Stop Conflating Genius With Asshole

Somewhere between Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, we started believing that in order to be brilliant, you had to be unbearable. That cruelty itself was a kind of clarity. That the sneer, the kicking and screaming, the impossible-to-please demands were just signs of a mind operating on a different level.

The myth took root.

The sharper the mind, the sharper the tongue.

Kindness is mediocrity in disguise.

It's become a socially acceptable archetype. The difficult genius. The tortured artist. The visionary CEO who treats everyone like disposable cogs. The director who berates their crew because "greatness demands suffering." The startup founder who burns through people like lighter fluid because "disruption isn’t polite."

We turned a preference for decency into a liability. We started grading cruelty on a curve, as if insight automatically offsets damage. As if the trauma left in some dickhead's wake is just the tax for being in the orbit of genius.

But excellence doesn’t require abuse.

It never did.

We just stopped asking for better.

We lionized those who hurt others in the name of vision and made excuses for behavior that, in any other context, would be called what it is: toxic.

We wrapped cruelty in clever quotes and pointed to output as if it justifies everything that comes before it.

We forgot that power protects power, and some people weaponize excellence so they can avoid accountability.

The damage is real, and it’s everywhere. People walk away from entire careers. They stop creating. They go quiet. They start to internalize the abuse as a test they failed, as proof they weren’t built for brilliance. That’s not a meritocracy. It’s a rigged system designed by those who profit from a warped, self-serving definition of genius; one that looks like them, sounds like them, and excuses everything they do.

The smartest people I know don’t leave trails of destruction. They listen more than they speak. They build things that last because they build with people, not on top of them. They know that empathy doesn’t weaken ideas, it strengthens them. That you don’t have to be an asshole to be a genius.

The lie persists because it's convenient. Because it gives cover. Because if cruelty is the price of vision, then we never have to confront how many mediocre people we let get away with inhumane bullshit, just because they were good at marketing themselves.

Genius doesn’t look like domination. It looks like collaboration. It looks like the humility to know you’re not the smartest person in every room, and the strength to make space for those who are. If someone needs to belittle, berate, or break others to feel powerful, they’re not a genius—they’re a tyrant in a hoodie, a bully with a pitch deck, a tantrum in search of a title.

And we should stop fucking clapping.