How I Deal with Harassment, Abuse, and Crazies in General

> First about violence: You're wrong

Wrong about what? What claim did I make that's wrong? Oh, wait, you're just assuming that I disagree with you, so that you can be mad. You assume that I assume that mental illness predicts mental behaviour, but I said nothing of the kind. I think? Right?

> Mental illness does not predict violent behaviour.

That's an interesting claim (interesting in the sense that I am interested, but not yet convinced). Two minutes of googling found mild disagreement with your claim, and was in general utterly consistent with my previous beliefs (e.g. [0]). Care to cite evidence in favour of your claim? If it turns out that you're correct about the facts, I'm interested in knowing more.

[0] http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/about-us/reports-stud...

Note, btw, that while the summary at that link makes it look like you're right, when you read the actual findings, it says the opposite of what you claimed.

So, unlike when I wrote the previous comment, now I have started to believe that mental illness _does_, to a small degree, predict slightly increased violent behaviour, though not nearly as much as being young or male or substance-abusing, all of which are about as surprising as the sun rising in the morning.

> The fact that you don't care that vulnerable people are frequently the victims of violent crime

This sentence is you being an asshole. Please stop. Obviously I meant "when I am assessing whether or not I should consider mentally ill people dangerous, what I am concerned with is whether or not I should not consider mentally ill people dangerous, as opposed to some other issue which is unrelated for the purposes of my security". Obviously I did not mean "In general I care about no one but myself" or some other farcical interpretation which no one would admit to in public.

> But in this thread someone isn't saying "these behaviours are crazy", they're saying "these people are crazies".

That is not a correct description of this thread. My comment was a reply to a comment that contained a link, which talked entirely about whether or not it was okay to call people and behaviour crazy. Did you follow the link and read the argument? Your description of "this thread" is a correct description of the original word used in the title of TFA, but the conversation is at this point broader than that. I dunno if I personally have ever called anyone "a crazy", but maybe I have.

> by describing people who do things you don't understand as "crazies" you're promoting stigma against mental illness

I'm not at all convinced that that's true. I think it promotes stigma against the behaviour characterized as "crazy". And I think it's pretty clear that that's what is happening in TFA's title: online harassment is being implicitly characterized as so inappropriate that it brings into question the health of the brain that committed it. I'm in favour of that implicit characterization.

> Another reason: ..... You're inadvertently insulting your friends

I don't agree that I'm insulting the friends, and family, and loved ones, and self, that I know, with mental illness. (You're so cute in your assumption that I'm in the privileged group.) If we're all getting along fine, maybe the problem is you. Or maybe you're right, and I misunderstand everything, and the problem is me. But just stating your implausible claim over and over again is frustratingly unpersuasive.

Thank you, by the way, for not getting distracted by the claim about violence, and after making your comment about it, moving on to the more interesting main point.

Anonymity precludes history. Pseudonymity doesn't.

Sure they can overlap. They can't knowingly overlap.

A prominent example is the mastermind behind DotA, Icefrog. The public has no idea who he is despite the fact that he has been quite famous for several years.

It's sort of like what happens to people who win the lottery; they have less experience as millionaires, so they make a ton of big purchases and questionable spending decisions. People who were born/grew up/made it rich more slowly tend to have more experience managing their finances and hence tend to go broke a lot less quickly/often.

The same thing tends to happen to the newly famous. They think they're invincible, get a quickly overinflated ego, respond poorly to criticism and end up under a ton of psychological pressure as a result. You can see it with people who make it big off talent shows or reality tv.