Stop me if this has been theorized before.
I think Fatrick’s whole “thing”, especially the real life tough guy act, car and motorcycle, guns, and faking the gym and marathons is all directly from the lappening and PCJ stealing his first wife.
He probably hates himself so much for being too afraid to go and punch PCJ, so firstly he has to “prove” he is a tough guy.
Secondly he has to not back down from any of these online feuds because he knows he would get kicked hard in his fat belly and drop like a sack of wet diarrhea, if he really tried to fight someone for real.
Again, all of this would be just laughable but forgettable if he paid Quasi and didn’t try to win so god damn hard, but I suspect in his head he thinks he is giving PCJ a slap, while Adrien falls back into his arms as all assembled applaud.
I don’t think he is mentally ill, just deeply sad and self absorbed.
When a person’s conduct has had a negative effect on every area of their lives, that’s pathological. Not to mention that mental disorders are progressive: Untreated, they only get worse, never better.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Ade dumping Pat for PCJ — his most prominent narcissistic wound in adulthood — made all of his disordered behaviors ramp up into overdrive. But that situation didn’t cause any of this. People don’t suddenly go from emotionally healthy and mentally well-adjusted to acting like Pat.
I’d say Pat is one sick puppy but he’s not remotely cute or sympathetic.
Pat is absolutely
obsessed with masculinity. It's an all-consuming neurosis for him. He is, however, also deeply confused about it and doesn't really understand it at all.
Pat's dad is/was extremely macho and was all about fresh air and exercise. His cousin (the Chadtastically-named Jake Raven) is a sniper with the US Marines and by all accounts is a highly decorated and very respected soldier. I have no doubt that Pat was made to feel inadequate by the successful male role models he had around him growing up, whereas he was a pudgy, argumentative little pig-child who excelled at neither academics or sports. I think this developed into a serious complex as he grew up, he was going to
show them all that he was a
Real Man, despite being a pudgy midwit with highly effeminate mannerisms. He was probably taunted about being gay - whether Pat actually is gay/bi or not I don't know, but if Nikki is a lesbian then it's very much a marriage of convenience for both of them, given their need to project some degree of heterosexuality to their respective families. But Pat has an all-consuming drive to look as masculine as possible, despite being a lisping, campy, short, rotund man with gynecomastia.
Pat has a cargo-cult understanding of what it is to be masculine. Because he is, and always has been, a mewling shitlib, he comes from a political tradition that both hates and misunderstands what being a man actually involves. To Twitter Liberals like Pat, masculinity is about guns, muscle cars, DIY, motorbikes, beer, sports, having lots of sex, , running marathons, being good at fighting and threatening people with violence (including sexual violence). Therefore, in order to seem more masculine, Pat indulges in all these things and is very keen to project that image on Twitter, to laughable effect. Pat thinks that these surface-level signifiers of manhood will make people think that he is a manly stud. It's also one of the reasons he won't change his phone number or let a single aTalker go unchilded - Pat has got it into his head that A Real Man never backs down, because that's what the Punisher comics he no doubt
masturbated to was deeply inspired by as a teenager told him. It's why he won't admit that he's overweight, it's why he won't ever admit that he's wrong, it's why he won't take advice, because the Gigachad he has in his head, that he desperately wants to be, wouldn't do those things. It's why he uses "Child" as his go-to insult - he thinks that Not Being A Man is the worst thing you can be.
With that as the background, I agree with both of you that it was the Lappening and the collapse of his first marriage that changed him from your typical macho shithead to a broken lolcow stuck in an infinite loop of stupidity. For someone with a caveman's understanding of masculinity, losing his woman to a superior man made him totally lose his mind with humiliation and rage. That's why he flipped out and threatened Ade and his unborn child, but that, as would become a theme in his life, blew up in his face when he was also stripped of his daughter by the courts. If he does have ODD, losing his most prized symbols of manhood (that's all his wife and child ever were to him) to authority figures is a meltdown scenario, and it has totally shattered his mind. He bullied a shrewish, mentally unwell woman from a rich family into subsidising him so that he could become a full-time belligerent alcoholic, like the Manly Men he sees in
his collection of gay pornos manly action movies.
The irony is, of course, that Real Men don't act anything like the way Pat thinks they do. He has based his understanding of manhood entirely on trash media and what his Liberal friends tell him it involves. That puts him in the weird position of trying to act like the kind of stereotypical toxic male that his Twitter friends hate, which is why he's never been able to make any inroads into liberal political or social circles despite having put years of his life into his efforts to do so. That's why he's forced to pal around with lunatics, lolcows and child molesters, the only left-wingers who will tolerate him because they're as desperate as he is for any kind of social circle or respectability. He's also too stupid to understand the massive dissonance between his politics and his own personal values.
Thing is, Real Men sometimes
do back down. That's because Real Men prioritise the safety of their families. Real Men don't let their wives get swatted because they're too stubborn to change their phone number. Real Men spend quality time with their families and work to earn enough money to keep them comfortable and secure, rather than leech off them to pick fights on Twitter all day. Real Men don't put their families though bankruptcy and humiliation because their ego can't cope with being made fun of. Real Men protect their children, they don't threaten to kill them then let another man raise them. Real Men don't associate with child molesters, they put them in jail. Real Men don't invite weird Polish men to fight them then whine to a Judge that they took them up on the offer. Real Men don't cheat in marathons. Real Men tell the truth, even if it makes them look bad. Real Men pay their debts. Real Men recognise when they fuck up and resolve to do better. Real Men put the welfare of the vulnerable people who depend on them above their own egos. Patrick fails at each and every one of these things, and many more. He's not a Real Man, he's a fat faggot with bitch tits.
No amount of beer, Mustangs, motorbikes or Twitter confrontations will ever make Pat a Real Man, and he's too stubborn, oblivious, egotistical and stupid to ever figure that out.
