would you have said this? And I was like, okay, well, in my nice indirect, I want nice language. This is how I would say it. And he completely shocked me with his answer. He said, I honestly do not see the difference. I cannot tell in the written word. I cannot understand emotion most time in the written word. And so this is likely neurodivergence talking is at the very least indirect, first direct communication, which in itself leaves a lot of room for misunderstanding messy, right? By the way, if you have this struggle, my friend has continued to deliver information the same way, but he just adds an emoji at the end, like a little smiley face to soften the delivery, to change the tone of the text. Acquired neurodivergence is pretty hard to identify at times. So that was an example of more biological. Acquired neurodivergence is the PTSD that I mentioned earlier. You can know someone for years and not know that they are navigating life while experiencing emotional trauma that has resulted in acquired neurodivergence. So two and a half years ago, I left a domestically violent relationship at the height of COVID.  And while the strongest thing I have ever done and will ever do in my life was leave that situation, it broke my brain. My brain just broke. It stopped working. I could not stop thinking about these incidents. I could not recall memories. I slept all the time and I was looping. So I would say the same thing over and over and over again. And while it certainly has gotten much better, almost two and a half years later, it's still not the same. I don't know if it will ever get completely better. I do know that having that glimpse into a world that others experience every day has made me a better person. And I'm grateful for that. So collective grief and trauma and why this matters. So why PTSD matters, why neurodivergence matters, and why understanding grief and trauma matters. This is my favorite meme from Twitter, probably ever. If you are listening and unable to see the slide, I will read it to you. It says, friend, while over the phone, do you think the quarantine has changed you? Me, while knitting a dress for the raccoons in my backyard? No. Right? This is a hilarious example, but it is amazing how much our life experiences change us and how difficult it is to detect these changes in ourselves even when asked a direct question. So types of trauma, this is just a very quick overview of trauma. So you have what's called acute trauma, which is one example. This could be being robbed, being in a car accident, for example. You could have chronic trauma, which is more like childhood abuse or domestic violence. You could have complex trauma, which are different traumas that map on to each other and begin to remind you. So for example, say that you were in a situation where you experienced childhood abuse. And then you're in interactions where you experienced workplace abuse, and they will remind each other. And the situations will become interlinked, and you will not be able to separate them. That is an example of complex trauma. And do remember that complex trauma can result in neurodivergence. So can result in your brain not feeling like your brain. If you've not had the opportunity to learn about trauma more than this, I want to suggest that you take time diving into TED Talks and literature on the topic. I really suggest that you go and take what's called the ACEs test, which stands for Adversed Childhood Experiences, because especially if you underwent trauma as a child, you might be surprised at some of the information that is provided, and it might perhaps provide you with much-needed grace for yourself. If you did not have significant trauma as a child, it can help you understand another layer of these invisible barriers with those whom you interact. So we are in a situation right now, all of us in this room, where we are experiencing a form of historical trauma. We all have gone through COVID. Everyone in the world has been undergoing COVID. This is absolutely one of the largest shared experiences I hope that we will ever have. Besides world peace, world peace would be great, I'd be so for that shared experience. It is not the same as other types of historical trauma, which are usually within a certain group. For example, the Holocaust was a shared trauma, a historical trauma, for the Jewish community. We of course have slavery in the United States that was a historical trauma whose effects still continue today, genocides, et cetera. So historical trauma will look different as we're experiencing this, but we still have trauma in a way each and every one of us. I was speaking to someone last night and they were like, oh yeah, COVID was great for me. And I was like, how did you feel about not getting to see your friends and family? Oh, that wasn't so great. I am personally very nervous standing here. I have not been in a group of people for a very long time. I certainly haven't done any presentations in a very long time. So I'm experiencing a type of trauma, just simply trying to reemerge into a world that I used to be very comfortable in. So why does this matter? Has anyone heard of trauma responses? Is that something that people are familiar with? Okay. So if you've experienced trauma, you sometimes respond to situations in a way that comes from your trauma rather than from your original thinking brain. So it might be that some people describe it as the knee-jerk reaction, like, oh, I can't believe I said that, right? I just reacted. It is more common for us in this historical trauma moment to have those knee-jerk reactions. And you know, I am watching it happen over the internet every day, oh, Twitter, Twitter with the doom scrolling, right? Just people really getting at each other, feeling criticized and reacting. And maybe people were sensitive before, but you are certainly more sensitive once you have experienced trauma.  So all right, this is my midpoint. You're freaking us out. What do we do? Slide. I grew up watching The Simpsons. I love The Simpsons. So this was just mostly for me, honestly, right here. It's really overwhelming when you think about all of this. When you think about poverty and racism and structural inequities, it is very, very hard to think about practical steps you can take. So I wanted to give some very, very practical steps that we can take in our community and outside of our community. And so the very first one is to literally check yourself.  Could I be nicer?   Just take a deep breath, reflect, check yourself. So I don't know if this was common before I was at my work. We have some kind of explosive clients right now. They are very scared. I am sure that if you are sitting in the audience and you have business sense that's greater than my own, you are wondering what the economy is about to do. So we have some people who are like, I could die any minute. Let's go all in. Let's do it all. And they are full in. And then we have other people who are like, I experienced real hardship during COVID. I am terrified. I do not want to lose my home. I want to make sure there is food on my table and I need to step back. So if you are experiencing clients changing their minds back and forth, keep that in mind that this might be a type of trauma that they are working through. So colleagues, your interpersonal relationships with your colleagues and those trauma responses I mentioned, I certainly do have trauma responses.  And I am very, very lucky that I have a group of individuals who are supportive and can walk me through those. I'm not saying I flip out on people. I'm just saying that it is not hard to misinterpret. It is very, has anyone in here ever been misunderstood? If you all don't raise your hands, then you are just tired. We have all been misunderstood. We have all misunderstood others. So just give yourself that second to just pause and think. I know we're a highly efficient community. We want to go, go, go, go, go. It is okay to pause.   I am ignorant. We are all ignorant because you absolutely cannot possibly have the same experience as everyone else.  That is okay.  I really want to stress, and I apologize, I did not figure out how to say her name ahead of time. Pecha, Pecha maybe is having a talk, was that close? Okay, thank you, of developing cultural intelligence. And if you're interested in that, I want to highly encourage you and tend. She looks amazing, and she will probably go into a lot more detail about this. But please remember, as you interact with people across the globe, that they have different cultural practices at work within their family, within their friends. Even if you are interacting with someone who looks very similar to you and grew up in the same area and has the same religion, they are still different.  So you also don't know what's happening. You don't know if their cat just died or they're going through a divorce. You just don't know these things, right? We actually don't walk around with hashtags over our heads like hashtag neurodivergent, hashtag survivor, right? You don't know these things. So don't assume. You can be best friends with someone, for example, of another race or culture, all your life, and hear hours about their experiences, and you will never get it. You will just never understand. I have a very patient, wonderful friend who is a black woman who lives in Florida. And she has explained to me some of her experiences, and while I am horrified, I will never understand what it is like to be her.  So speaking last night, it was very interesting with Alan, right Carol, whose technical skills are far beyond my own. He's a software, he was talking about software, and he brought up the importance of learning different software languages, because if you only learn one, then it's difficult to identify what other specific languages, what is very specific to that language, versus what is kind of universal to different software languages. And I think that's a great example of cultures and languages. The more you learn, right, the more you understand the beauty of uniqueness and diversity, and also how things are different. If you are listening to this, and I just have to make this comment, if you are listening to this and you are white, especially if you are a white male, and you have felt the defensiveness flick up, send it to the back seat.  