Treating his peers like a bother for engaging with his dumb posts is hilarious and especially when they’re stupid enough to buy his books and mention them. Remember the lady who posted his book and he called her table cloth ugly lol. The difference between interactions like these and the sniveling ass kissing he pulled with that Chris guy who called him kiddo are stark. If he thinks your engagement won’t bring clout or envy from other twitter anons he resents you for thinking you were worthy of speaking to such greatness.
Rick is a prime example of a species of asshole who is obsessed with social status and hierarchy. They will be obsequious and snivelling to those they perceive as above them (while secretly seething with jealousy) and abusive and bullying to those they think are beneath them. It's a prime signifier of sociopathy. Think Patrick Bateman or Eliot Roger, malignant narcissists for whom stepping on people's faces to get what they believe they are owed is an all-consuming obsession. It tales a very specific kind of person to cheat in a half-marathon, for example. It's an amateur race with no money on the line, so the only incentive to cheat is for bragging rights.
There may not be any conclusive evidence that Pat killed Bernard Trammell, swatted himself or called in bomb threats, but his personality exactly matches the kind of people who do.
90ish IQ sounds just about perfect for Pat. Compulsively exercising your ability to read and write without ever considering whether or not you should is about as lower-midwit as it gets
Pat's relatively high level of education and literacy obscures what a dunderhead he actually is. With some cows like Cyrax, Lou Gagliardi or Emily Cassidy, just reading or hearing a few sentences from them lets you know instantly that they are dumb as rocks. But Patrick is more MovieBob stupid, someone who knows how to structure a sentence (at least while sober) and so whose idiocy requires prolonged study to become apparent. That's why they grow a fanbase of other midwits, who assume they are smart because they agree with them because they're not capable of critical thinking themselves.
Bragging that you're smart is something that only stupid people do. Actual smart people know that bragging just makes you look like a dickhead, as well as setting yourself up for failure. Smart people often call themselves dumbasses and retards, because they are intelligent and perceptive enough to recognise when they have made a mistake, and are as a consequence often brutally self-critical. Idiots don't have that perceptive ability, and so see themselves as not making mistakes; this is the mechanism behind Dunning-Krueger. And because they don't see their mistakes, dunderheads like Pat will often gain huge egos because they think they can do no wrong.
If you have to tell people you're smart, you aren't.