61–70 of 218 posts
Sounds like he was HFA (High-Functioning Autistic), with some extra Trauma Sauce. It can be quite difficult for folks like this (Disclaimer: IR1) to find happiness. Crowds, high-stimulus environments, external expectations can be quite chafing. It can also be tempting to latch onto external things and people, to try to heal something that can't really be healed; but only mitigated (long story, but I went through that…
The article talks about his ability to be friendly to strangers but abusive to his long term acquaintances. I have observed this pattern and curious if anyone knows what drives this? My personal theory is that you have some sort of obligations to long term acquaintances but you owe nothing to strangers on the trail. It's this feeling of obligation that leads you to resent people over time.
I've known people closely people like that, there's a selfishness to their lack of acknowledgement of others' needs and wants, but it's more of a drive to do that than a reaction to their existence; if and when they have nobody else to hollow out with their negativity and neglect, they'll turn it on themselves, and over time there will be just less and less of themselves.
Notwithstanding that they can be charming on a superficial level.
There's lots of ways people can have that pattern of being a completely different beast to strangers than to intimate partners in a bad way. Say on the other end the ones that make their whole world about you, but that specially means that every single bad feeling of theirs will be offloaded or straight up blamed on you.
Sounds like he was HFA (High-Functioning Autistic), with some extra Trauma Sauce. It can be quite difficult for folks like this (Disclaimer: IR1) to find happiness. Crowds, high-stimulus environments, external expectations can be quite chafing. It can also be tempting to latch onto external things and people, to try to heal something that can't really be healed; but only mitigated (long story, but I went through that…
Or he could have bipolar, schizophrenia, anxiety, C-PTSD or a number of other things.
All of those would explain what I’m seeing.
Personally, I’m bipolar and I share an a lot of traits with autism. You can’t know what’s happening in a person’s head unless you take time to talk to them or they’ve left a detailed journal.
The article talks about his ability to be friendly to strangers but abusive to his long term acquaintances. I have observed this pattern and curious if anyone knows what drives this? My personal theory is that you have some sort of obligations to long term acquaintances but you owe nothing to strangers on the trail. It's this feeling of obligation that leads you to resent people over time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. Its the idea that the more you learn about people and have to be around them, you start to judge them and then realize they aren't like you, so you push them away and crater relationships on purpose so you can be alone and unencumbered by other people's problems. It sounds to me like he did just that. Easier to have short-term relationships and human contact when you need it, but not long enough where you sta…
> But soon he started to clam up and shut her out. “If something upset him, he would stop talking to me completely. Which can be lonely when you share a 500-square-foot apartment,” she says. You definitely get the sense that he just wanted to be alone at times. Hard to do that when you're in a long term relationships because you have to adjust to some else's schedule. Easier when your acquaintances are short-term.
In this thread: It’s Friday. We do the usual and judge someone we know nothing about, whom we have never met, and begin by call them an asshole and a psychopath. This is the top story on Hacker News. Brought to you by Wired, Inc.
Does anyone remember a Wired (?) story from the earliest days about a teenager who got mixed up in a geek subculture and disappeared into sewers under the city? A quick search on their site didn't really yield what I think I remember.
> disappeared into sewers under the city This might interest you: I watched the quite disturbing documentary "Dark Days" a few years ago about homeless people living in subway and sewage tunnels under New York. They had built small apartments down there and even had electricity. Here are the first 10 minutes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh4s78Db5OQ
A good read and a good reminder that people are always much more complex than we think. I wonder sometimes if by being exposed so often to fairly flat depictions of characters in movies and on TV if folks forget that. I know I do sometimes.
Somehow I read this and I'm not sure what the actual Unsettling Truth was, but it still was interesting, I learned a few new things, and I've been following this one pretty close. The more I read about this the more I'm reminded of Chris McCandless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McCandless
The unsettling truth is that he was deeply troubled, and, at times, an abusive asshole who didn’t necessarily warrant quite as much compassion from strangers as he was given. I’m open to the idea that it may not really matter, and everyone deserves the dignity to not be buried anonymously. But there were a lot of resources invested in this case because he looked very relatable in photos. He was very different from wh…
Assembling dialogue around the divisive narrative of a misleading title is just something that plays into it and I think something we all need to avoid.
The article talks about his ability to be friendly to strangers but abusive to his long term acquaintances. I have observed this pattern and curious if anyone knows what drives this? My personal theory is that you have some sort of obligations to long term acquaintances but you owe nothing to strangers on the trail. It's this feeling of obligation that leads you to resent people over time.
I believe it's called a mask. People with some personality disorders gradually develop a sort of behavioral mask to wear in public in order to fit in into the wider society and be able to achieve one's goals. However, having it 'on' is apparently taxing, so it comes off around people who are in one way or another part of some inner circle for whom there's no point to pretend.
I had a significant personality change after a psychotic break and most people don’t think I’ve changed. I know I have.