You do get to challenge it. You do get to look every day at others as equals and try to rip down this unfair system and rebuild it. And especially those of you creating the web, you get to do this for others all around the world, and that is super important. So I could not leave this talk without talking about assessments. So some people are very data-driven. They connect better with data, and that's great.  I feel like personality assessments are more reflective of those who create them than those who are taking them. If you ever have a consultant that wants to start with a personality assessment, maybe reconsider that consultant for the record. There are great things to pull from certain assessments, though. So the two assessments that I want to suggest if you're interested in assessments and taking is the Strengths Finder Assessment and the Disk Communication Assessment. When I say take, I mean it's great when you take the Strengths Finders, because you're like, oh, hey, I can put this on my resume, someone said what I can do really easily right here, talking points, woohoo, that's awesome. More important is looking at your strength and realizing how it ostracizes other people. So how your strength makes it difficult to connect to others. And I will give you an example from my own Strength Finder. So input is one of my strengths, and I, sorry, I have to read this because it's not from my own brain. You are likely to archive, that is preserve, your discoveries so you can use them later. Because of your strengths, you see yourself as highly qualified to perform specialized tasks.  Normal language, by the way, ordinary person, thumbs down. Adding words to your professional vocabulary indicates that your knowledge base is expanding. As a result, you can converse more easily with experts about a subject. Furthermore, you can understand what they are saying to one another. So I'm a smarty pants, that's awesome. I'm cool with that. I'm not cool with speaking in a way that ostracizes other people. And makes them feel like just because they don't know my specific vocabulary, that they somehow don't understand what I'm talking about. I have to be very intentional to use language that is not set only in my field.  Don't do that. You're missing out on so many wonderful things when you cannot communicate across the board. That's a big problem of mine. I really have had to work on that. I have other areas that I also need to work on, and you can look through my Strengths Finder and you can easily find them.  Also look at what you might be doing to others based on your own strengths. The other assessment I like, which is a great one, is the Disk Assessment. So Disk is just more or less how you communicate.  I will tell you absolutely your life experiences change your communication style. I took this Disk Assessment several years ago, probably like five or six years ago, and I was a strong D. So I was dominant speaker with an S, supportive. After going through domestic violence, I am much more on that CS. Black people frequently are within the C category because they are taught to make space for white people to talk. And physically, step back so that white people have space.  Give them space. It is not a person of color's responsibility to push themselves into a conversation. So building a diverse community to reflect a diverse world. Is anyone in here into ADA? Does ADA work? No? Maybe? Sort of. Oh, hands. Thank you. Thank you for raising your hand. So I have just recently learned about ADA. I have a developer on my team who is very kind and has even shown me things like the Wave tool. And he actually has spoken to me about his desire to, from the onset, as you are even speaking with clients to design products, websites, et cetera, from the very beginning, make it about ADA. The clients are trusting you. So present the information as if it's absolutely vital. Very important. Very, very, I would hope simple thing to do. But something that we need to become part of our cultural norms is to build things from the onset in the framework of ADA. An equitable world means implementing equitable practices within our whole system. So it's not only about hiring to check a box, like the diversity box, like, hey, we did some diversity. What's up? What's up? That's great. But you actually have to design a world of equality by providing tools that are meant to increase equality. And this is when I am going to slightly get on a soapbox. So the whole adage of, like, well, I wanted to hire a woman.  Sorry, Mitt Romney. You're never going to get away with that. None were qualified. I wanted to hire a person of color. None were qualified. There are whole workshops that break down the preconceived notions based on prejudices. And I am not qualified to give that talk. I encourage you to go to one of those talks. But if you're insistent that this is the case, that there are not qualified people of color to be hired, then you need to make a pathway. So I used to be in the nonprofit world. And I was doing economic impact programming, which is a fancy way of saying using volunteers to help kids read was a big thing. And there is a company. I was in Manatee County, Florida. There's a company called ITWGSE. They are aerospace engineers for the government. And they have been donating to the organization with whom I worked for years. And they wanted to be more involved. So we created a system for them to have people rotating to volunteer to read with children. And they weren't exactly sure if they were making a difference, I think. At first, they really got into it, and that was great. But over time, they built these relationships with the school. They got to know the populations. By the way, I believe, I did not look it up, I believe Palm View, the school is about 80% children of color, mostly the Latinx and Latinx and Black children, high second language learners in that area. So over time, they created these relationships with the school. They started helping the school apply for technology grants. And now they have this little known funding called the WASNIAC grants, which I'm hoping I said correctly. And people are hopefully understanding a little bit maybe what that means. So this school that was so horrifically underfunded has now been provided technology for children who are hoping that they have meals when they leave school. And their parents are being provided with support to not only teach their children but learn themselves. And that came from a company deciding to read with children. I think it's about seven years later, but you can build pathways. You can choose to build pathways. If you're not sure how to do it, if there's not a non-profit or an agency in your area that can help you do it, you have my information. I would be happy to help you do it. I cannot imagine the number of lives those five volunteers who started out will change over the course of time. So we want to drive people toward equity through education, support, and being so creative that you come up with something that people just they want, they desire to have. Put effort into equity, put heart into equity, and let creativity drive equity. Try to understand each other. Try to understand that you can't understand each other. I think it's easiest to understand people when I'm like, I have no idea what you've experienced.   You matter. If you're uncomfortable with this, good. I'm uncomfortable with this. I have placed myself in communities that I used to work with migrant workers. I worked with a group of migrant workers from Guatemala who had fled to the United States. They had put their youngest children and older adults into a city in Guatemala City because the village next to them had been slaughtered. So they moved everyone in, came to the United States. Some of them had tuberculosis, I think. No access to healthcare, food, and they would send all the money they could back to Guatemala. I don't really care what your politics are. You can't understand that. You can never understand what it's like to flee your hometown into a world that probably is going to hate you. You can't get it. So I was with them, and I'm still terrified to step in it when I talk to other people. I am so afraid I'm going to be insensitive, and you know what, that's okay. It's okay because the alternative is to isolate myself and not try to understand, and that is unacceptable. Everyone in this community is so kind. I told people this was like my first word camp, and I was like scared out of my socks about speaking. Don't worry. Everyone wants you to do well. You're going to be great. It's totally fine. Awesome. More people should get to experience this. We are not diverse until we have 51% people of color in these rooms. We are not diverse until we are openly ensuring accessibility. We are welcoming. I have to say I did not work this into my talk. The trans community, we see you. We're here for you. We need to be more vocal about it. This community is beautiful. Please don't keep it siloed. Please try to understand each other. My boyfriend has ADHD. I have learned a lot. I am certainly, he also has a podcast about it if you're interested. Talk to me about that later. If you want to make the world a more equitable place, you can. It's hard. It's a long road. We have a long way to go. If you want to make people feel accepted and loved, you can. You can. So use your voice. Use your power of designing the web to create as beautiful, diverse, and maybe even terrifying a world as the one we live in. Thank you so much for coming. And please feel free to, you know, at me or email me or whatnot.


