A low-grade villain is a special kind of villain that is not powerful like other villains. Other villains tend to have a special kind of power, whether it be a super power, political power, economic power or social power. Low-grade villains, however, possess a level of power equal to or below that of the average person. Villains generally strive for large amounts of power, but low-grade villains, for one reason or another, have failed to acquire such power. Therefore, they remain in a position of average to below average power. In other words, they are average everyday people that you could find anywhere.
When we recall the villains we have seen in fairy tales, movies and sitcoms, we see that they often do acts of evil out in the open for all to see. Because they are so powerful and often have leagues of followers at their disposal, they can do acts of evil out in the open and still get away with it — that is until the good guys defeat them in the end. Low-grade villains, on the other hand, do not have this luxury. When they carry out their wicked schemes, it has to be done in an underhanded way; or the act of evil has to be a certain kind of evil that is not recognized by culture as being evil. Good people will refrain from a certain behavior when they see that it is hurting people, even if the surrounding culture views the behavior as being perfectly okay. Low-grade villains, on the other hand, will take advantage of their culture’s acceptance of certain immoral behaviors as a free pass to indulge in such behaviors and still view themselves, and be viewed by others, as perfectly decent people.
Low-grade villains do operate by a moral code, but it is a perverted moral code that they have crafted to suit their convenience and their desires. Take Tyler Down from the TV series 13 Reasons Why. In the first season, Tyler has a crush on Hannah Baker and decides to stalk her. After he takes pictures of Hannah and her friend through Hannah’s bedroom window, Hannah confronts him. He says he will not take pictures of her anymore, then he asks Hannah if she will hang out with him. Hannah laughs and says no. To seek revenge against Hannah, Tyler circulates pictures that he took of Hannah kissing her female friend. According to Tyler’s moral code, Tyler is entitled to hang out with Hannah simply because Tyler “loves her”. Hannah fails to fulfill Tyler’s false sense of entitlement by refusing to hang out with him. According to Tyler’s moral code, Hannah has wronged him and deserves to be punished.
Low-grade villains generally don’t know that they are villains
Compared to other villains, low-grade villains are more likely to bury themselves in the delusion that they are good decent people. They will even see value in being good, but they still want to give in to their desires to do evil. So they find a way to fulfill their evil desires while still seeing themselves as good and being seen as good by others. When someone tries to call them out on their evil behaviors, they will likely go to great lengths to maintain their disguise as a good person, even to themselves. One major thing they will do is try to discredit whatever person speaks out against their wicked behaviors. They may call the other person “crazy”, “difficult”, “overly critical”, “mean” or “judgmental”. Another tactic they will use is something along the lines of gaslighting. Recall the subjectivity blog post where the evildoer will try to convince the victim that his/her bad behavior is all in the victim’s head. Here, the evildoer will use statements such as “I am sorry you feel that way”, “How you feel…”, “I never looked at it that way before…” or “well, that’s your opinion”. Such statements seem innocuous to the naïve outside observer, but can be emotionally abusive to the victim because they can get the victim to question his/her reality.
For some low-grade villains, it may be impossible to reveal to them the truth of how horrible they really are. They may even think that being so thick-skinned is a virtue to be admired. Yet, their thick-skinned nature is really just narrowmindedness, and a refusal to see a truth that they do not want to see. If you try to prove to them how bad they are, you may find yourself running around in circles, and keep hearing them say, again and again, “well, I guess that’s just how you see it…” or “hey, stop acting like your opinion is fact!”
Unlike many other types of villains, low-grade villains are more likely to torment others with the approval of their own conscience, and may even convince themselves that it is “for your own good”. There will never be any remorse. There will never be any end.
Which is worse: when a classic villain hates you, or when a low-grade villain loves you?
In both of these scenarios, the villain has chosen you as the target of his/her malice. Classic villains are usually filled with hate. They may attempt to harm their victims because they hate them and/or because they view their victims as being inferior. Low-grade villains, on the other hand, will use love as a justification for their malice. At first glance it does not seem to make sense. Why would someone do evil to a victim because of his/her love for the victim? Are we not supposed to care about those we love? As was discussed in the blog post on love, the definition for the English word “love” is very broad, and sometimes love can be the motivating force behind evil behaviors.
