Hello guys, I hope that you’re all doing well, I found out about this place through my friend, you might know him as Kirby so let’s just call him that. We all know that the internet is a wasteland as far as leftist spaces go and that’s the reason he was on this website for years in the first place.
As far as I know he was banned many months ago for some reason(he didn’t tell me, he just told he was banned and gave up on it), but since then he doesn’t have a leftist space to go since reddit pretty much purged those some time ago and the same thing on other social media, left is dead in real life here and not to mention constant western oriented content, comments and news, it got particularly intense lately.
During the recent events in the past few months, Kirby is on downward spiral and his sanity is worrying me. Almost every time we met he had unhinged rants about western white people, how he wants Yellowstone to explode and destroy United States after every non-western is evacuated, how he wants to watch cartels execute white Americans, especially republicans, how he personally wants to kill every western and western-aligned leader starting with American presidents and Erdogan and is cheering on NATO infighting over Greenland. Being a leftist, I also heavily dislike the west, but I wouldn’t want a nuclear war or volcanic cataclysm to take place because of it, he was always hating on west, but never said stuff this unhinged, stuff that I wrote isn’t even scratching the surface of everything he said. When he’s on PC and not on the internet, he’s playing GTA V and constantly killing cops and in the past few weeks downloaded probably every single game where you can kill American soldiers.
His most recent rant which I had to listen to was 3 days ago and it was about how ‘‘westerners destroyed/ruined Godzilla’’, it went on and on for an entire hour however unbelievable that sounds and it was… interesting to say the least… Certainly more so than his usual constant rants about vampires in western media. I’m not into Godzilla and I just casually watched a couple of movies some years ago and so I didn’t understand more than half the stuff he said.
He has a brother and sister, I’ve been hanging around with his brother almost just as much as with him during school and he’s pretty much the same in opinions except he’s level headed and doesn’t have bursts of anger. His older sister also shares same opinions, is extremely LGBT phobic, goes on rants and introduced him to Terrifier movies, so that’s all you need to know about her sanity. So family isn’t going to help in this in any way.
I know him since 2012, we grew up together and am extremely saddened to see him go from a silly guy with dark humor to this… Since he’s been here for years, you probably know how he was online unlike me, so please, If you have some advice or any way to help, to bring him back and talk to him, tell me, why did this happen to him all of a sudden.
Thank you in advance.
He needs to seek professional help. Remember, Lemmy, any kind of social media are not a way to address mental health problems. Months ago, I survived some mental health problems without discussing it even further, and softly and indirectly sought professional help to address some of my concerns.
The problem is that he doesn’t think he needs it in the first place.
i know this might be hard to hear and it might sound cruel, but if that’s the case the only thing that will force him to become aware of his need for help is, in fact, deteriorating conditions to the point where there is no other option but for him to become more self-aware. your job is not to tell him what he needs (people always have to help themselves first and foremost), but to support him as much as you can through that process. at best you can slightly nudge someone in the right direction. truly, best of luck to you
“Professional help” is never going to be a substitute for a community of like minded people and if these are your political opinions there’s like 2 forums where you are not going to feel like either you or everyone else in the world has gone insane
That’s true, but the question is, does he most need community right now or does he need more pointed help? Both would be ideal, but from the way the behavior is described, it sounds like there are major issues with regulating emotions and subsequent behavior. We are not, in my view, a tight-knit and physically close enough of a community to be able to deal with that kind of thing well, insofar as setting boundaries without excluding someone. Banning (temp or long term) is pretty much the forceful boundary setting option that is available.
Maybe I’m more sensitive to this kind of thing because I’ve dealt with people who are varying levels of immature in emotional regulation my whole life, but I’ll put it this way: this can’t be much of a community if some of the people here are chronically dysregulating and refuse to change their behavior in response to feedback. What happens in my experience in RL if that kind of thing is allowed to chronically recur without consequence, is people end up changing their behavior to “manage” the person who chronically dysregulates, rather than setting boundaries and forcing them to make a choice to either mature or be more at a distance.
To be clear, I’m not saying that the occasional rant and upset, or general expression of emotion, is dysregulation. Dysregulation might on some occasions have disagreement as to what qualifies as it, but I’d roughly consider it as “the person is not limiting themself” (and, when enabling behavior is in the mix, others present are not trying to limit them or create distance). Emotion and impulse become closer together, they may ruminate on shaky narratives that they haven’t thought through well at all, and as a result, their actions may seem more erratic or childish. Professionals have tools to try to help with this kind of thing, like grounding techniques, and are more equipped to take on a mentoring role in regulation without it turning into a co-dependent relationship. I wish we could brush that all away and live in a world where people are looked after and supported unconditionally, and as a result, a lot of these issues would probably exist a lot less. But for the time being, we have to work with conditions as they are and figure out how to create that world, not just wish it into existence via a mindset.
Hope that makes sense.