> If someone checks all the boxes from the points raised in this article I would really hope that that sort of behavior never gets normalized because these traits are the exact opposite of what people should strive for in their lives.
I don't see any cause for concern. Putting aside Hollywood nonsense there doesn't seem to be any reason why psychopaths would inherently engage in destructive behavior. In reality psychopaths are quite probably among the most interesting and charming and entertaining people you will ever meet.
Psychopaths can be very manipulative but there's no inherent malicious intent behind this manipulation. They need to be manipulative because all human relations are based on manipulation and so to get anything done they have no choice but to "play the game."
Again, psychopaths are just people who don't get jealous. There are so many stories (really, all of them, from the Bible to virtually every pop song) about jealousy, where jealousy plays a central motivation for virtually all the characters, but to a psychopath, reading stories about characters motivated by jealousy is like reading stories about aliens. Abstractly it makes sense as a motivation but there's no actual 'there' there. Saying "I did X because I was jealous" is like saying "I did X because the voices told me to."
The problem for psychopaths is that virtually all human relations are motivated by jealousy. All of the politicking, the status games, the in-group/out-group and intrapersonal power dynamics that define so much human experience come down to this. And so psychopaths, out of pure necessity in order to participate in such relations, will quickly learn to fake jealousy, to deliberately inspire it in others or carefully suppress it in those they care about it. This is no different from everybody else does, really, they're just doing it for different reasons and are perhaps a bit more deliberate about it.
At this point it's also important to understand the difference between psychopaths and sociopaths. This comment [1] lays it out well. Note the end result here: both psychopaths and sociopaths end up being manipulative of those around them but while sociopaths are often consumed by jealousy and paranoia and will do anything to ensure they "win", psychopaths, more often than not, are seeking a generally optimal or neutral solution, they have little real interest in hurting or helping you in any given encounter.
[1] http://www.thecut.com/_pages/cjkmuv88b00500xy6u0morj7n@publi...