have you ever admired someone who turned out to be a jerk?

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This is my first post. It has happened to me twice in a row. Both musicians I was a fan of for years. I get obsessed with them to a ridiculous degree. The last one, I drew sketches of her twice a day. I seem to always have to have someone to idolize. Then she got a facebook and she is rude and I really don't like the way she responds to people. I defriended her because she was so consistently rude. Plus it was upsetting me to be 'friends' with someone I idolized, it seemed like it cheapened it but then also I didn't like seeing the way she really is. I could go on but it's enough to say I am crushed. When I lose these obsessions it is like a big empty hole. I don't even want to draw her anymore, which means I have no one to draw. I bring it up because I think it falls in the category of aspie obsession for me. Well, I know it does. And then you lose it, and there is just a big void. I think I am going to start drawing inanimate objects and forget about people.

I have, and I don’t stop admiring them because they’re jerks. They always make it clear they can afford that behavior, and whatever they do seems the right thing. It’s like bullies: if they’re mean to you, it’s because they are genuinely offended by your mere existence, and they’re not the kind of weak person who would let you get away with it.

Mark Rippetoe.

I have when I was in college many years ago. I admired and looked up to a man who was in my college programme as a brother. He was a very sweet person at first. He seemed to be a gentle giant. He started to become a jerk towards me in the Spring of 94. Once one our college professors told him how much I looked up to him, he went back to being the Sweet Pea that I knew him as.

More often than I care to admit. Sometimes they aren't the person they seemed, and sometimes they have qualities I admire but a lot of negatives that give me pause. A huge one for me is dishonesty....someone I know casually admitted to lying for their own convenience. Now I am going to question everything out of their mouth, and it really saddens me that I have to distance myself. I don't take everyone's word blindly, but I do see it as a crack in the mortar of someone's character if they can lie so effortlessly.

Maybe this is not exactly the theme of this thread, but my instinct in judging chanacters sometimes fails me very badly. I guess some people are very good actors. My instinct is usually pretty reliable.

Last year we had two new people joining our department. I felt one was a snob and the other seemed really genuinely nice. This genuine-looking one even said himself that he didn't judge people. I trusted it. Well, as it turned out, the one I thought was a snob is the non-judgmental good-natured person and the genuine-looking one is the judgmental hypocritical sneaky snobbish sh1t. I regret trusting and being nice to him initially. In retrospect there were signs that indicated he was indeed sh1t, but my assumption that he was a good person prevented me from linking those signs to reality for a while. That was another reminder that I should not simply trust genuine-looking people and I should still keep some distance from them.

Sadly yes there was one person now I can't even bear look at him.

Gordon Jump - He seemed like a great actor on the telly, then I met him in acting school, and he essentially told everybody that he was too important to answer any questions. Then he hung around and socialized with the faculty down the hall.

Dolly Parton - Couldn't get my real name right, even after I spelled it out for her. Just winked, giggled, and bounced along to the next fan.

Arnold Schwarzenegger - More interested in the administrators running a charity event (especially the cute girly-girls) than in us volunteers on the front lines. His "people" were total alpha-goons, too.

Kobe Bryant - Right in front of his own kids, Kobe cursed out a parking attendant who insisted that Kobe pay for his parking - "Don't you f*&^%$# know who I am? I'm Kobe f*&^%$# Bryant! And you're f*&^%$# nobody!"

Unfortunately it was a close long time friend. She turned out to be a total narcissistic shallow social climbing bigoted jerk. Wasn't as close as I thought.

I can totally relate to this, I am HORRIBLE at judging character. One thing I have learned via the internet. Another thing I have learned is that people who are sociopaths mimic the desirable qualities. And people like us take things at face/visual value, what we see, is. And with humans, this is not so. So it makes total sense that the abnormal person was faking all the desirable qualities and a naive aspie type would think these are real and the normal and good person was showing a normal and prudent amount of reserve at meeting a stranger, and we might not understand that. I can't think of another issue that has caused me so much emotional pain as this one, I fall for the charmers every time. And they are always completely full of crap.

Plus I am grateful to everyone who has share their experience, especially with celebs. The 'image' is so phony. Another example of taking things at face value. Because they are just humans underneath, good and bad. Kobe Bryant really sounds like he sucks. But his reputation precedes him. I have to admit, it's crushing to know Gordon Jump, i.e. Mr. Carlson, is a jerk. Bummer, I love/loved WKRP.

Back in the day, pretty much everyone I've admired turned out to be someone with a personality disorder wishing me dead in return.

i've had people i like turn out to be douches. the current womens and queer officer because i thought they were left wing and nice but theyre just w*kers really. also frank miller who is a racist and stan lee who is a zionist. alfred kinsey who is also a racist. many others. i can like nobody.

I hesitated to list famous people in case they were anyone's hero, but since someone already mentioned this next one...

Oh I saw Stan Lee once on the street. He gave me such a disdainful look I didn't go up to him. Granted I wasn't looking my best that day, but I hardly looked like a yeti. It made me feel really strange. But I was walking around in snobby Beverly Hills at the time. He was talking with a man so it wasn't like he was afraid to be on his own and a fan approach him. I'm not even a fan.

Timothy Leary was a jerk but I think it was age and bad hearing. He just was very snippy. It was at a Q & A type of thing.

Neil Simon, much the same way.

I'm starting to think elderly famous males just do not like me.

Dafuq?

That's a bummer. Where did you find that out?

Some people still surprise me. Makes me wonder if anyone can ever truly know another person. A comment I heard yesterday on TV was that "you only ever see two faces of other people: 1. what you want to see in them and 2. only what they want to show you."

There have been three members on WP who initially made good and insightful posts which I enjoyed reading. I even thought they might make good moderators in time, then after many months something changed in those people and their masks started to slip revealing other sides to them including manipulative behaviour towards other members, narcissism and misogyny. All three have since been banned after their masks fell off completely and they were blatantly aggressive to numerous (female) members. So three members who I admired and respected turned out to be complete jerks.

One perhaps posted a pic of his tool in the adult forum?