Hey man. You have more influence and power here than the person you are replying to. Maybe use it to set the tone you want cultivated?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33763836
You're at least partly right and may be quite right, but I did choose that word consciously. The difference between what I wrote here and the moderation boilerplate I traditionally post (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) is that I used a word with a bit more energy in it. I did that because I feel like the culture here might be ready to take a step further toward recognizing that sort of comment as what we're trying to avoid (because it gets in the way of what we are trying for). Also, I was careful to use a word that is only about the content and in no way personal.
This to me is pretty much anyone with a social media account...
Us as laypeople read an article like this and immediately begin to assess who we know that fits the mold, when we aren't properly trained in human psychology. Having an ego or thick skin is essential to survival in today's world, Heck The Rock has an entire TV show dedicated to stories of his childhood... Yet somehow psychology now wants to convince us that the spectrum for chaos goes from The Rock, To Donald Trump, To your Dad... It not helpful at all to me, and it seems like it only drives polarization rather than problem resolution. I also don't believe that humans stay fixed in one phase, like narcissism or depression, which makes treatment sometimes a really harmful, and often an ineffective but torturous thing to people that receive the classification and treatment.
I respect the fields of psychology and psychiatry, but it seems to me like since the pandemic, they have attracted some highly opportunistic individuals that make generalized characterizations of personalities that truly don't help with problem resolution, but they serve to drive sales of pharmaceuticals and services.
This article advertises "Better Help", a company that totally inundated social media during covid lockdowns. That same company (Better Help) ran TV commercials around that time to, and became popular out of nowhere. I assume they made a lot of money off of mental health marketing because even my family members and friends began to tell me about the company, how telehealth services for mental health did not work well for them, and how the company quickly billed them for undelivered services.
If you look up the definition for "BiPolar" it literally looks to me like it includes absolutely everyone I know --
Symptoms - Bipolar disorder
feeling sad, hopeless or irritable most of the time.
lacking energy.
difficulty concentrating and remembering things.
loss of interest in everyday activities.
feelings of emptiness or worthlessness.
feelings of guilt and despair.
feeling pessimistic about everything.
self-doubt.
That is any of us (conveniently) throughout our lives... Including some highly functional and responsibly motivated people. We go through peaks and valleys in life, If all modern psychiatry does is seek to drive medication and counselling profit and to generalize conditions across very different people to gaslight and create paranoia for profit, it's a highly problematic and costly threat towards our future.
Right now, in many states, individuals can file mental health petitions against friends and family members that get them involuntarily detained, even when they haven't committed any crimes, have no history of drug abuse, and have not shown any violent behavior. It's based on generalized conditions that the industry issues like this, and like the one for bipolar... It can and is being weaponized against many people, and it also drives a vast amount of unexpected medical billing for affected individuals that didn't even consent to being detained for the evaluations.
My advice is to be very wary of psychology for profit, and advice from companies that drive it.
If you look up the definition for "Bi Polar" it literally looks to me like it includes absolutely everyone I know, including some highly functional and responsibly motivated people. We go through peaks and valleys in life, If all modern psychiatry does is seek to drive profit and to generalize conditions across very different people to gaslight and create paranoia for profit, its a highly problematic threat towards our future.
This is primarily why people getting a psychology bachelor's degree are explicitly instructed not to diagnose. Much like a radiologist needs to practice reading scans before they can distinguish between healthy and normal, it takes time and effort to realize how bipolar disorder differs from normal people's presentation.
The point of the vague definitions is to allow for the complexity of people; there's a way in which clinically bipolar people are different from the norm. The condition exists even if we can't figure out how to word the diagnosis yet.
Most modern software design involves emotional and psychological manipulation now more than ever.
Because of the nature of how much social media and software drives our lives now, it's embedded deeply into emotionally manipulating people more than ever, and it complicates human psychology greatly. The best treatment for some afflictions is often to disconnect from toxic Internet resources rather than taking a pill. It's evidenced by Trump being off of Twitter for example, as the entire tone of the platform and even Trump changed when he was banned... As you can see though, people who want to profit off his narcissism work hard to try to drive him back to wild public statements and towards posting on Twitter again. Profitmaking drives a lot of negative behavior and toxicity these days in people, and often the things that drive harmful behavior can't be fixed with antidepressants.