Mini is back, and so am I. There's no good without bed, and apropos good in bed. Today we're going to discuss malignant covert narcissus. You've never had this one before, but it tends to reason that if there is a malignant version of the overt grandiose narcissist, there should be a malignant version of the covert fragile, vulnerable, shy narcissist. And indeed, there is. My name is Sam Wakni, and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love and Narcissism Revisited, a former visiting professor of psychology, and a not-so-shy member of the faculty of SEAPS. It is commonly accepted that there is a variant of overt grandiose narcissism known as malignant narcissism. It's the unsavory combination of sadism, psychopathy, and narcissism, the perfect trifecta, your dream partner. Indeed, some scholars suggest that what we call overt grandiose narcissism is actually a form of psychopathy, and that the only real narcissism is covert compensatory. There's an innate bed object, an inferiority complex, feelings of inadequacy, of unworthiness, of being unlovable, and the compensation is to appear to be godlike, to insist on one's perfection and brilliance, omniscience, and omnipotence. So this is where the field is heading, focusing on the compensatory aspects of narcissism. And apparently, covert narcissism is irreconcilable, cannot be put together with malignant narcissism. Because malignant narcissism is in your face, it's defiant, it's reckless, it's contumacious authority rejecting, it's in short grandiose, it's aggressive, even violent, it's sadistic. These are not typical traits of a covert narcissist. How can we put the two together? This I will attempt to do in today's video, because I firmly believe from my experience that there is such a thing as covert malignant narcissism. Now malignant narcissism in the covert version is also compensatory. In other words, we have two layers of compensation. The original covert narcissism compensates for inferiority and the bed object. And then there is a second layer of compensation, which is the malignancy, malignant narcissism. Why do we need or why does the covert narcissist need two layers of compensation? Because of the collapse. Covert narcissists are in a permanent state of collapse. They are frustrated. They are inefficacious. They are losers. They never succeed to attract narcissistic supply, to accomplish things, to become famous, to draw attention to themselves, and so on and so forth. This permanent state of collapse resonates with a bed object and reinforces it. It is as if constant failure, repeated defeats, they affirm and confirm and buttress and uphold the covert narcissist's innate or inner self-perception as a loser, as a nobody, as a no good, as an unworthy, unlovable person. So the covert narcissist has a problem. Unlike the overt or grandiose narcissist, increasingly it becomes more difficult to lie to himself or to herself about the state of things, about his or her life. As the covert narcissist keeps tumbling from one failure to another, from one defeat to another, from one frustrated strategy to another, from one hair-brain scheme to another, from one failed attempt to attract attention to another, as these reminders of collapse accumulate the covert narcissist's constellation of self-defeating, self-destructive, self-rejecting and self-loathing inner voices. They become louder and they become much more convincing and the covert narcissist needs to compensate for this by adopting a posture of malignancy by becoming a malignant narcissist. So whereas in the overt grandiose version of narcissism, the malignancy, malignant narcissism has to do with an emphasis or an exaggeration of antisocial traits and sadism in the covert narcissist. The malignant compensation has to do with a desperate attempt to somehow silence, repress the bad object inside the covert narcissist. It's when the initial primary compensation fails, malignant compensation is a secondary compensation. So in the overt grandiose narcissist, we have narcissism and when this narcissism is extrapolated, when this narcissism is emphasized and exaggerated and writ large, it becomes malignant. In the covert narcissist, there's an initial posture, initial posture of inferiority, of failure, of defeat, of self-deprecation, of frustration, of self-directed aggression. That's the initial posture. Then there is a compensatory layer, which is the covert narcissism, the belief, although this belief is rarely communicated or verbalized, but the belief in one's own superiority, one's own brilliance, one's own perfection. So this is the first layer of compensation. But when confronted with the vicissitudes and exigencies of life with constant failure and defeat, the covert narcissist can no longer maintain this self-deception, this facade. And he resorts to malignant compensation, the second layer of compensation, second level of compensation. And through the malignant compensation, he tries, the covert narcissist tries to somehow restore himself or herself, the gender pronouns are interchangeable, to restore themselves into a state of functioning. Malignant narcissism, therefore, is compensatory in covert narcissism, and it's a last resort. I'd like to read to you something from the amazing poem, The Rhyme of the Ancient Marina, like one that on a lonesome road, Doth walk in fear and dread, and having once turned around, walks on and turns no more his head, because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him, dread. This is a perfect encapsulation of the covert narcissist's dread of his or her own shame, the truth of his or her own inferiority and inadequacy and incompetence and incompatibility with the world, inability to exact and extricate positive outcomes from the environment, a lack of self-efficacy. The narcissist, the covert narcissist, knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him, dread. And so he never turns around, he never turns around because of the terror of coming face to face with himself, because the fiend is the covert narcissist himself or herself. So this is the background. To understand how malignant narcissism compensates for problems and issues in covert narcissism, I need to introduce it to the concept of externalization. Now externalization is a defense mechanism where one's thoughts and feelings and perceptions are attributed to the external world, not internally. They're perceived as if they're coming from the outside, independent of oneself, independent of one's experiences. And production is a private case of externalization, is when we attribute to other people elements of ourselves, traits of ourselves that we're ashamed of, that we reject in ourselves, that we would not like to have. So if we are weak, we would say that, yo, if someone else is weak, this is projection. And it's again a case, a private case of externalization. Externalization is the process of learning to distinguish between self and the environment and usually occurs during childhood. Again, a private case of externalization is othering, realizing that other people exist, that they are external to yourself, and that they're separate from you, and have their own life, preferences, priorities, emotions, cognitions, wishes, dreams. This is a form of externalization, othering. I dedicate several videos of this channel to othering. But there is another manifestation of externalization, which is more relevant to our video today. It is the process by which a drive, some drive, is aroused by external stimuli, not by internal stimuli. So while a normal person would feel hunger and seek food, someone with an externalization problem would come across food and this would arouse in him or hunger. So internal states are triggered by external stimuli in externalization. Similarly, the psychopath, for example, is bound to become aggressive when confronted with other people. So this aggression is a form of externalization. It's not that the psychopath was angry and then he met people. He meets people and this makes him angry. Externalization is a crucial dynamic and process in narcissism. These narcissists are incapable of perceiving the externality of objects. They're incapable of grasping that, for example, other people are out there separate from them what narcissists do. They internalize everything. So narcissists have the opposite externalization problem. Rather than react to external stimuli and then develop an internal state, an inner process, the narcissist develops an inner process, an internal state of mind based on the conversion of external objects into internal objects. That's in a nutshell.  I'm going to use Cooper, the late Cooper and Akhtar's table dated 1989, the cornerstone of covert narcissism studies. I'm going to read from this table and then I'm going to demonstrate to you how the covert narcissist develops malignant narcissism as a compensation for the problems and issues and conundrums that are presented by Cooper and Akhtar's table. Start with self-concept. Cooper and Akhtar say that the covert narcissist is in a state of inferiority, morose self-doubts, marked propensity toward feeling ashamed, fragility, relentless search for glory and power, marked sensitivity to criticism, hypervigilance, and realistic setbacks. So this is the background. This is a psychological background of the covert narcissist. This is the land the covert narcissist inhabits. This is constant state of mind and it's intolerable. It's unbearable. It's difficult to live with. And so the covert narcissist compensates for this by developing malignancy. He becomes a malignant narcissist. It's a form of malignant compensation but unique to the covert narcissist. Whereas the malignant compensation in overt grandiose narcissists is to be more overt and more grandiose and more anti-social and more psychopathic and more of everything. In the covert narcissist the malignancy is more nuanced. So the covert narcissist problem with self-concept is solved via several mechanisms. Number one, grandiosity. But this is a type of grandiosity. I would call it latent grandiosity. It's an inner conviction that the covert narcissist has that he is superior, that he is brilliant, that he is perfect, that he is godlike but he never verbalizes it. He never communicates it. It's not ostentatious as is the case with narcissists, classic narcissists, psychopaths. The covert narcissist grandiosity is an inner dialogue, an internal dialogue between the covert narcissist and himself. And yet it forms a part of the malignant compensation in the covert narcissist because the covert narcissist uses this inner conviction of his inflated fantastic self-image. He uses it to offset, to somehow defray or somehow ameliorate and mitigate the sense of inferiority, the self-doubts, the shame, the fragility, the vulnerability. And this grandiosity drives the covert narcissists to what Akhtar and Cooper called a relentless search for glory and power. Covert narcissists under the radar, under the cover, is very driven, very ambitious. I would say insidiously and virulently so. His ambition is toxic, all-consuming, obsessive, compulsive, virtually insane. This is the only way he can survive somehow against the waves of shame that sweep over him time and again, whereas the grandiose overt narcissist is able to isolate himself from the shame. There's a barrier, there's a firewall between