Because low-grade villains do not have any more power than the average person, they often need to establish a sufficiently close relationship with their victims in order to inflict harm. They will cite “love” as their reason for forcing a relationship upon the victim. When the low-grade villain speaks of love, he/she may just be referring to an emotional attachment, but note that emotional attachment is not the same thing as caring about one’s better interests.
Sometimes, however, low-grade villains may say that they are trying to sabotage you because they want to protect you. Once again, love is used as a rationalization for their wicked acts. The “threat” that they are trying to protect you from most likely does not exist.
“Are you okay?”
Low-grade villains like to ask this question sometimes. It is an easy way of showing concern that does not actually exist. Note that this question itself is not evil. There are plenty of scenarios where asking this question is warranted. Good people ask this question when they have concern for a fellow human being. When a low-grade villain asks this question, however, the last thing that is on his/her mind is whether or not the other person is actually okay.
Low-grade villains may even ask this question as an implicit form of condescension. For example, let us say that someone is trying to stand up to the low-grade villain and call him/her out on his/her destructive behaviors. Rather than owning responsibility for his/her actions, the low-grade villain may ask “are you okay?” as if to imply that the person standing up to him/her may not be in his/her right mind and may need help. In this context, the “are you okay?” question is used as an implicit way of discrediting the other person who is speaking up. At the same time, the low-grade villain is putting on a façade of concern for the other person to make him/herself look like a good and caring person that he/she is not. When the other person complains about the inappropriate question, the low-grade villain may just say “Hey, I am just trying to see if you are okay”. Here, the low-grade villain is trying to frame the other person as being ungrateful for villain’s concern for his/her well-being.
Low-grade villains sometimes frame their bad behaviors as being the norm
Low-grade villains like to make themselves blend in with everybody else so that they are not singled out for their wicked behaviors. They may use phrases such as “Hey, I am not perfect” or “well, you know, there is some evil in all of us after all…” Low-grade villains are more than happy to admit that they are not perfect. It is an easy way to put on a façade of humility, but without admitting anything of any significance. Obviously nobody is perfect, so admitting that one is not perfect does not say much.
Sometimes low-grade villains will frame the good guys — who do not exhibit the same toxic behaviors — as being the weird ones. The low-grade villain will try to make his/her bad behavior look more common and mainstream than it actually is in some ploy to get his/her victims to tolerate him/her despite his/her wicked behaviors.
Low-grade villains love scandals
Low-grade villains just love it when skeletons are found in someone else’s closet. While a good person would feel bad about darkness in someone’s past and genuinely hope that the person can move on to a better life, the low-grade villain rejoices (at least on the inside). While low-grade villains love scandals, they don’t necessarily care about whether the scandal is based on truth. As long as the other person is put into a bad light, the low-grade villain has a chance to look like a saint in comparison. Scandals among other people take attention off of the low-grade villains’ own hidden darkness, and not only help low-grade villains appear as good people to others, but also appear as good people to themselves, thus feeding their delusions that they are good people.
Nice Guy Syndrome
Nice Guy Syndrome is an example of a low-grade villain personality prototype. It is a pathological behavioral pattern where a man is a good friend to a woman, and is always there for her, but then feels entitled to a romantic/sexual relationship in return. The man is kind to the woman, always listens to her, and provides a shoulder for her to cry on. None of these seemingly altruistic deeds are done with good intentions. Rather, the man is expecting something in return which he is, in reality, not entitled to.
Not only are his intentions bad, the end effects also are bad. If the woman succombs to the nice guy’s mind games, then she will feel obligated to have romantic and sexual relations with the man that she has no feelings for, and who, in reality, is only pretending to care about her. I wonder what a romantic relationship that starts with Nice Guy Syndrome would be like in the long term. Would the guy continue to act nice, or would he eventually not act nice anymore once he knows that he has her? Would he eventually resort to other kinds of mental abuse and manipulation? How long would such a relationship last given that the woman has no feelings for him to begin with?
These “nice guys” do believe that they are truly good people, and that women should be flocking to them in droves instead of dating the jerks. What they do not understand is that they are at least as evil, if not more evil, than the so-called jerks. They are indeed a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and all that they see when they look in the mirror is the sheep. According to their perverted moral code, acting nice automatically makes one a good person (even if it is just an act). Also according to their moral code, being a good person and doing nice things for someone means that one is entitled to get what he wants in return.