The mental health industry should be making serious moves in countering and calling out the negative aspects of psych manipulation like that more than ever.
I think that you are being too critical of BetterHelp. I had a good experience with them. They have helped me come out of severe depression and significantly improved my quality of life.
There are good and bad therapists on the platform. I've been on and off BetterHelp as a client for a long time, probably since around 2016. Every year, I switch my therapist to see what different branches of psychology can do for me. I have had some genuinely awful therapists. But one can change them easily.
My wife had a bad first impression of BetterHelp, too, because her first therapist was seriously incompetent (offering a live-love-laugh type of therapy, as we called it). She later quite liked the platform when she found a good therapist.
Before the pandemic, the platform was good with refunds, too. They used to offer discounts, and I remember it was pretty easy to get a refund as well. During the pandemic, I wanted to take a break from therapy one month into my 3-month plan, but all they could offer was to pause my subscription, which worked for me.
I think it's easy to make the platform work for you, but it's probably more likely that you will have a bad time than not if you go with your randomly assigned therapist. I hope this additional context is helpful.
Only two? It seems most celebrities are going through something like this near constantly. Or at least they are simulating it since the drama attracts more views, reinforcing the celebrity.
We can’t diagnose from the keyboard, only speculate. So why not having both? Kanye strikes me as a classic narcissist, he likened himself with a messiah and so on. While at the same time I trust the leaked diagnose he actually received as bipolar.
> Kanye strikes me as a classic narcissist, he likened himself with a messiah and so on. While at the same time I trust the leaked diagnose he actually received as bipolar.
Delusions of grandeur are a common symptom of bipolar mania. His diagnosis explains everything. If he's experiencing a manic episode now, it's hard to draw any conclusions at all about his baseline personality (which may in fact be narcissistic).
I think most narcissists only metaphorically think they're the next coming of christ, and most of them are too self-aware to say it even if they didn't.
If someone tells you they're Christ, or Napoleon, think schizophrenia or bipolar or manic-depressive before narcissism.
You're of course correct. And I'm not a mental health professional.
But as someone who has known several people diagnosed with NPD and bipolar. Kanye screams bipolar manic episode to me. The difference seems subtle until you've seen both close up.
Unfortunately as long as enablers stand by them narcissists are protected from collapse. People who have or claim to have billions of dollars always seem to find yes-men hoping to profit by association.
Ain't that the truth. I know one extremely wealthy person (inherited his father's company). Can barely feed himself. Spends his days waxing his collection of luxury automobiles, immersed in superhero fantasy and stalking women. Truly a carcass of a man.
But his every passing whim and crisis is the axis of existence for his gibbering swarm of sucker-creatures.
That could be because - for example - there are now Tweets saying Hitler was misunderstood and didn't really mass murder anyone. And those Tweets are not being taken down.
I guess some people are okay with that. But you don't even have to be "progressive" to see the problem.
>I'm scared because every day or two I see another article on HN that uses Free Speech, a precious and vital political freedom, as a way of spreading fear and hate. And I see the heads nodding along.
And you, like seemingly increasing amounts of people, fail to understand the mechanics of free speech. The part you don't understand is that hate is protected. And that is just as important to protect as any other free speech.
Well no, depending on where you live 'hate' is not protected for one. And for two, it should be obvious that there is no such even handed methods of protection going on, considering how quickly Twitter is banning even mildly left-leaning voices under false pretenses elevated by liars and charlatans.
There is no 'free speech' being protected. It's speech for me and not for thee. Which is hypocritical coming from Musk.
They were banned a few days ago, it seems -- unclear why, it sounds like the called for violence (against Tesla no less), but it's so full of "the capitalist fascists are murdering us"-crazy-level rhetoric that it's hard to find out what happened.
I don't know who "that Friedman guy" is, but I did read that Musk announced a general amnesty. No clue if they are included, I assume it depends on the (given) reason for the ban.