the grandiose narcissist and the reservoir of life-threatening shame at the core of the narcissist. The covert narcissist has failed in doing this. It's another form of collapse. The covert narcissist is in constant contact with this ominous menacing shame that threatens to overwhelm him, overpower him, and drown him. In short, this shame threatens to dysregulate the covert narcissists, reduce the covert narcissists into a state akin or reminiscent of borderline personality. So to fight this off, the covert narcissist inhabits a paracrossan, a fantasy, an internal, not shared, but internal fantasy, idiosyncratic, unique, individual fantasy, where he is godlike. He is the god of that fantasy. He's the godhead of that fantasy. This grandiosity is a bulwark, a defense against the shame, the self-doubt, the sense of inferiority, and so on and so forth. Another element in the malignant compensation for the self-concept problem is psychopathy. The covert narcissist, when exposed to stress, anxiety, environmental challenges, utter collapse, modification, the covert narcissist becomes a primary psychopath. I have a video dedicated to this. I encourage you to look for it in the Comorbidities playlist on this channel. He becomes a primary psychopath. The same way a borderline, someone with borderline personality disorder, becomes a secondary psychopath when exposed to abandonment, rejection, and humiliation. The covert narcissist becomes a primary psychopath when exposed to the same ambient or environmental cues and circumstances. So the primary psychopath is callous, exploitative, manipulative, Machiavellian, and the covert narcissist suddenly transforms, adopts another self-state and transitions from a doormat to a bully in an instant. And then he becomes psychopathic. There's a sense of immunity to the consequences of his actions, recklessness, a lot of projection of the parts that the covert narcissist is ashamed of or cannot tolerate. He attributes them to other people. And overwhelming sadism. The sadism in malignant covert narcissist is much more pronounced, much more pervasive, much more dangerous, much more cruel than the sadism in malignant overt narcissist. The overt narcissist, the malignant overt narcissist is much less sadistic than the malignant covert narcissist. And the reason is that the covert narcissist is sadistic to start with. The covert narcissist is constantly frustrated, and this frustration is converted and transformed and transmutes into aggression. So the covert narcissist constantly accumulates aggression. And this aggression is coupled with envy, with hatred, what we call negative effects. And when you put all this together, this seething cauldron, this when you put it together, it's a witch's brew. And when the covert narcissist transitions to a psychopathic malignant self-state, his sadism shines through. It's as if this new self-state legitimizes the sadism.  It's an affirmation of his omnipotence and godlike qualities. So this is the malignant compensation for self-concept issues in covert narcissism. Next on the Cooper and Akhtar table of covert narcissism, 1989, is interpersonal relationships. They say the covert narcissist is unable to genuinely depend on others and trust them. There's chronic envy of others' talents, possessions and capacity for deep-object relations. There's a lack of regard for generational boundaries. There's a disregard for other people's time and a refusal to be responsive and reactive. They give example that the covert narcissist refuses to answer letters. So the covert narcissist's interpersonal relationships are the ratification and manifestation and embodiment of the covert narcissist's steaming, seething, volcanic inner space where he is constantly in pain, constantly hurt by life's slings and arrows, by his negativistic attitude, by the belief that he's constantly discriminated against, overlooked, unappreciated, demoted, hated, criticized. The covert narcissist spends an inordinate amount of time hunting for slides and insults and imagining in his sick mind payback and retribution. He cannot therefore depend on other people and trust them because he attributes to them his state of mind, he projects.  All gender pronouns are interchangeable. So he is unable to incorporate himself into any social unit or structure to engage in any form of social intercourse or discourse.  And passive-aggression is an element of malignant compensation together with fantasy, introjection and sadism. When the covert narcissist encounters and experiences difficulties in interpersonal relationships, which make it almost impossible for him to obtain secure, regular narcissistic supply from the environment, so this leads inexorably and invariably to a state of collapse. To compensate for this, the covert narcissist creates a fantastic internal space, a paracorsum, we mentioned it before, and inhabits this space and only this space. Covert narcissists are nearly psychotic, they are more psychotic than overt narcissists, they are more withdrawn, their reality testing is much more impaired, they interject much more, they convert the external objects, other people, separate people, external people, they convert them into internal objects and they are sadistic and passive-aggressive within this fantastic space and in reality, actually, and this is the malignant version of covert narcissism. The next part of the table has to do deals with social adaptation, Cooper and Akhtar described the covert in these terms, nagging aimlessness, shallow vocational commitment, dilettant like attitudes, multiple but superficial interests, chronic boredom, aesthetic taste of an ill-informed and imitative, and of course, this is an excellent encapsulation of the psychopath. Psychopaths are exactly like this, this characterizes psychopath 100%. So here, the malignant compensation sits well, coheres with who the covert narcissist anyhow is, with who the covert narcissist is at all times. In short, what I'm trying to say is that covert narcissism includes a pronounced element or pronounced elements of psychopathy. Covert narcissists are much closer to primary psychopathy in disrespect when it comes to social functioning and social adaptation and interpersonal relationships and so on and so forth. So there is an interesting mirror image here. The covert narcissist is much more narcissistic than the overt narcissist when it comes to internal processes, the inner landscape, the psychology, then the covert narcissist is more narcissistic than the overt narcissist. But when it comes to the environment, circumstances, other people, interpersonal relationships, social functioning, and so on and so forth, the covert actually is usually more psychopathic than the overt. For example, the overt or grandiose narcissist is more likely to collaborate with other people, to work in teams, to obtain a goal. Yes, there will be a lot of friction, a lot of infighting, a lot of ego trips and power plays and mind games, all true. But at least the covert grandiose narcissist is capable in principle of mobilizing multiple people and creating ad hoc coalitions and alliances to obtain goals. The covert narcissist is utterly incapable of this. That's why covert narcissists are loners, majority of them are loners. Now, even when the covert narcissist pretends to be someone he is not, a wolf in sheep's clothing, when the covert narcissist pretends to be a victim of narcissistic abuse or when he pretends to be empathic or when he pretends to be kind and nice and compassionate and helpful. Even when the covert narcissist plays a play act, adopts a role that is divorced from reality, the reality of who he is. Even then, it devolves very fast into a loner position. Even when the covert narcissist becomes a cult leader, there's only one cult leader. The members of the cult are interjects, they're extensions, they don't really exist. Even when the covert narcissist becomes politician, he aspires to work alone and to be sui generis, to be a unique case. Covert narcissists are really bad at working with other people because it triggers their insecurities, their self-doubts, their sense of inferiority, they become envious, then they destroy everything, they're very self-defeating and self-destructive. And of course, the malignant compensation for this is grandiosity. So ironically, covert narcissists, although their grandiosity is not expressed, is not manifested, is unobservable, is not ostentatious, is hidden, is latent and covert narcissists are very good at deceiving people by pretending to be humble. This is known as pseudo-humility in clinical terms. They play humble. But actually, the grandiosity of covert narcissists far exceeds the grandiosity of the overt grandiose narcissists. And that's the irony. The covert narcissists needs to triple quadruple and quintuple his grandiosity just in order to compensate for the gaping hole that is left in him by constant collapse and failure and defeat and the admonitions and injunctions of the bad object. So while the overt grandiose narcissists' grandiosity is a cognitive distortion, the covert narcissists' grandiosity is actually a malignant compensation. And in this sense, the covert narcissists' grandiosity is identical to the grandiosity of the psychopath, because psychopaths also have grandiosity. Grandiosity is not unique to narcissists, by the way. It's a common mistake online, where people confuse grandiosity with narcissism.  Most psychopaths are grandiose. All narcissists are grandiose, but grandiosity is a common denominator. It doesn't mean that they are one and the same. Same goes for covert narcissism. But in covert narcissism, the grandiosity is so outlandish, so all-consuming, so fantastic, so aggressive, so demanding, so shocking, so I would say surrealistic that the covert narcissists' grandiosity is very reminiscent of the psychopath's grandiosity. The next part of the table, Cooper and Akhtar's table of covert narcissists, the next part is ethics, standards, and ideals. They say that the covert narcissists possesses a readiness to shift values in order to gain favor, pathological lying, materialistic lifestyle, delinquent tendencies, inordinate ethnic and moral relativism, irreverence toward authority, and again coming to the same conclusion. This is a perfect description of the psychopath. This is exactly what the psychopath is. So it would seem that the Cooper and Akhtar are describing the malignant compensation of the covert narcissists. This is how the covert narcissists compensates for his innate insecurity, uncertainty, doubt, fears, anxiety, sense of being less than good, less than sufficient, inadequate, failure, and so on and so forth. He compensates for this by actually becoming a primary psychopath. So whereas the malignant transformation of the ordinary narcissists, the classic, the overt, the grandiose narcissists, the malignant transformation has to do with the combination of sadism and psychopathy, but with pronounced narcissistic aspects and traits. In the covert narcissists, the malignant transformation or the malignant compensation is psychopathy coupled with sadism.  It's as if the covert says, look here, I've tried to be a narcissist, but I'm not doing this well. I keep failing. I keep collapsing. I don't want to be a narcissist anymore.  