he gets infantalised a lot, like, he was out there causing real harm right in s1 because he was an ass to traumatised statement givers, which people don’t give a lot of thought to because statement givers don’t register as ‘real people’ to most listeners so his scepticism is always played for laughs. and i don’t think jon has low empathy. i try to avoid pathologising characters because that enters headcanon territory very quickly and i’m not great with those, so i just prefer textual analysis. i’ve talked about this before, he perfectly knew what he was doing, he knew they were all true stories, and the reason he was reluctant to acknowledge their truth is because it would’ve required vulnerability on his part, i.e. feeding beholding his own fear. he says it outright in MAG 39 - “Because I’m scared, Martin! Because when I record these statements it feels… it feels like I’m being watched […] The scepticism, feigning ignorance. It just felt safer."—and this is basically the bureaucratic version of what he will do later as an avatar, feed on someone else so your god doesn’t feed on you. that bit of s1 characterisation is important to me because then you can’t handwave his s4 feeding choices as simply psychological urges he has no control over, he has always been like this (which is a very human response, i don’t find this contemptible. it’s good writing). the other thing about jon is that people engage with him as a guy who 'lost all his friends’ because of the monstrosity downward spiral, but that’s not true either. he’s clearly meant to be a guy who was out there gleefully burning bridges in seasons one and two and that attitude of his is the primary reason nobody wants to associate with him when he starts displaying his weird guy powers. the weird guy powers are bad enough but on top of that he did not endear himself to anyone (see, tim and melanie) with his previous behaviour so when he actually decides to do bit of a heel turn in s3 by seeking human connections, that comes back to bite him. which is, again, good writing and why i think jon is a very compelling case of the 'asshole smart guy’ archetype, because there are. consequences.
