Crowns Don’t Wear Themselves
Here’s the thing about megalomania — these people don’t get that way by drinking their own Kool-Aid. They get that way by drinking ours.
We hand it to them. Sip by sip. Every time we hype them up, every time we let them talk over us, every time we confuse loudness with leadership and charisma with competence. We build these people long before they ever crown themselves. We do it with our admiration, our silence, and our desperate need to believe in someone bigger than us.
A megalomaniac doesn’t rise alone. They rise on applause. On followers. On our willingness to treat ordinary humans like prophets because they dared to act like they were.
And then we’re shocked — shocked — when the mask slips and they start acting like kings. But really, we made the throne. They just sat in it.
Take Elon Musk, for example.
People forget he wasn’t always the cartoon villain, the tech tyrant, the world’s richest man firing off nonsense at 3 a.m. There was a time — not long ago — when Tesla was on the brink of bankruptcy. Days of cash left. Doors about to close. The “Death of the Electric Car” wasn’t a documentary — it was about to be his life.
And back then?
He wasn’t arrogant.
He wasn’t untouchable.
He was *empathetic.*
He wrote open letters to customers. He explained the crisis honestly. He asked early adopters — ordinary people — to pay more for the same car just to keep the dream alive. And people did. They stepped up because he spoke to them like a human being terrified of losing everything he’d built.
That humility saved him.
Not genius.
Not bravado.
Humility.
Funny how quickly we forget that part.
Success arrived, the money poured in, the followers multiplied, and suddenly the same guy begging customers for help was out here calling himself a savior. The empathy faded. The humility evaporated. The crown appeared.
And that’s the cycle, isn’t it?
Success inflates ego.
Ego feeds delusion.
Delusion breeds megalomania.
But only if we keep pouring the cup.
Because a megalomaniac isn’t born — they’re made.
And worst of all, they’re made by us.
We celebrate them, excuse them, elevate them until they forget they’re human.
And in the end, they think they became gods.
But maybe the real question isn’t why *they* become megalomaniacs.
Maybe the real question is why *we keep needing them.*
Why do we crave heroes so badly we’ll manufacture them out of anyone loud enough to claim the role?
Why do we hand our power to people who barely know what to do with their own?
Maybe it’s easier to believe in someone else than to believe in ourselves.
Maybe a crowned leader gives us permission to stay small.
Maybe worship feels safer than responsibility.
So we lift people up.
We call them brilliant.
We call them unstoppable.
We call them visionaries.
And eventually — they believe it.
But if we stopped feeding their egos, if we stopped building pedestals, if we stopped pretending anyone is bigger than the crowd that raised them…
Half of these so-called “great men” would collapse under the weight of their own mythology.
Because the truth is, megalomaniacs don’t build empires.
Crowds do.
We do.
And maybe — just maybe — it’s time we stopped drinking our own Kool-Aid too.