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So, I think this video succinctly captures him pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uLzaKlZSQQ Clearly a very intelligent and insightful guy. On the other hand, he also comes across as racist and an egomaniac, and it's debatable how much of that we can chalk up to mental illness. On a cynical level, I don't think he was the "right" kind of mentally ill person for a charity campaign. Someone who is rendered, for lack of a better word, pathetic, or pitiable, by mental illness is a good poster child that will encourage visibility, donations, etc. However, no one wants to be the company sponsoring a guy who brazenly and defiantly calls everyone who disagrees with him a CIA n-word, while repeatedly claiming himself "the smartest programmer who ever lived". Simply put, no one pities an asshole. That's not a judgment on him specifically, more on society as a whole and how there are social repercussions for showing pity on "the wrong" kind of people. EDIT: I'd also argue that giving him a platform whereby his worst behavior can be encouraged and goaded by faceless followers is probably the worst thing you can do to a mentally-ill person. |
I agree that for some mentally-ill people that it can make them more sick.
But is "more sick" better than dead? I don't care how obnoxious or racist the guy is. I hate his opinions myself. From looking at the video, this is not somebody I would want to be associated with. But I don't hate the person. I hate his opinions. No matter how worse his behavior becomes, if he's alive, there's hope, right?
Isn't this the problem? People from a particular looked-down-upon outgroup are those that we would really, really not like being around, and we don't know how to help them, yet we feel that we should? (regardless of the group or why we feel we should help them)