[Macha]

I think there's plenty of people who the internet or gossip circles hate where that hate is unjustified. At the same time, a lot of the worst people are initially quite personally charming and keep that face even as they screw you over. And I think when people come into contact that they've only heard about in gossip in person, there's quite often an attempt to be like "well that's the caricature of Larry Ellison, maybe he's not actually that bad". Face to face contact can weight quite heavily compared to "people on the internet".

Combine the two of them and you get a recipe for people to give Larry Ellison the benefit of the doubt, taking a "well we're adults, let's handle this more maturely than immediately doubting our counter party" stance, even as people who by their own accounts had heard otherwise. Ultimately in this case, Cantrill's experience proved "the internet" right, but I think even that might not prevent someone else repeating the same situation in the future.

[dijit]

This is extremely well articulated, and is exactly true in my experience.

People take gossip as "gossip"- an unrealiable approximation and gross-oversimplification of an individual. Thus give people with poor reputations the benefit of the doubt, believing themselves to be open minded. (which is true).

When they are shown just how 1-dimensional some people can actually be, and that the gossip depicts people precisely, it can be jarring. Especially as, like you mention, many people are very personable, charismatic, charming etc;

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Idi Amin could be quite charming. Same for another dictator, who will not be mentioned, at the risk of Godwining the conversation.

He could talk to a family, leave them smitten and hopeful, then whisper "Kill them" to the guard, on his way out.

[nick3443]

Just think about the exceptionally gifted "10x" engineers we all meet from time to time. There are people equally gifted in charisma and manipulation, they can predict what people are feeling and steer them where they want them with high success rates. This is what I think of whenever I see a politician on video or meet one in person.

[hinkley]

I joke that Larry is from that evil Star Trek universe and somewhere in the multiverse a clean-shaven, teddy bear of a man is trapped in a universe full of assholes because he was tricked into swapping with this Larry.

[ryandrake]

It's a funny joke, but I think it downplays how much of our world is led, run, and inhabited by assholes. It's more likely that we are living in the Asshole Universe and there is a parallel universe out there where being the asshole is an outlier.

[Aeolun]

It’s why I now doubt the motives of all people that seem too personable :/

[markus_zhang]

"Motives are rarely unselfish". That's good enough.

[JohnBooty]

From murders to politicians to CEOs, nearly every impactful predator has a lot of positive qualities as well.

You don't rise to the top of the food chain without having some really sociopathic/narcisisstic traits.

But, you also don't rise to the top of the food chain solely by being terrible all of the time. And IMO/IME lot of those "good traits in bad people" honestly are genuine, not just facades.

This is not to excuse the bad people of the world. It's just... honestly, as a middle-aged person myself... it has been the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around as an adult. The rest of the stuff, I was prepared for, on some level.