I want to be a sadist. So the covert narcissists, when his narcissism fails, when he collapses, transitions to a self state which is essentially sadistic and psychopathic in pure terms without narcissism or where the narcissism is not a main component, not a major component. Let me summarize this for you because it's a very important clinical distinction. The ordinary classical run of the mill overt grandiose narcissists, some of them develop malignancy and then they become narcissists who are also psychopaths and sadists. The narcissism is very, very dominant. The psychopathy is at the surface of narcissism. The sadism is a way to extract sadistic supply, which is a form of narcissistic supply. It's all about narcissism. The overt grandiose narcissists does not cease to be a narcissist when he becomes malignant. On the very contrary, his malignancy emphasizes his narcissism. This is the overt, the overt. The covert narcissism is exactly the opposite. The covert narcissists discard his narcissism because his narcissism has failed, led him to constant pain and collapse and self recrimination and humiliation. He doesn't want to be a narcissist anymore. It's not working. Instead, he is transitioning to a self state of psychopathy, pure psychopathy and sadism, pure sadism. So the covert narcissists spends a lot of time as a narcissist and sometime as a pure primary psychopath who is also a sadist. And this is the dichotomy of the covert narcissists. This is what we don't see in overt narcissism. The overt narcissists is always a narcissist.  The overt narcissists is a narcissist when he's a sadist. But the covert narcissists is not a narcissist when he's a psychopath. He is not a narcissist, not primarily when he's a sadist. And this is a very important distinction. What about love and sexuality? According to Akhtar and Cooper, the covert narcissist has an inability to remain in love, an impaired capacity for viewing the romantic partner as a separate individual with his or her own interests, rights and values, and inability to genuinely comprehend the inses taboo and occasional sexual perversions. The malignant compensation here is psychopathy, sadism, but above all, auto-erotism. The covert narcissist, and this is common also to the overt, but the common, but less pronounced, and the frequency is reduced in overt narcissism. There's an overt narcissism, there's a process called sublimation. The sex drive is converted into socially acceptable behaviors and goals and accomplishments. The covert narcissist is unable to accomplish anything, unable to realize anything.  And so the covert narcissist, when the covert narcissist tries to convert his emotions, erotic emotions, romantic emotions, sexual drive, when he tries to convert them, he doesn't convert them into socially acceptable goals because he's unable to accomplish goals. The covert narcissist converts them into auto-erotism.  The covert narcissist is attracted sexually to himself. The covert narcissist arouses himself by looking at his body, touching his body and so on and so forth, but he does this by sadistically humiliating and degrading, willing, consenting partners, for example, submissive partners. So the sadism here is at the service of auto-erotism.  And this is coupled with psychopathy in the sense that the covert narcissist would not hesitate to pray on vulnerable people in order to convert them or to use them as submissive, albeit willing and consenting fully partners, so as to uphold his auto-erotism. Again, the solutions are very different here. When the overt narcissist becomes malignant, his sexuality is other directed. It may be a sexuality that we would find abhorrent or unacceptable, for example, extreme types of king or sadomasal or whatever, but it would still be other directed. It would be auto-erotic, but it would be collaborative, shall we say. While the covert narcissist unable to convert sex, love into socially acceptable modes, what he would do, he would pray, would become predator and pray on vulnerable potential partners, convert them to the cause of degradation and humiliation and submissiveness, thereby satisfying or slaking his, sating his own sadism, and this would arouse him sexually in his attraction to himself. So the covert narcissist would be attracted, would arouse himself by perceiving himself as irresistible. Through other people, through his partner's gaze, through his degraded and humiliated partner's gaze, the covert narcissist convinces himself that he is irresistible, finds himself irresistible, and makes love to himself auto-erotically. The humiliation and the degradation of the partner has to be not only consensual, but enthusiastic as far as the partner is concerned, because of the element of irresistibility, covert narcissist needs to feel that he is amazing, unique, top performer, irresistible, drop dead gorgeous, you name it. And this can be, he can obtain this kind of sensation of feeling only if the partner indeed finds him this way, or at least communicates this way. And finally, cognitive style. Akhtar and Cooper say that the covert narcissist's knowledge is limited to trivia, headline intelligence. The covert narcissist is forgetful of details, especially names, impaired in the capacity for learning new skills, has a tendency to change meanings of reality when facing a threat to self-esteem. Language and speaking are used for regulating self-esteem. The malignant compensation in this case is grandiosity. Grandiosity and, but it is grandiosity that is coupled with kind of intellectual laziness, if you wish, entitlement. The covert narcissist, because his grandiosity is much bigger than the overt narcissist, albeit never expressed, his entitlement is much bigger. The covert narcissist appears to be lazy or indolent, appears to be laid back, but actually it's because the covert narcissist believes that he is entitled to everything, and everyone's attention and property and reputation and accomplishments and so on, without any commensurate effort, without any investment, without any study, without any work. This is the malignant compensation for the problems with cognitive style that the covert narcissist possesses. In short, covert narcissism is a much more complex condition than overt narcissism, because covert narcissism is a state of collapse. It's when overt narcissism failed and failed, and in this sense, covert narcissists are comparable psychodynamically to borderline, people with borderline, as borderline is also a failure of overt narcissism. The covert borderline compensates for this failure and the feelings of shame that this failure induces. It compensates for this, by becoming a primary psychopath, and this gives rise to malignant covert narcissism. It's a primary psychopath who is also sadistic to a large extent and operates through a variety of defense mechanisms, cognitive distortions, and behavioral strategies that I've described in this video. It is time to explore the malignant version or malignant variant of covert narcissism. I suspect that it's much more common among covert narcissists than among overt narcissists. We believe that 3% of overt narcissists are also malignant. I would not be shocked to find that something like 15 to 20% of covert narcissists are actually malignant, and the malignancy of covert narcissism is far, far more accentuated and a lot more dangerous to society than the malignancy of the overt narcissists. While the overt narcissists malignancy is socially disruptive, hurts people, undermines situations and projects and so on and so forth, the covert narcissists malignancy is covert and therefore it's rich and it's infiltration and its invasiveness is comparable to cancer. It's much bigger, it's aggressively, aggressively multiplies and aggressively infiltrates and invades healthy tissue, healthy social tissue. So even if we were to accept that overt narcissists are actually primary psychopaths and that the malignant version of overt narcissism is just the addition of sadism, we would still have to somehow tackle the fact, the indisputable fact that covert narcissists act psychopathically very, very often and when they do, they're literally indistinguishable from psychopaths, primary psychopaths. This is a major problem because you can't see them coming, they're great camouflage and disguise as I mentioned, pseudo humility here and so it's a topic that bears a focus on, I think it should be the next hot button topic in narcissism, in the study of narcissism. Thank you for listening.


I'm the owner and president of the over-the-top aviation Inc. We've been here in Cache, Arkansas for four years and been flying for, I think this is my 29th year, flying helicopters, doing an aerial application. I actually went to school to become an AMP mechanic and my first job that I got was working with guys that were spraying with helicopters and after I got my first helicopter ride at about the age of 18, I was hooked and so then I spent every waking minute trying to get my license, you know, and so I worked as an AMP in an IA for about three or four years after I got out of school while I was continually building my hours and then a group of farmers, a friend of mine had a company, or a group of farmers actually started a company and a friend of mine was flying for them and we started flying for that group of farmers in about, I started in 1994 for that group and then we flew for them for, they owned the company until 2008 and he and I bought that company and then in 2018 I decided his sons were getting older and we just decided it was time that we kind of went different ways there. So I moved over here and been here ever since. That's all we primarily treat rice. Rice is our biggest crop. We do some soybeans, some corn as well. We do herbicide, fungicide, insecticide applications on those crops and we do a good bit of fertilize application as well, you know, dry granular. We do that with our airplanes. We have the helicopter and then we have a 502 air tractor and 802 air tractor that we use both in the spraying and the fertilizing as well. What makes aerial application with a helicopter different than fixed wing aircraft is I can slow down or I can spray from anywhere from 60 miles an hour to 85 or 90 miles an hour and especially, you know, it does well in big fields but it can do well in tight areas as well where our power lines and trees and things but it also, you know, does a good job out in the crop.  All the different technologies now. We've got clear field rice and provisional rice and different things like that and we try to be precise in those applications. So our helicopter is a 68 model UH-1H. It actually saw action and went to service in Vietnam in 1970. The guy that actually flew it when it was brand new in Vietnam looked up the serial number several years ago and came in and kind of, we did a test flight with it with him in there and he really liked that and but that, we got the aircraft from Atlanta Police Department and we took it through certification and got it, you know, in restricted category and so that was kind of a long process and that was in 2002 that we did that and so I've been flying the same aircraft since 2002.  It has, you know, GPS and flow control and so we can dial in exactly what we do. We can do as applied maps and we can do, you know, shape files if we have a farmer that needs that and just, you know, it's a purpose-built machine for the aerial application.


