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Joe Goldberg is the main character in the Netflix thriller series You, based on the novel by Caroline Kepnes.
Biography
Joe manages a bookshop called Mooney’s. During his youth, the owner, Mr. Mooney (who was his adopted father) would physically beat him and lock him in the basement, scarring the boy and warping his mind.
Sometime before the story begins, Joe was dating a woman named Candace. The relationship seemed happy enough, but Joe caught Candace cheating on him. Driven further into insanity, Joe killed the man and Candace disappeared shortly after that.
One day a young woman named Beck caught Joe's eye. instantly obsessed, Joe begins stalking her while plotting the best way to enter her life and be her ideal boyfriend. He lies, steals, assaults, kidnaps and even murders in order to form his idealised relationship with Beck. Eventually Beck finds out that Joe has been stalking her, which leads to Joe turning on the very woman he claimed to love and eventually killing her.
Personality
Joe is severely unbalanced. While he acts charming and outgoing, this is little more than a mask for his madness.
He's almost devoid of any empathy, seeing people as little more than playthings for himself. The one exception being Paco, the son of his neighbour. Whenever Paco gets abused by his mother's boyfriend, Joe steps in and gives him some support. While Joe's infatuation with Beck is unhealthy, the care he shows Paco seems to be completely genuine. This is likely because he sees himself in the boy.
While he keeps talking about how deeply in love with Beck he is, he only loves the idea of her. Once they become a couple, things quickly spiral out of Joe's control as the two can't trust each other. They break up, see other people, only to cheat on them with each other and reconnect in an even less healthy relationship.
Joe is also incredibly hypocritical. He sees everyone in Beck's life as manipulating or objectifying her. While he's right in that regard, it's Joe himself who is the worst of them all.