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The main reason is that almost all content online comes from people who are mentally ill. Commenting or creating anything online is really weird. Normal people don't do this, so you're interacting with a very different group of people on your computer than in real life.

> people in real life seem so much more complacent and uncritical compared to people online

This is just to avoid conflict. I'm sure they feel the same way internally



>The main reason is that almost all content online comes from people who are mentally ill.

I wasn’t brave enough to say this, but since you have, I want to agree. Gaming, Discord, forums, etc - filled to the brink with mentally ill individuals.


I'm glad you and the one above you said it. My addiction to discord scares me more than anything - because everyone else on there is extremely mentally ill... So why am I drawn there?

Oh no!


what "mentally ill" means in this context? like literally?


Suffering a distortion of perspective. From focus, trauma, drugs, obsession...


There’s a huge difference between having a distorted world view because of ignorance or knowledge or whatever and being clinically diagnosed with a mental illness. For example, someone that seems very self involved, a trait of immaturity and youth, isn’t the same as someone with narcissistic personality disorder as defined here: https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/materials/Narc.P...


Never discount the power of long, intense, sustained focus to wreck your perspective.


"commenting or creating anything online is really weird"

You are commenting right now here on HN. Are you ok ? ;)


no


> mentally ill

What does that mean? We're all 'mentally ill' to some degree, in some situations, etc.

> almost all content online comes from people who are mentally ill

Wow! But I agree: Almost all content online comes from people, and all people are 'mentally ill' - or just normal.


This seems deeply correct. Do you have an idea why it seems half the people on Reddit and twitter are trans?


Autism


We have a word for people who live life read-only, consuming their surroundings - NPCs. Not sure who's really mentally ill in this situation.


To paraphrase the climax of the movie War Games, "In some games, an NPC is the only winning character".




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