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The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

wired.com

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Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#101

Post by tartoran »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #73
tppiotrowski wrote: post #37

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.

He wasn’t abusive to his roommate or coworkers, so the divide wasn’t stranger/close acquaintance. Sorry to spell it out, and I don’t expect any sympathy for it, but the pattern was man/woman.

I highly doubt the pattern was as you put it man/woman. That pattern seems to indicate that he was more abusive to people who were closer to him.

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#103

Post by deeeeplearning »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #26
blakesterz wrote: post #4

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…

>The other unsettling truth is that HN can read this story and come away asking what people could possibly object to in his life story, and why one should believe the spouses (plural) that describe his dark side

What's unsettling about thinking that hit pieces on a dead man with quotes from supposed "ex girlfriends" is obnoxious?

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#104

Post by nemonemo »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #37

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.

My theory about what might have governed his behavior: boredom. He was designing a game, which is a system designed to mitigate the boredom issue. Knowing people better could make them boring to one's eye -- there are familiar patterns, and not much interesting new patterns developed. Nature has a lot of interesting new patterns.. but maybe he eventually got bored out of that too.

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#105

Post by Neil44 »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #37

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.

Need for approval maybe. Skilled at getting approval from strangers. Once in a relationship that disappears.

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#106

Post by deeeeplearning »

dickbar wrote: post #57

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.

bbbut 2 whole ex girlfriends said he was meeaaaan!! /s

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#107

Post by tsjq »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #78

Is there an official term for people that appear to be charming and outgoing to strangers, but often moody and/or distant to people they know well?

This sub thread here goes into some detail. I'm also very curious about the same. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25793526

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#108

Post by bart_spoon »

jasonv wrote: post #34

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.

Perhaps its about the DnD kid? I vaguely remember hearing about that, in the early days of DnD there was a college kid in Michigan who disappeared, and it was thought he had been in the steam tunnels under the campus as part of a DnD campaign or something. I don't remember all of the details, or if it ended up being true, but I think it kind of became a trope surrounding DnD for a while, and there was a Tom Hanks movie about it.

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#109

Post by TeaDrunk »

fsckboy wrote: post #55
tppiotrowski wrote: post #37

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.

there is a broad class of psychological problems called "personality disorders" and they're basically "spectrum" disorders, there's no one size fits all diagnosis for anybody, and even skilled practitioners go through a tricky and time consuming process of diagnosing patients directly, i.e. we can't diagnose him from here based on 2nd hand information, and especially because we are not skilled practitioners. wrt your…

This doesn't apply to all personality disorders. Schizotypal and paranoid personality disorders do not have this behavior at all.

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#110

Post by throwstranger »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #37

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.

From experience, I would explain it by an inability to accept others, which could be traced to perfectionism and low self-esteem.

With long term acquaintances, you start to notice imperfections. If you have a low self-esteem, you could develop this peronality where you are constantly judging others, and trying to control and make them perfect, because they are part of your life.

This could have been caused by constant criticism received during childhood, or abusive parents who were themselves perfectionist in treating you, and didn't show enough acceptance, pride and love.

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