It's hard to tell. Whenever I look at something on Twitter, I still see left-wingers posting, but I assume if they're not banned they're not real leftists and that's not a counter-example etc. Movements should really go back to officially recognizing members so we can discuss these things more easily!
Dude, the capitalist spent 44 BILLION dollars to fight the "woke mind virus". He proceeded by inducing Twitter to shed most of its LGBT, Black and female workforce -- those before/after team pics are gutting, and easily googled.
You get that that is literally how fascism do, right?
Oh no, you've caught me red handed 1attice, I am indeed a fascist. I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for your brilliant insight, you truly are an amazing person protecting the marginalised communities from evil. Truly a life well spent, your father must be very proud to have a son like you.
My understanding (as a non-German citizen who lived there for a year, in the '00s) is that while the line between hate speech and regular speech might be open to debate in Germany, no one debates that there is a line.
In other words, the existence of the distinction is recognized even though it is irredeemably vague. This is important: there is a recognized, valid ontological category for vague distinctions!
To non-American ears, the U.S. debate around free speech sounds a lot like one person shouting 'squares and circles are different and can be treated differently,' and another pointing out that, because squircles exist, the slope is too slippery to acknowledge the reality of squares and circles.
This pattern is employed on both sides of the aisle -- my fellow leftists do it to, particularly around issues of gender. (And I say that as a trans woman.)
The only thing worse than a pink-is-for-girls transphobe coming at me and telling me that gender isn't real is a nonbinary polyamorous anarchist telling me that gender isn't real, and those are basically my options in 2022.
The next protest I attend, I'm bringing a sign saying 'clastic, ad-hoc, and vague ontological distinctions are still real distinctions' but this is why I'm not really invited to protests
Nazi rhetoric is so lazy and reddited. And your comment is useless without examples.
With anti-free-speech advocates continually trying to expand the definition of what constitutes "hate speech", we could be talking about totally different things.
The term is irrelevant here. No matter who you are, you don't have the right to have your viewpoints amplified by a private platform unless your viewpoints qualify as protected speech.
Well, what about something like 'The Libs of Tiktok', a Twitter account that routinely posts the home addresses of trans people? They get away with this by posting the address on its own, but against a trans-symbol background.
Technically, they haven't threatened anyone, but the threat of stochastic violence is legimately chilling to that 'vigorous open free speech debate' that we supposedly all want, and that is so untroubling to so many freeze-peachers speaks volumes.
You can have physical intimidation or free speech, pick any one.
Only a fraction of the people being referred to as Nazis in contemporary, largely-online discourse are saying anything close to this though. It's a routinely misapplied term.
My god. You guys are starting to sound like the insane anti-vaxxers blaming everything and anything on Bill Gates. It's okay to not make every single discussion about Musk
Like it or not, he's a huge part of the public discussion right now.
He used outsized power to take control of a public square, and has let previously disruptive individuals back into that public square. (And Twitter is a public square. Governments, celebrities, charities and more all use it to communicate with people, and news organizations report on the goings-on there.)
I disagree with assigning a Narcissistic collapse to Musk though, I don't think he fits the criteria laid out in the article. Kanye West may fit, but his other untreated mental illness makes that difficult to separate from the narcissism that drives some of his actions. trump, of course, fits NPD, but again I don't think he's collapsing right now. putin as well doesn't seem to be collapsing despite what's happening to the russian military in Ukraine.
While I wish I didn't have to hear anything else about Musk, he's an incredibly powerful person who can effect massive change in our society. Whether that's right or wrong depends on your personal views, but I personally believe that no one person should have that power unless it has been temporarily granted to them by a government in a time of great need.
None of the three frankly make sense to me. Musk is winning rather than collapsing, Trump had his collapse two years ago, and Ye is going through something else right now.
Being extremely successful is more than enough to get both fans and haters, neither are rational in their emotions towards the person/company/organization.
I'm not the person you're responding to, but to me it seems like a straightforward and commonly used technique. The sentence is intentionally crafted for comedic effect via sarcasm, given the general audience that comprises HN, and given what's being pumped across all social media platforms & news media outlets. to say it directly is to utterly remove any comedic/ sarcastic effect.
whether you find it funny/ effective is up to you, though.
