I wasn't surprised by the Dear John stream at all. It was really Nick just saying the quiet part out loud. If you'd been paying any attention at all, you knew that he had no empathy for anybody at all -- he couldn't subject his wife and family to the public humiliation that he'd been subjecting them to if he had any empathy.
And it was pretty obvious that he had no regard for his audience. They were just paypigs to him.
The thing that shocked people was his willingness to reveal a confidence in order to score points in some trivial online bickering. I thought it was interesting that he had so little insight into how other people would view him after he did this. The idea that he was some social media genius playing 4th dimensional chess against his enemies was just completely shot out of the water. He was just a petty narcissist with poor impulse control. That was the flaw that was costing him over six figures in respect of his defamation of Montagraph, it was the flaw that would take a huge chunk out of his reputation in respect of the Dear John stream, and it was the flaw that was going to result in his getting arrested when the police watched the big cocaine stream.
It wasn't even just that he said something or revealed something - he went on and on and on about it, seething and showing his true, petty, vengeful, punching-down, nasty character. Which, though horrific, was great because it left no doubt about the hole in him that masquerades (poorly) as a soul. Anyone who thinks there is anything in him that counterweighs his jealousy and malice is an absolute idiot. Jealousy, pettiness, and malice
are his character. With a generous side of delusion.
Don't forget how it also demolished any remaining concept that he had the character to practice law (don't laugh). If there is one rock bottom absolute minimum ability a lawyer needs it is to be able to retain a confidence. This wasn't in the context of an attorney-client relationship in all likelihood, but could you ever trust a lawyer like Nick with a confidence?
He totally showed his ass.
And he wasn't just a disgusting piece of shit doing that, he was an absolutely autistic retard who didn't realize he was basically nuking his reputation from orbit. What did this idiotic faggot think, that somehow if some kiwi farmer got humiliated, people would suddenly think he was some Law Pope again and not just some Balldo-encrusted weird cuck?
Nick has never had the judgment to be even a bottom-of-the-barrel lawyer. Yes, he lacks good character, and he certainly lacks brainpower, but there are plenty of low-character and midwit lawyers (it's perfectly possible to be intellectually average as a lawyer but succeed because of effort, work, compensating traits (even sleaze), or the willingness to learn an area or how to do a job competently).
But what he doesn't have is good judgment - not for himself, not for his family, and not for his handful of past clients. All of his decisions are in service of maximizing the perceived benefit to himself and for short-term (self-) interests. That is poor judgment.
Bludgeoning wild critters (and broadcasting same for no purpose other than to sound like The Cool Guy (in his mind)); literally fucking around and finding out; being publicly gross and out of control - and quadrupling down on it; blatant neglect of home and barely veiled serious drug use while holding up the transparent mask of piety and thinking no one can see him; blowing off appearances and deadlines; apparently assuming no one he fucked over would ever connect with others to whom he did the same...and on and on.
Yeah, his poor judgment relates to the narcissism, the mid brain, the lack of work ethic, and the poor character, but plenty of dumb lazy narcs with pretensions to grandeur have at least some strategy and know when to hold 'em/ fold 'em. Not Nick. He has a teenaged boy's sense of snickering strategy: simple, poorly considered, and whatever allows him to get what he wants RIGHT NOW, long view or judiciousness be damned.