The Hammer Family Exploit For Public Perception (And How Armie Trashed It)

Last year an instagram poster named HouseOfEffie started sharing screenshots of Armie Hammer’s supposed “cannibal sexts.” And if the name Armie Hammer doesn’t ring a bell, he was the stunningly handsome leading man in the multi-award-winning 2017 movie Call Me By Your Name. Armie is so attractive, GQ Magazine once called Armie “So handsome it must be a joke,” and “Shaving Cream Commercial Handsome.” Which made the horrifying sexts posted by HouseOfEffie all the more shocking. The incongruity between Hammer’s lustrous, on-screen persona, and the sexual assault depicted by both his alleged messages and the acts he was accused of, is staggering to say the least.

Here are a few of those messages.

“I want to see your brain, your blood, your organs, every part of you. I would definitely bite it. 100%. Or try to fuck it. Not sure which. If I fucked you into a vegitative state I’d keep you, feed you, wash you, and keep fucking you.”

“So hard. Thinking of holding your heart in my hand and controlling when it beats. I am 100% a cannibal. I want to eat you. That’s scary to admit. I’ve never admitted that before. I’ve cut the heart out of a living animal before and eaten it while still warm.”

As shocking as the initial sexts were, they kept coming. Other exes of Armie’s began posting their stories of non-consensual encounters as well. Then there were interviews - women speaking out about being cut with knives. Branded. Enduring embarrassing forms of sex and borderline torture. And perhaps worst - a specific style of sexual grooming, which started with chivalry and love-bombing, and ended with Armie demanding promises to be his sex slave.

But Armie’s alleged evils are just the last acts in a long family line of unscrupulous deeds. According to an exceptional article published last year by Vanity Fair, the horrors of the Hammer family legacy begin with Armie’s great grandfather, Armand. A man who was tied to Soviet money, shady art deals, faberge egg counterfeits, and royalty. His son, Julian, shot a veteran over a gambling debt. And Julian’s son, Michael (Armie’s father) was exposed after photos of his sex throne were released - a throne that sat atop a cage where he could shackle women so their heads would peek up around his feet. The list of family horrors goes on and on, and deserves its own article. Or, more realistically, its own Discovery+ series.

For the purposes of re-engineering a better “us” we choose to focus on the Hammer family guideline, handed down from great-grandad Armand. A guideline that kept the family legacy from being tarnished by an unending train of scandal and darkness.

“God forbid you did anything wrong in front of [Armand’s] friends. You couldn’t wear the same dress twice to his gala parties. On the outside, we had to be the perfect family.”

We examine this guideline not because we want to reproduce the misdeeds of the Hammer family, but because there is value in separating the two sides to public perceptions. Dividing the narcissistic drive for public attention, from the act of public self-monitoring for self-awareness’s sake.

A somatic narcissist is obsessed with their own beauty or appeal. And narcissists in general have a much higher rate of self-obsession and reacting thin-skinned to public scrutiny. Overreacting to challenges to their public persona or their greatness, or acting without regard to the feelings or wellbeing of others. Traits a leading man in Hollywood might benefit from.

Attractive narcissists can be rewarded with huge online followings, public approval, and artistic attention (see: Armie Hammer). In the corporate world, narcissists receive promotions at a greater rate, according to a study published in Psypost and the Journal of Personality. To put it very simply, a hallmark of narcissism is to act like you’re important and in charge, and your opinion is the only one that matters. Those also happen to be hallmarks of leadership, which is why researchers found a disproportionate number of narcissists receiving promotions.

“...In other words, employees who were more narcissistic had a greater sense of power at work, and in turn, were rated as more suitable for promotion than their counterparts.”

However, one does not have to be a narcissist to desire better public perceptions. In the 1970’s psychologist Mark Snyder proposed the self-monitoring scale. A benchmark that gauges how much people modify their own behavior around others for positive effect. According to Snyder, people might engage in high self-monitoring for extroverted reasons (I want to be liked, because it feels good) whereas introverts can be high self-monitors out of risk aversion (I want to be liked, so I won’t be ostracized).

Self-monitoring can also be an act of acquisition - training one’s reactions, looks, and behavior to fit in, garner attention, or acquire status or power. Or it can be a protective trait - self-monitoring to defend oneself from disapproval, embarrassment, or rejection.

Regardless, self-monitoring is a cornerstone of self-awareness. If it’s practiced for positive reasons and with good intent (as opposed to narcissism) self-awareness can help correct bad behaviors.

According to the Gottman Institute, self-monitoring is a necessary step in achieving the Magic Relationship Ratio. That is, 5 positive comments or interactions for every 1 criticism. Without self-monitoring, one could very easily skew this ratio into the negative.

Lucky for the rest of us, Armie Hammer was a low self-monitor. He spilled his guts to interviewers, freely sharing details about his private life. He texted women with his darkest fantasies, after luring them into a sense of false trust by oversharing about his sordid family past. He talked about his drug use on Instagram. Joked with friends about kinks. And made his private thoughts public record.

In short, Armie Hammer became the black sheep of his family and a pariah online exactly because he broke his great-grandfather’s guideline: Public perception comes first. We may all be better off for his sudden and shocking exposure as a cannibal. His future partners certainly are.