What are your thoughts when someone self-identifies as misanthrope?

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Well, a few thoughts..
1) they might be the antisocial type and not be very pleasant people to interact with
2) they're probably more aware of and bogged down by all the atrocities, stupidity, etc. of humanity than your average person who tends to live in his/her happy little bubble
3) it's possible, since they resent humans so much for all their faults, that they're actually better than a large proportion of humans.

I know almost anybody would seriously object to the idea that misanthropes are better than other people, but this is honest, open-minded thinking, rather than simply being reactionary and fighting negativity with negativity. This is the same reason, for example, I don't have automatic disdain for someone who claims shamelessly to have a high IQ--I think, "cool, let's talk about interesting subjects!" and appreciate that I can relate to their need to let others know they're intelligent.

It just makes sense that if someone resents someone else for being greedy, ignorant, dumb, barbaric, primitive, or whatever, then that person is probably better or at least lacks that particular trait they're judging.. do you think thieves judge each other for being thieves? So by extrapolation there's a good chance that someone who hates the majority of humanity is better than the majority of humanity.

Not that disdain for humanity is necessarily a virtue, perhaps it's negative and any type of negativity is categorically not a virtue, but nobody's perfect, and people can be appreciated despite their shortcomings.