Why do people think people with aspd are out there harming people on purpose? Like no I won’t manipulate you just to harm you. I don’t care enough. I manipulate you because I need something from you. More often than not I don’t even realize I’m manipulating someone or not being sincere?
It is media sensationalism. A common trick to get things to sell (that governments also use to unite their public against another country) is to paint a group of people or condition as the “monster” - an evil entity that basically acts as a scapegoat and people love to fear, such as we see in the popularity of myths and legends. In nowadays society people appear to act identically to those with ASPD as they would have “vampires” or “witches” centuries ago. It may well be an intrinsic element of human nature to participate in the culture of myth.
It sells papers and gets views, and unites the public against one common enemy. A story would sell more copies if it were about a psychopath (the villainous character) who brutally murdered a bunny (the innocent victim) than it would if it were about a young man stabbing a robber - the character of the psychopath represents the unknown, a different “breed” of human; simply, a fascinating point of interest to those who don’t have ASPD.
However, we - those with ASPD - are not entirely blameless for this phenomenon. As you noted, we more often than not accidentally manipulate people or act in a certain way that make them perceive us to be scary. We have the problem with not forming an accurate view of how others see us. So while we may be entirely innocent in our heads and not be up to any trouble, others may interpret our actions or words differently and I think we ought to be more conscious of that.
That said, once someone knows we have ASPD they automatically - even subconsciously - start “ noticing” antisocial traits, whether we are presenting them or not. Yet, they only start noticing the traits they have been taught are typical of psychopaths and sociopaths. These traits are, of course, fed to them via media outlets and thus convey the message about us being villainous while ignoring less controversial symptoms of the disorder.
To summarise, people absorb what the media shows them, whether they want to or not. In conjunction with human curiosity, the judgement and bias of the stories portraying us as evil influence people to view us as humans have always viewed the “other”. They just can’t help it, and they are provided evidence which is biased towards only one side of the story (or rather, only half of the stories are being reported - you’ll never see a report on how a psychopath saved a building from collapsing because of their logical thought processes and level head).