There is a love that is called agape love. It refers to acting in the better interests of another without expecting anything in return. It is what you do when you really care about someone and are willing to do whatever you can to help them. This agape love is not in the vocabulary of the guys with Nice Guy Syndrome. Their good deeds come with an expected return on investment.
Losers
Losers also can be villainous, as explained in the Planet Loser post. Losers are people who were given some great opportunities and assets in life, but messed it all up with their bad decisions. They are prone to insecurity and low self-esteem. To cope, they like to form an environment around themselves where being a loser is the norm, and anyone who is happy and thriving is an alien and a threat. Losers can easily get jealous of family and friends who are making something of themselves.
Losers may just try to avoid the people who outshine them, but other times they may do wicked deeds to bring other people down. They may sabotage other people to prevent them from achieving their goals, or they may try to control people — particularly vulnerable people such as women, children, disabled people and chronically ill people. Wielding control over a victim gives the loser a feeling of power and status that he/she does not have to earn. Such a feeling of power and status helps losers to reduce their insecurities and make them feel less insignificant.
The Villainous Suburban Mom
Another low-grade villain personality prototype is the villainous suburban mom. The suburban mom villain has children, not because she has a lot of love to give, but rather because she wants a brood of human beings to be under her control. Villains gravitate towards positions of power because they like to control their environment and they like to control other people. When a villain cannot acquire a position of high power, the villain will try to acquire whatever power he/she can over individuals in his/her vicinity. What better a way to have power over someone than to have children under one’s custody.
To the suburban mom villain, the children exist for her sake, not her for their sake. She likes to establish superiority over them by patronizing them, and calling it discipline. Because her children are younger and less knowledgable about life, it is easy for this evil mom to feel superior to them. They are like her personal property rather than separate human beings that have rights. She likes to taunt them for the sake of entertaining herself. When her children get angry with her, she always frames their emotions as being invalid. To her, they are just kids. They don’t know anything. Therefore, nothing about them is to be taken seriously. If they get upset, just give them a hug. Don’t address why they are upset. Children are always upset over nothing as far as this evil mom is concerned.
The suburban mom villain does not want her children to accomplish anything extraordinary. After all, she never did, and personal property cannot be superior to its owner, as is explained in the People as Private Property post. The suburban mom villain especially does not want her daughters to accomplish very much because of her internalized mysogyny. She may even favor the son over the daughter, in which case she may allow the son to be cruel to the daughter without disciplining him, but not let the daughter be as mean to the son.
The suburban mom villain is very good at hiding her true evil nature underneath that simple loving mom exterior. She even believes her own lies. Her loving, simple mom façade is very compelling and can make anyone feel bad for even suspecting that such a loving mom would be capable of any evil at all. Even if you tried to address the way she treats her children, she may say in her meek, sweet voice “I don’t understand…”, thus placing the burden on you to further explain yourself when she should be explaining herself.
Let us say that despite the odds, one of her children does manage to achieve some great accomplishments. In such a scenario, the suburban mom villain would never want to be in her child’s shadow. Instead, she would try to latch onto her child like a tick and try to receive credit for her child’s accomplishment (even if the accomplishment is not hers). “That’s my girl…that’s my girl…I’m her mother…I raised her” she would keep saying. She would essentially demand whatever credit she can get for her child’s accomplishment even if the accomplishment was done regardless of her abuse and not because of her.
Low-grade villains from television
Some characters we have seen on television are not known for being villains, but they are actually low-grade villains. The nerds from the 1984 movie Revenge of the Nerds are an example. At first glance, they just look like the underdog protagonists who are sometimes bullied by the jocks, who are the jerks that get all the girls. If we take a closer look, though, we see that they do exhibit villainous behaviors, with women as their primary victims. Many, though not necessarily all, of them do not view women as fellow human beings worthy of human rights, but rather as conquests and sexual entertainment. Numerous viewers have complained of the infamous rape scene where one of the nerds dresses up as the boyfriend of an attractive women so that he can trick the woman into having sex with him. Though the woman responds favorable when she finds out that he is not really her boyfriend, no woman in her right mind would respond so favorably to such horrible treatment in real life.
