Thanks for the welcome - suppose I am here to stay now haha.
It would be my pleasure
It’s very common (particularly in the case of covert narcissists) to come up with illnesses and traumas in order to garner sympathy and attention. They don’t understand that in normal relationships (familial, friendship, spousal etc.) that affection and empathy is given freely despite circumstances or lack thereof. Because they don’t understand the normal triggers of emotions and they themselves cannot give anything freely they will invent situations. The processing of emotion and feeling for a narcissist is a a higher threshold that non-narcs and as such they must created the most fanciful situations. From what I see Melanie is someone that needs a great deal of narcissistic supply (simply put, attention) and hence if somebody has something going on she HAS to have something even worse/more important because it is unbearable to her to have the supply cut even for a moment. I will also say that narcissistic have a special ability to truly convince themselves of their own delusions and will reach a certain point of “no-return” after which, they simply cannot remember their authentic experiences. It will all be filtered through the fantasy.
As you say, she has used this very obviously to martyr herself to gain engagement. She cannot cope when the supply dwindles and so she finds the next thing. Her troubles are short lived, and only applicable when convenient for her.
The troll blaming and sock puppets I will put in one point if thats okay
this is actually a relatively new phenomena in the advent of social media. It has been coined as “cyber self-harm”. It is common in teenagers who lack self-esteem and quite often they themselves are victims of narcissistic abuse from parental figures. They will invent personas to use to be cruel to themselves in order to garner sympathy. There is a lesser common form which is what I believe Melanie is participating in, in which someone will be giving themselves “self-supply” she is being cruel to herself, and then sticking up for herself in an attempt to in a way, self sooth, her own need for attention. That is one aspect, the other more obvious is of course the simple “to have her followers stick up for her” and to her to so called “trolls” call her out. Every facet of attention is sublime to a narcissist. Deleting comments is a panic response when she is being caught out, she knows there isn’t a way she get wiggle out of enough attention is brought to her inconsistency’s. That’s why she gets so riled up over what is said on here. She has no control. The recent meltdowns on Instagram I believe are a sign of what is to come, rage is the most potent emotion for people with npd and it will spill to the surface and will be catostrophic for her and her families mental well-being if she doesn’t quickly step back and have professional assistance.
I hope that was okay and made sense haha x sorry if there are any spelling issues I am on my phone