Elijah McClain's mother wiped tears from her eyes as a verdict was read Monday but quitting a second Denver-area police officer in the 2019 death of her son.Two of three officers to face trials so far avoided prison time after being found not guilty.I am the most recent trial, a 12-person jury found Aurora officer Nathan Woodyard, who put McClain in the neck hold, not guilty of homicide and manslaughter following a weeks-long trial in state district court. He faced years in prison if convicted.Shaneen McClain sat in the front row of the courtroom and left with a fist raised high, just as she did after the first trial last month against two other officers. She declined to comment, but a supporter who accompanied her called the verdict pathetic and assigned that the justice system was not changing.Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said outside the courthouse with the prosecuting attorneys by his side that his office was undeterred in its pursuit of justice for Elijah McClain.A third officer was convicted in the earlier trial of the lesser charges he faced negligent homicide and third degree assault.Two paramedics from the Aurora fire department are awaiting trial later this month. Unlike the first two officers who were prosecuted, Woodyard took the stand during his trial. But we respect the jury system and we accept the outcome.We remained undeterred in our pursuit of accountability and justice for Elijah McClain. At this moment, I'm thinking about Shaneen McClain, who has fought hard to keep her son's memory alive and to live on as a blessing. No mother should go through what she has gone through. We must all do what we can to stop the unlawful and unnecessary use of force that can result at people dying at the hands of law enforcement. As I've said before, only then will we have true justice and accountability. I am very proud and grateful for the team behind me and those who worked on this case. They presented strong cases against the officer involved in the death of Elijah McClain on trial here and just in a few weeks the trial against the paramedics will begin and I know the team handling that case will do their very best work.


So we have an interesting little update on Canada's Wonderland today I was gonna release this yesterday, but me and my team wanted to sit down and fully digest what we were looking at So we've grown we're gonna go over a lot of options here today Or I should say tonight because this video is gonna be released really late We honestly had like a good two-hour conversation literally like five minutes ago Before recording this to just fully digest what we were looking at But for those of you that don't remember over the summer, we were looking at some really interesting Kind of things going on around Mindbuster a lot of conversation about Mindbuster's future had already begun in the season Before now and it keeps honestly getting more interesting the more we learn or the more we see a Lot of you and a me myself have been kind of hopping back and forth between wild beast Mindbuster RMC wild beast RMC Mindbuster GCI this GCI that We've been leaving out a few other options. So this is where things get a little more interesting we know That Mindbuster is one of the older attractions in the park and wood coasters tend to not age the best Especially up in a Canadian environment But before I go into details I just want to stress that amusement insiders does not have any inside information on Mindbuster Amusement insiders does not know what's going to happen to Mindbuster So for those of you that are watching please understand that this is a rumors and speculation video on Mindbuster And until we see solid facts like an RMC truck or GCI truck or get like, you know documents from the city That happened to get leaked all around the world For other projects until we see something like that. Nothing is concrete So watching this video definitely just understand that amusement insiders is not saying this is going to happen We are just entertaining the idea for mere fun and speculation So let's get right into it for those of you that had keen eyes in yesterday's video You can see that Mindbuster most certainly has some bulldozing or land clearing going on around it Along with the construction trailers that have been there for the last two to three months now You can also see someone kind of looking up at the break run of Mindbuster You can see again the land clearing going on which is super interesting And if you look really closely there is I might actually insert it if you took the image I took on my drone and zoomed in it looks like they ripped up some wires that are at the base of Mindbusters hill There's like little like almost like trenches like just almost like small clearings or dugout sections Which look like they would be digging out electrical wires coming from the base of Mindbusters hill There's no evidence of the land clearing heading towards Yukon strikers, so it does stop right at the base of the lift of Mindbuster, which is super interesting so Again, it could be for Yukon striker, but I'm not seeing any evidence of that being the case yet From my understanding and when I watched and recorded earlier in the season electrical for Yukon striker was done Actually, it was one of the first things they did for Yukon striker I feel like this is like every time I say Yukon striker I'm saying it too much in this video, but yes back on track, so it's very interesting So you have the land clearing you have the electrical companies Hartwell construction or Hartwell electrical. Sorry on site And based off of this we decided to analyze what would best fit in this location And what could Wonderland do with Mindbuster? There's so many options Again RMC is one of the first things that jump to an enthusiast mind when we're discussing the closure of a wooden coaster So if Mindbuster were to close, let's say Mindbuster is no longer operational or Mindbuster is under an expansion plan What could happen? So I mean there's lots of options We could be looking at RMC and yes, that is a very likely option But Mindbuster doesn't really house one of those awesome layouts that really would benefit from an amazing RMC Yes, RMC would definitely turn this into a masterpiece But Mindbuster is definitely not one of those wooden coasters on the top of the list to be an amazing RMC a lot of people definitely think GCI When they're looking at a layout like Mindbuster, they could be building, you know These awesome airtime moments turn it into something amazing But what a lot of people left out is a mock double launch coaster I mean if you looked at that footprint and they removed orbiter that would house a mock double launch coaster perfectly and imagine that rustic tones on the Mock track in that area fitting into frontier Canada It would be phenomenal and then you have that whole second half of Mindbuster That could be utilized for a water park expansion. So it's almost like I'll geek do birds with one stone in this instance I don't know. I keep getting that messed up But I honestly think removing Mindbuster for future attraction would be in the park's best interest and it just makes the most sense Can you imagine? Half of Mindbuster's layout being utilized for better water slides and expanding the water park Which we know Wonderland needs to do that water park fills up and is that like max capacity from what I can tell Almost any given hot day in summer And then you take the mock double launch coaster and put it in its original footprint and include the orbiter footprint as well You got a nice Frontier Canada themed double launch mock coaster added in I'm absolutely ecstatic for that I mean when we were at media day for the park We were kind of hinted at the park and guests do really go after the new large steel Coasters the keyword steel coasters and that's what the park looks at when adding new attractions in fact I remember even being further expanded that at the time again at the time the park didn't see RMC as a Viable kind of like marketable attraction because guests preferred the larger steel coasters So that's all we have on that I just wanted to present all these ideas for you let you guys know that there's definitely some interesting activity going on over at Mindbuster So I want to hear from you guys comment down below What do you think is going on with Mindbuster and would you prefer a rocky mountain construction RMC? A GCI or a mock coaster in its footprint Comment down below what you guys think and what you would prefer get the video like subscribe You haven't and share this video for others to enjoy Thanks for watching guys, and I hope you have an amazing weekend. Bye


Hey guys, it's Nate, aka The Foot Accounting. Welcome back to the channel. Today is a day that we've been looking forward to for a while now, especially inside of Team of the Year. The full Team of the Year is expected to be in packs today. No more of the position-related releases. Full 11 in packs today, and we have a lot to look at, including these Team of the Year prices definitely dropping off today. If you have any of these in your team, I'd be very careful because more pack supply and panic selling ahead of the pack supply today has me thinking that some of these Team of the Year will be dropping off considerable amounts in value. So we'll talk about that and look at that. And of course, EA is hopefully dropping us a nice SPC today as well. An SPC that we have been wanting to see, we have confirmed stats leaked for Player of the Month in Bopay, but the stats that we have seen are a bit unfortunate. So we'll look at that and talk about maybe how it might be worth skipping this SPC if you already have an in Bopay, maybe even just a gold card in your club. We'll talk about the price of that and how that could be today. Of course, cover the rest of potential Thursday content and what is gonna happen on this market and the beginning of what we will see tomorrow on the real big day of Team of the Year with the honorable mentions being dropped in packs. We have leaks and those leaks are moving prices on the market like crazy. So there's a lot to talk about today. If you're excited for it, hit the thumbs up, subscribe if you're new. Let's talk about full Team of the Year impacts and let's talk about some of these prices because some of them have already been dropping off. You've seen prices dropping in the past maybe about 12 hours or so. As these cards, some of them are still in packs, of course, like the defenders are right now, but Teo started the day yesterday at 1.7 mil, went all the way down to about 1.4 where he is right now. I think literally every single card in the Team of the Year is going to end up cheaper today at the end of the day than they did at the start of the day because these guys are gonna be packed a lot, right? And the full team is gonna be out. And of course, on top of that, people know that the full team is gonna be out and they have started selling, right? Case in point, look at this Benzema card. He was 2 million coins plus earlier in the week. And of course, even yesterday on Wednesday, he was 2.1 million coins all the way down to 1.85, had a bounce back, but is now in the 1.8s again. I think a lot of this Team of the Year, you're gonna see big price drop-offs today even before the content drop because people that have these will be selling and wanting to get them out because they fear bigger price drop-offs. That is gonna pull these players' prices down a lot. And then I think they're gonna even fall further after the 6 p.m. content drop. Well, not every single one of them, but a lot of them will fall further today because they're, of course, going to be in packs. And EA is gonna be running lightning rounds today. And I mean, guys, believe it or not, I know a lot of you guys watching this video are not planning to open your packs until tomorrow on Friday, but a lot of people are gonna actually end up opening packs today because they will see full Team of the Year in packs. EA is gonna get a lot of lightning round sales today. They're gonna get a lot of people to open their packs because they see the full Team of the Year is in packs. Trust me, EA know what they're doing with this. This is how it's gonna go down today. So just be careful with these cards.  