Another low-grade villain, whom I have mentioned in some of the previous posts, is Howard Wolowicz from The Big Bang Theory. He is always on the prowl looking for women to victimize. He may not be proficient at attracting women, but his intentions are still evil. He seeks the opportunity to take advantage of women, and particularly gets excited when some of the women have low self-esteem because it means he can get easier sex.
Low-grade villains sometimes disguise their evil as stupidity
Another character, Ray Barone, from the show Everybody Loves Raymond, is not consistently evil enough to be a villain, but does exhibit a particular kind of low-grade villain behavior: he acts like a buffoon a lot of the time until he is presented with an opportunity to take advantage of a situation for his own personal gain, but at the expense of his loved ones. When presented with such an opportunity, he becomes cunning and crafty.
These kinds of low-grade villains look like buffoons to most people, but are actually pretty intelligent. Their true intelligence manifests itself when they are presented with an opportunity to do an underhanded form of evil. One example with Ray Barone is the episode where Ray’s wife and Ray’s mother are having a dispute. Amidst the dispute, Ray’s wife and Ray’s mother are competing with each other for Ray’s affection to see which one of them can win more favor with Ray. Ray likes this kind of attention, so he deliberately prolongs the dispute in an underhanded way so that this attention he is receiving can continue. Eventually, Ray’s family sees what Ray was doing, which Robert calls “taking advantage of the situation”. However, I doubt that Ray would have done things any differently if he went back in time. He did not receive much of a punishment for his behavior, and his whole family continues loving him anyway.
Low-grade villains that put on this buffoon facade just love being called an idiot. When someone shouts “idiot!” at them, they inwardly rejoice, not because they are humble, but rather because it means that their disguise is working.
The low-grade villain’s evil laugh
We can all recall the wicked laugh of the villains from stories. The villain will let out his wicked laugh or cackle when everything is going to plan and it seems to be just a matter of time before the villain’s wicked scheme is accomplished.
Low-grade villains also have an evil laugh, but the low-grade villain’s evil laugh does not occur in the same context as that of the other villains. A low-grade villain’s wicked laugh may occur in regular everyday conversation as a way of conveying disrespect. For example, you may be speaking your mind on something that is important to you. Just when you thought you made a great point on something, the other person just laughs. It is obvious that you were not making a joke. Instead, you feel disrespected and mocked. Yet the other person tells you to just chill out, and that laughing is just a part of every day casual conversation. This is what it feels like to be at the receiving end of a low-grade villain’s laugh.
Low-grade villains may not be able to pull off any impressive schemes like other more powerful villains can, but they still can put people down and make fun of people for the sake of entertaining themselves and for the sake of feeling better about themselves.
The low-grade villain support system
Though low-grade villains have no more power than the average person, they still have a substantial support system. Mainstream culture in itself provides a support system for low-grade villains as it overlooks many kinds of harmful and destructive behaviors. Wicked behaviors are often portrayed as being normal and acceptable on television, and many scenes on television entice the audience to laugh at people getting hurt and at people intentionally hurting each other. Such a culture gives low-grade villains a free pass to participate in certain harmful behaviors while still being viewed as regular decent people by others.
Low-grade villains also provide support systems for each other. Let us say that on two different occasions, you stand up to two different people who are exhibiting harmful behaviors towards others. These two people you spoke to may know each other and may even start talking to each other about you. One may say to the other “He told you that? He said the same thing to me, too. I wouldn’t take it personally. It looks like he says that to a lot of people…” Here, the two low-grade villains are supporting each other in their delusions that they are justified. They have decided to operate under the premises that the side with more people must be the side that is right. If there are two or more of them on their side and only you on your side, then you must be in the wrong. Indeed, if the three of you took a vote on which side is “right”, you would lose.
What’s worse, when a low-grade villain has chosen you as his/her target, you do not have as much of a support system as you would if you were targeted by a more powerful villain. The reason is that low-grade villains are generally good at concealing their identities as villains. You may be one of the only ones that notices that this low-grade villain is a villain. Furthermore, the low-grade villain who has targeted you may be trying to make you out to be the villain, or at least some crazy person, behind your back.
