I think Pat might be about to crack. The whole "Black Woke Twitter" clusterfuck and his car blog getting outed through his own drunken idiocy has resulted in a change in the kinds of things he's saying and doing. He's saying that the Rascals are trying to drive him to suicide, and that's new as far as I'm aware. He's spending all his time on what should be quality time with his wife glued to his phone, fighting the trolls. Others have noted that he's a lot less creative in his responses. I think his mental state is close to collapse.
I don't think someone as narcissistic as Pat would ever harm himself, but I think a storm's a-comin'. And that has me worried - for Nikki. Allow me to explain.
One of the big mysteries of Pat lore is why Nikki puts up with him. Imagine going to the ball game with your SO on a lovely summer's day and all they do is stare at their phone fight with strangers on Twitter the entire time. I'd be fucking furious, and I'd stage some kind of intervention, maybe even issue an ultimatum that they need to prioritise me more or gtfo.
But it doesn't look like Nikki has done that, despite this going on for literal YEARS at this point. Why does she tolerate a marriage to this pompous barfly, especially when she's the breadwinner and there's no kids to stay together for? As far as I can work out, there are only three possible explanations:
1 - She is monumentally stupid.
2 - She is as bad as he is.
3 - She is doing it under duress.
Let's look at the options:
1 - Other than being married to Pat, Nikki shows no obvious signs of stupidity. In fact, judging by the fact they can afford holidays, sports cars, ball games and restaurant visits, her SEO business must be doing well. And, having done similar work myself, manually re-writing articles to trick search engines into thinking they're different articles whereas in fact they say the same thing, is not easy work at all, and if she's good enough at it to make serious bank that indicates that she has a brain. The fact that her social media presence is minimal and fairly normal compared to Pat's indicates that she has way more sense when it comes to the internet than he does. I don't think she's stupid.
2 - If Nikki was as conceited and narcissistic as Pat, her Twitter would look a lot more like his. You never see her intervene in his slapfighting, even when the trolls drag her into it (which makes me uneasy, see below). If she was some kind of genius puppetmaster who portrays a normal social media presence, she would be directing Pat to do way smarter things than he has been doing - especially as an SEO expert. Plus the mask would inevitably slip at some point. It just doesn't add up.
3 - This is the only explanation I can come up with that matches all the available evidence. Nikki works her ass off at a difficult job and Pat just drinks it all away. Let's look at Pat's personality: He's a narcissist, a very heavy drinker, a reckless driver, a macho asshole who keeps going on about how tough he is, he has a gun collection and has admitted to having Oppositional Defiant Disorder, something that makes you seek out conflict and flip out at the tiniest sleight. Remember that time Pat boasted about laying a floor and it turned out Nikki had paid a contractor to do it? That was a massive red flag, she's working around his delusions. She daren't contradict him. Pat's personality profile fits with that of a domestic abuser as does Nikki's behaviour.
tl; dr I think there's a strong chance Pat is abusing Nikki. He spends all day at the bar raging at people on Twitter before driving home drunk. How do you think he'll be when he gets home?