I do think that some of these Team of the Years will be a lot lower to end the day today and will be dropping off during the day, but they also could reach low points and some of them could bounce back. Maybe watch some of your more rare cards. Hakimi is still very, very rare. Maybe you watch a Jude Bellingham, maybe Tail. Any of these Team of the Year cards, if you're trying to trade it with any of these today, there could be some pretty good fluctuations with the panic selling, with the supply, and some potential bounce backs, but make those quick flips because tomorrow and Friday, it's probably gonna get even crazier. That's the biggest part of this game today besides the SBCs, right? All 11 of those cards coming into packs. So watch out for that for sure. Now also today, well not even also today, but with this Team of the Year 11, we do know the 12th man, it has been leaked and there's really no surprise. This card, Erling Brunholland, is going to be our official 12th man award.  So I don't know if Holland's gonna be 97, maybe it'll be 96, maybe even 95, but should be a very, very nice card. The only problem is, and you see somebody commenting here in this tweet, Seb Foote says, shame it's no longer the lengthy meta TBH. It's just true, but this card may not even be lengthy because he gets such a big dribbling boost, depending on how much they boost his card, this might be a non-lengthy Holland because he would have too high of agility to be lengthy. He would end up being controlled, but that is your 12th man award winner. If you were looking forward to Valverde, don't get too sad because I think Valverde is gonna get an honorable mention and we'll talk about that here very soon, but this card will not be in packs today. Again, we are speaking and kind of going off of the schedule that EA have done now for the past couple of years. We are very confident that the full team is gonna be in packs today. I would be shocked if they didn't put the full team in packs today because that would just be EA missing out on FIFA point sales and basically money that they could make. So the schedule as follows is team of the year in packs today, honorable mentions and the 12th man in packs tomorrow on Friday. So we'll talk about more honorable mention stuff here in a second, but let's continue talking about today on Thursday, how is the market gonna move, right? We talked about it with people getting, opening packs and getting coins. There could be other places on the market today that do move up. Now I know these team of your icons are in packs and there's a lot of cards that are still very high at the moment, but I do feel like there could be some cards today with people that are going out and getting coins from opening packs. Some cards that are maybe out of packs, maybe some of your other promo cards like other Path to Glories or other World Cup promo cards, maybe the Centurions, Winter Wild Cards. Some cards like that could have a slight rise today, but it should be a pretty uneventful day in most parts on the market, except for some maybe leaks and stuff like that. It shouldn't be too crazy of a day just because tomorrow is the really, really big day. Now, speaking of a big day, it's gonna be a big day for SBCs because of the player of the month, Mbappe, right? We expected this SBC last Thursday when it was announced, but it actually wasn't. And we have official stats, I'm sure you guys have seen these, and we are underwhelmed, right? We were hoping that Mbappe was going to be a 93, he's only going to be a 92, and the reason that we have confirmed stats is that SBC must be coming today, right? Footshare, I've tweeted this yesterday, Thursdays, we're like almost always the days where they drop a League One player of the Months, and it's only a 92 rated Mbappe. If you look at this compared to his gold card, it is a plus one in every individual stat, but plus three passing. And now the question is, where is this card gonna come in at in terms of price? We were all looking forward to crafting a player of the month Mbappe during Team of the Year to get a high rated Mbappe, a nice upgrade over his gold card in our team. And now we see this, and we're like, wow, is it even worth it to do the Mbappe player of the month SBC when it's just a slight plus one upgrade and plus three passing over his gold card? If you have the gold card untradable, if this SBC today is at a million to 1.3 million coins, like honestly, what is the value of this SBC gonna be to make it worth doing today? I feel like it has to be like exceptionally cheap for it to be something that if, especially if you have an Mbappe gold already in your team untradable, I wouldn't upgrade my gold Mbappe to that just for a dynamic image and some plus ones, you know what I'm saying? So that's the only thing that I have to say about that. We already have a 92 inform Mbappe to round 1.4. That's why we're guessing this SBC would be around the 1.1 to 1.3 million coin range, but I could see EA overpricing it because fodder prices on a lot of the market are still a bit inflated. But again, a lot of people just saw this and myself included, we're just a little bummed because we were hoping for a 93 Mbappe, a more expensive SBC, but also better stats and one that would maybe feel like it could last a bit longer. But don't get too sad about this because also I know so many people were just looking to do a play of the month Mbappe just because it's a nice card with a dynamic image. People are still gonna do this SBC even if it comes out at like 1.5 million coins. People are still gonna do this because it's Mbappe, right? And because people were had their minds set on this and Mbappe played the months, people have had really good interactions with in the past. People do it and Mbappe played a month like this. It's an upgrade over the gold so they go out and they do it and they'll have this guy in their team for literally the rest of the year, right? And if that's your idea and what you wanna do and you're still set on that, that's fine. I'm really not trying to talk you out of it. I just think that if you're in the place where you have a version of Mbappe unshakable already, I mean, I would probably just keep that version of Mbappe and not do the SBC. But of course it's an Mbappe SBC. People will want to get it done. So we'll have to see what the price is but if it's gonna be a lot cheaper that might not mean as good of profits on some of the SBC fodder specifically you're really higher rated. Your 91s have been around 69, 70, 71K. They've been up in price because of the icon SBCs we've had and people were investing in this stuff really heavily hoping that Mbappe would be like a 2 million coin SBC and require some 89 and maybe 90 rated squads. If we're gonna have a 1 million, 1.2 million coin Mbappe, I mean, it might just be an 88 rated squad. Maybe an 89 would be the highest overall squad inside of that SBC which would maybe hurt the rise of these 90s and 91s a bit but there's still a lot of SBCs to come and there's so much crafting still to happen during a team of the year that I wouldn't necessarily sell these cards. I would just maybe not expect to see these guys go to like 80K or something crazy because Mbappe doesn't require as many high rated squads and isn't as expensive. There's still a lot of crafting to be done right now. Let's talk about fodder today. With the packs that we talked about being open we've seen this now every single day when EA is running lighting rounds. Yes, there's demand like on Monday, right? All these guys went to like 18K, lighting rounds, boom, pushed them back down to 16. Tuesday we had the refresh of the icon pack. They went up to like 20K, boom, lighting rounds pushed them back down to 17. Yesterday on Wednesday they went up to 18K, now they're back down and they're dropping lower. With Mbappe today, would fodder like really go up on the mid tier and like kind of boom? I don't think it would go up that much. It's not like it's a gamble SBC pack that so many people are gonna rush out to the game and do but I mean, there could be a little bit extra demand for Mbappe SBC today which could make some fodder hold its price but at the same time, I still feel like as you saw with these graphs it would drop off into the evening a bit just because there's gonna be a lot of supply and I especially think on the lower tier of fodder 83s were like 3000 coins yesterday at the content drop with the 83 times three defender pack being out and it says 25 and a lot of them were actually like 2.7 to 3K. If I had these lower tier fodder cards I would look to sell them before the content drop today. If you have 82s, I think there's still an opportunity for 82s and 83s to go up before content today but then afterwards they are probably going to drop unless EA release some sort of like other pack today, right? I don't know what other gamble pack they could put out maybe like a last second, 83 times something upgrade. I know we've had the 83 times three defender, I did that all three times. If EA drop one of those last second today that stuff could maybe go higher after content but if they don't and if it's just unbopped player SBC as our content today which it very well could be fodder and especially on that lower tier end is going to drop off. So if you have that stuff I would consider selling it pretty soon because especially tomorrow on Friday when there's more pack supply and more people opening packs even more than today that stuff's probably going to drop down a little bit lower. But the high tier I think I would hold because it's not going to get packed as much and there's still SBC demand out. So other potential content we could see I mean we still have a charlison SBC that is leaked. I mean technically it might a flashback if you rewind all the way back to last year on this day in FIFA 22. On this day we have the flashback Veran last year. So I don't know if that is just different this year because of course we had the Pogba already we've had the Ramos already will they drop a flashback money today? It could be a part of content but I also imagine that today just feels like it would probably be a little bit of a quieter day just like yesterday was, right? Yesterday we had one