Comment by pornel

5 years ago

Many comments rush to label this guy as "mentally ill". Being an entitled asshole with misdirected anger is not necessarily a medical condition. And there are plenty of people with actual mental health problems who are not aggressive at all (statistically, mentally ill people are more likely to be victims of violence).

Health issues are a thing that happens to people, and they don't have control over it, which absolves them from responsibility for it. OTOH if the guy making these threats is just pissed off due to his own failures, or even is just a troll making it all up, he should be held responsible for his actions.

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pornel

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joombaga  5 years ago

You're drawing a brighter line between mental illness and being an asshole than I would. There may be more grey area between absolution and being held responsible than you're allowing.

I'm not implying we shouldn't hold trolls responsible when they know better. From an outside perspective it would suck to have a brain that releases dopamine when causing others to suffer.

Cederfjard  5 years ago

I think people are saying that not just because of the aggression, but also because the story is all over the place and makes little sense.

  • duskwuff  5 years ago

    Precisely. The list of attacks (?) described in the email is an assemblage of meaningless phrases (like "favicon XML injection" and "JS stochastic Templating") and unrelated occurrences ("Solarwinds Oct/2020").

    • skissane  5 years ago

      That kind of gibberish is actually a symptom of psychosis (thought disorder).

      I've interacted with a few people with psychotic illness over the years (both in-real-life and online) and the distinctive language style is rather hard to miss.