So, why did I choose a Bill Harper (Tom Riis Farell) pic?

In a sense, Bill Haper might be nothing to Elliot but a security vulnerability that he can exploit to infiltrate Steel Mountain (a broken egg in Steel Mountain's omelet), in many ways Bill Harper is an actualized and authentic human being.

He seems sweet and open, he is comfortable with himself, and the opposite of cynical. Is Bill hip, or cool, or security-aware? Of course not, but he does seem like a good human being.

He is one of many examples of people who are left broken in the wake of Elliot's desire to save the world. We see detritus all around the first two season of the show in the wake of Elliot's social engineering. And let's be totally frank here, the casualties are almost all the result of Elliot's social engineering.

Part of the problem is that Elliot "gets to know" people through screens before he ever really meets them socially. In season one, he does deep dive's into the background of virtually every character (friend or foe) that he encounters and never with consent.

When he "protects" Krista Gordon (Gloria Reuben), it is because her metadata led him to Lenny Shannon's metadata.

When he tries to "protect" Shayla Nico (Frankie Shaw) by putting Fernando Vera (Elliot Villar) in prison it is because he dove into Fernando's metadata after meeting him through Shayla. As we all know, this did not end up well for Shayla (a character who authentically cared for Elliot).

Oh, and this did not just cause the death of Shayla, as a result of his dive into Fernando he also releases the entire population of the jail where Fernando is housed.

When he tries to "protect" or "save" the entire world through the five-nine hack, we see the wreckage strewn throughout Season 2 (normal people who lose all of their money, the store-owner who is losing the store etc.).

And, when he tries to "protect" Carla he does it in an extremely narcissistic way. Now remember, he has leaked, to the whole jail population (and jail populations are particularly germ and disease phobic and intolerant) that Carla most likely has HIV.

Let me quote from the book:

"She [Carla] pulled me under the bleachers. She said she's mad at me because I'm oblivious or just a major narcissist. She said I sit there and write down everything as if I'm so important as if my thoughts are worth putting down on paper. But, she says the problem with me is that I don't ever look outward. I only see things from my perspective and in how they pertain to me. She said if I didn't do that, I'd actually be able to realize how humiliating what I did to her was."

When Elliot and Carla reconcile, she sits down with him and Leon and asked if they are "too embarrassed to be seen with the diseased whore."

Please remember, that Carla is seen as a whore despite being continuously raped and diseased because Elliot tried to "protect" her.

It seems pretty likely that what Elliot was trying to do was reduce his own discomfort as much as hers. At no point did he ask permission or even consult her. Like GOD, or at least a GOD, he decided what was best for her and did it.

That is narcissism.

The opposite of depression, addiction, and anxiety is a real connection with other people (not in a good therapeutic solution, sobriety, or isolation). You can't be anything other than a narcissist when you try to solve people's problems without knowing them or affording to them the agency to choose.

Luckily, Carla breaks through here, as Elliot continues:

"What she's really pissed about is that I didn't really involve her in something that was all about her and her well-being. She feels like I made choices FOR her."

Exactly, and this is what leads Elliot to reconnect (through writing a letter) with his therapist Krista Gordon.

If you think you make the decisions, that you are the key actor, it is harder for you to be hurt by the people who have control over you. By seeing the jail as Mom's house, Elliot isn't just dissociating from an unpleasant reality, he is also saying that, in his head, he is still the one in control.

The Seductive Promise in Playing God