SBC and other than that it was pretty quiet, right? So I would imagine today would be kind of like that as well. Again yesterday we had 83 times three defenders we had a kid SBC so technically we had two but it's probably going to be a pretty quiet day of content today because EA want us to be focused on tomorrow. I know Mbappe is big content but in the reality of the scheme of things there's not going to be a ton of SBC today because the real big day is tomorrow. So I'm really not expecting to see Mane today I'm not expecting to see Ray Charlson or a team of your icon player SBC either. I feel like today would be a little bit of a quieter one, marquee matchups of course you expect that that's a normal Thursday thing some last tradable packs maybe to save up or to probably open those before fodder maybe drops off a bit on that lower tier and you can sell those lower tier fodder cards for a higher price that might be something good that you can do today in terms of some content on this game but today is just going to be a day to catch up as well maybe get a couple games and qualify for week in league or maybe the last day to build upgrade packs. Today might be a really solid day what are gold rares right now still 800, 850 yeah gold rares are still 800 to 850 coins they are going up right and every single day that goes by they go up just a little bit more maybe today with the landing rounds with the packs being open these could drop maybe just this midge that might be a little bit helpful because these gold rares just slowly keep rising up in price as people are building upgrade packs and people will start opening upgrade packs today again guys I really would caution against that because we will see and look at these cards here in a second these team of the honorable mentions are going to be worth saving packs for but I don't think today is going to be an absolutely mental day of content it will probably be an okay day to trade as well especially if you're trading without a packs cards watch the fluctuations and again knowing that there will probably be some coins put on the game today some out of packs cards for centurions other promo teams might be solid to trade with again if you want to bet sort of thing on the market today but tomorrow is going to be the really crazy day and yesterday we started to get leaks and I'm sure today we're going to get some more about some insight on these team of the year honorable mention cards now we've had like what I think it's like five or six maybe seven of these cards leaked I think there's going to be more because last year we had a full team we had 15 I believe it was yeah we had a full 11 plus four on the bench we had a full team of 15 honorable mention cards dropped from all the different top five leagues all the different clubs represented here and we only have a few leaked right now there's going to be more to come today but the ones they have leaked are pretty nice and these are going to be cards that will change the market and will change the game because Vinny Jr for one is getting an honorable mentions card a plus two it looks like over his or a plus one or two over his 90 rated card but this is what I think you're going to see a lot more of today on the market you're going to see cards like this Vinny affect other leaks that we have affect prices on this game right Vinny's card if we take a look this is actually one that I bought with bought and traded with yesterday because he dropped down so much Vinny started the day yesterday at 1.4 mil went all the way down to 1.2 where I picked one up he's kind of bounced back to about 1.3 really rare card I'm probably going to sell this here in the next hour or so guys I'm trying to sell mines right there 1.327 if I get that sale I'll be very happy but you know that's the kind of stuff you can see today and on the market with these leaks that are happening so Vinny Jr first one that we had leaked yesterday there's a lot more though Saka is getting a card right this one right here of course costs a movement on Saka's older promo cards some of your arsenal cards moved a little bit on the market and your English links Premier League I'm telling you guys the Premier League upgrades with only two cards in team of the year didn't look that great after seeing some of the honorable mentions they are looking really really good to do as upgrades but this is kind of what we were waiting for also if you're crafting the upgrade packs waiting to see who is going to be an honorable mentions would help you decide maybe what league you really wanted to try to craft when you're packing team of the years and or hoping to pack team of the years and honorable mentions in the next week or so so Saka's getting a card again what this promo what this honorable mentions thing really reminds me of is last year with this honorable mentions team cards that are in the same position or in the same league as any person that gets in to the honorable mentions promo like with this Vinny right LaLiga Mids or probably left LaLiga left mids right left wings are going to be affected and right-sided attackers in the Premier League like Saka's older card maybe I know we just had Amara's inform but maybe some of your other right mids in the Prem they're going to be affected in price a lot like this and we always talk about prices going up during these big promos talked about prices going up as people get coins not every single price on out-of-packs cards whether it's from the Centurions team whether it's from Winter Wild Cards now I'm not saying like Salah is going to be affected by this Saka card that much but all I'm saying is as the as they drop these leaks as they drop these players not everything on the entire market's going to go up but there's a new card that comes out that is a certain player in a certain league in a position if other cards in that spot might go down because these honorable mentions are just looking insane now let's get on the leaks, right? Nate stop talking about this and show me some leaks Saka was one of the first ones we had yesterday with the Vinny and then Harry Kane I'm super excited for this one I feel like Sun maybe deserved it just a little bit more but Harry Kane getting a team of your honorable mentions card of course his other version of the game the team in tournaments started dropping off a bit some of your Tottenham cards started to go up like the Parasich, the Kuti Romero went up just a little bit in price yesterday because of this leak that's a cool one and then we keep moving on the list Joao Cancelo now this is where it's big, right? Cancelo was in the team of the year 12th man vote and obviously didn't win, right? Holland won what this means and we looked and we checked back on this last year the two guys that were in the 12th man vote last year were Benzema and Salah they both got honorable mentions so for my Fede Valverde fans out there Real Madrid fans Fede Valverde will probably be getting an honorable mention as well watch out for the leaks today that'll be a juiced up card a very, very hyped up card because Cancelo was already leaked I would assume Valverde is going to be getting one as well another Premier League player, right? more reason to open Premier League packs move into the Bundesliga Alfonso Davies, right? He's got one promo card this year so far he's going to be getting another one this one looks really, really insane and is going to be very needed and very hyped because of the Mane SBC that's going to be coming out soon, right? really keep an eye on this Alfonso Davies he already has a really cracked card but of course this one has gone down in value a lot after the leak of his new one coming after it, right? He was like 370 and absolutely went down a ton he's back up just a little bit but again with these honorable mentions that came out last year they were like really affordable and really, really juiced up in terms of stats it was really nice promo cards and they really impacted the market a lot any of these guys that had previous promo cards I remember last year like Erling had the rule breakers, right? and Erling's rule breaker card went from like let's see, it was right here from 400K to like 200,000 coins I remember like Jonathan David, right? So many people packed this Jonathan David card the Winter Wild Cards version went from like it was like 90K to like 40K no, it was 160K down to 40K like crazy drops because the new honorable mentions cards were nuts so just be careful with older promo versions definitely look to sell those even though the prices are already down they're probably going to go down a little bit more because these honorable mentions are going to be a lot more packable than the team of the years Odomendi, right? And people are finally happy to see Odomendi getting a card it was leaked to PB Getting One during the team of Tournament Promo we never got one nice link to the Enzo Fernandez Flashback in Argentina links all around he's going to be an objective so maybe we get two objectives I don't know if we're Charleston is an objective as well still not confirmed on what that's going to be but this is either going to be today or tomorrow might be tomorrow would make sense with honorable mentions dropping in packs so watch out for an Odomendi objective but that might be a nice card to grind hopefully they give him 80 paces and again if they give him 80 paces that's making a card that was usually not usable usable which is really really cool a couple more actually I think it's just one more fake here he had an honorable mention a couple of years ago he's back stats are a prediction of as well but another LaLiga player LaLiga and Premier League are looking so good for these upgrade packs especially for all the honorable mentions that will be involved that's going to be a hyped card as well if those are anywhere near the stats that he's going to have that's going to be a juicy card in this game so the honorable mentions stats look cracked there's probably more to come today watch the market for these players that get leaked if they have old special cards like the Davies, like the Fakir or if they have links to them that could potentially go up definitely keep an eye on those card prices today on this game it's going to be a big Thursday a lot of people are going to open packs but of course a lot of us are not quite there yet we are still waiting we are still saving because the big day for packs is Friday it is tomorrow one more day hold strong don't pre-epaculate as they say because honorable mentions are going to be worth saving for and of course today is the last full day of the team of your icons being in packs but we still expect to see team of your icons combined team one and team two in packs for tomorrow we'll get more information on that hopefully today as well so hopefully it's a banger day of Thursday content hopefully Mbappe is cheap and then we all want to do it because it's like a really good value and very craftable during team of the year we will just have to see but if you enjoyed this video today if you're excited for team of the year 11 being in packs hit the thumbs up comment down below if you have any questions and subscribe if you're new it's been Nate to put a count and I'll catch you guys later peace out