Why are trolls online so mean?

[unsunghero]

Last work anecdote: a long time ago we had a young adult guy who was deemed SMI status (serious mental illness) which people typically only got for psychotic disorders, who was having delusions of persecution and paranoid

We heard from his case manager he had just set his car on fire, ruining it. We were transporting him to a psych hospital and could tell he was symptomatic and becoming more escalated in the back. What made it worse was we were stuck in gridlock traffic for 30 mins longer than the drive should have taken. And I had to piss the worst I ever had to in my life. I couldn’t just jump out to pee on the freeway in front of a client, even if he was psychotic

So when we finally got to the psych hospital I was almost running in to avoid pissing my pants. And as I’m zipping in, I see out of the corner of my eye that the client has immediately upon exiting the vehicle put his $700 iphone on the ground and began to smash it with a rock. I remember wincing and thinking “man the car and now the phone, you are going to regret that once we get you mentally stable, that sucks man”

When I came out of the bathroom there was the client holding the rock like a weapon with police in front of him tasers out. They and us talked him into putting the rock down and going in voluntarily. He was saying that assassins had been tracking his phone and were coming to kill him

Afterwards my female partner was angry at me for days. She was like “you abandoned me with a psychotic hostile client”, and I bought her lunch and apologized every way I could because she was entirely in the right. I just told her I couldn’t piss my pants at work. She eventually forgave me

Moral of the story is sometimes psychotic people will break their own electronics on purpose too