https://unherd.com/2021/06/are-twitter-trolls-mentally-ill/ [menu-burge] Our Mission Log in [UnHerd] Log in [ThePostALP] Analysis Are Twitter trolls mentally ill? A disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues BY Tom Chivers . Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was trolled. (Photo by Francois Durand/ Getty Images for Dior) Tom Chivers Tom Chivers is UnHerd's Science Editor. His second book, How to Read Numbers, is out now. June 23, 2021 [share-twit]TomChivers --------------------------------------------------------------------- June 23, 2021 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Filed under: Don't missInternetMental healthmental illnessOnline abuseSocial media TransgenderTwitter --------------------------------------------------------------------- Share: [share-fb] [share-twit] [share-mail] There's a thing in the ethics of psychology called the Goldwater Rule . It states, in essence, that mental health professionals should not diagnose people from afar. It arose in the 1964 US presidential election, after the magazine Fact published an article quoting various psychiatrists saying that Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate, was "psychologically unfit" to be president. Reasonably and inevitably enough, Goldwater then sued the heck out of Fact. The American Psychiatric Association then made it a principle of their code of ethics that "it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorisation for such a statement". In the UK, the Royal College of Psychiatrists "strongly supports" the rule. I'm not a mental health professional. Nonetheless I think it's a broadly useful principle to live by, especially if -- as I do -- you write a lot about mental health. Suggesting that some political opponent or other is mentally ill is often easier than wondering why a sane person in command of their faculties might believe something you disagree with. But there's an opposite mistake to the one the Goldwater Rule guards against: acting as though mental health issues have no relevance to our political and cultural lives. Last week, the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie published a blog post called "It Is Obscene". It referred to her experiences since she did an interview with Channel 4, in which she said that "trans women are trans women" -- that is, she did not say that she thought that trans women are women, without caveats, although she has been a longtime campaigner on LGBT issues. Two young writers who she knew personally, she said, had accused her publicly of transphobia. One had called for people to "pick up machetes" to defend trans people from the "harm" she caused. For Adichie, this was a story about the "sanctimony" and "emotional aridity" of the online Left, and the "ideological orthodoxy" which requires people to denounce their friends and toe unwavering political lines in order to remain part of a "chosen puritan class". I think this is undoubtedly part of the story, but not the whole. More from this author Why third jabs are inevitable By Tom Chivers Adichie did not identify the writers; I will follow her lead, although it was not difficult to identify them from her text. But one of them had publicly declared a few months earlier that they have "dissociative identity disorder", DID. That is: they have multiple personalities within one body; they refer to themselves as a "system" of personalities rather than a single person. This is where I bump up somewhat against the Goldwater Rule. DID is a personality disorder which often presents with, or is confused with, another disorder called borderline personality disorder (BPD). About 70% of DID patients are also diagnosed with BPD, and the two conditions are often considered part of the same spectrum. The diagnostic criteria for BPD include "identity disturbance with markedly or persistently unstable self-image or sense of self," and "severe dissociative symptoms". Goldwater notwithstanding, I think it's OK to draw lessons across from one to the other; diagnoses of the various kinds of personality disorder are very fuzzy -- often people are in several categories, or don't fit neatly into any of them. Both BPD and DID are marked by extreme emotional volatility and a lack of a stable sense of self. This is a marvellous, sympathetic piece on BPD; the metaphor it uses is that people with BPD are cognitively "lighter" than neurotypical people. That is: if you are heavy, it takes a lot to move you. So when something quite nice happens to a neurotypical person, it makes them slightly happier: the wind only moves them a little bit. When something quite unpleasant happens, it makes them slightly sadder. But if you are cognitively light, then the same events will move you much further. A small victory will make you thrill with joy; a small problem can make you suicidal (and BPD patients have a tragically high suicide risk in their younger years). It also applies to people's opinions of others: "Either a relationship is perfect and that person is wonderful, or the relationship is doomed and that person is terrible," as the NHS page on BPD puts it. This is called "splitting", and again, it's easy to think of it as someone being light, rather than heavy: being blown on the wind of events. People with these conditions feel emotions much more strongly. But they also have difficulty forming a strong self-image, and often take on very visible identities, such as being a Goth or a fan of a particular band, dyeing their hair or getting tattoos, in order to give themselves something solid to cling to. More from this author The science of bullshit By Tom Chivers This piece written by a BPD patient discusses how she would change her entire personality, and with it her wardrobe, with each new relationship or phase in her life: "In my 'Premier League' days, it'd be athletic and gym gear; when dating a hipster, I mimicked their use of rings and hats. My wardrobe was like the skin of a chameleon, physically embodying the changes in my personality." This one talks about "waking up and trying to be a new person every day. Go vegan, go goth, go hipster, go glamour, cut your hair, change your makeup, gain weight, lose weight, and never feel quite there." I think this helps make sense of a lot of what was going on with the subject of Adichie's essay. That person had been a worshipper of Adichie's: later, they considered Adichie a transphobe and a bigot. A neurotypical person might have been disappointed that their hero was using what they considered insensitive language about trans people, but for someone whose emotions are more easily blown around, it made their opinion swing from 180deg from love to hate. The relationship is perfect and the person is wonderful; then, the person is terrible and the relationship is doomed. The identity aspect makes sense as well. In one Twitter post the author called for people to "pick up machetes to protect us from the harm transphobes like Adichie & Rowling seek to perpetuate". Those machetes are presumably metaphorical, albeit an astonishingly vivid metaphor, but in other posts they abhor the "violence" of Adichie's (to me mild-seeming) language towards trans women. This looks like straightforward hypocrisy, but to someone who struggles to form a coherent self-identity, and then finds one with the trans community, any criticism of that identity might well feel like a violent attack on the very core of one's being. The Adichie incident is a recent and high-profile one, but I think a disproportionate percentage of the problems with online discourse stem from similar problems. I won't link to or identify any individuals -- they would not benefit from it, and nor would anyone else -- but I repeatedly see analogous situations, often from people who in other tweets openly declare their diagnosis. I want to be very clear about some things I'm not saying. I'm not saying that all online bad behaviour is because of mental health issues or personality disorders: lots of people are just dickheads, and there's no need to pathologise them. And I'm not saying that all or even most people with BPD or similar disorders end up attacking people online. And -- while this example is lifted from the trans activism/gender-critical forever war -- I'm certainly not saying that all trans people have personality disorders or that being trans is a mental illness. Suggested reading What makes us hate? By Stuart Ritchie But one of the cries of our age is to be more sympathetic and understanding of mental health conditions. The trouble is, I find that when people say things like that, they are often thinking of the more acceptable manifestations of mental ill health; people being depressed or anxious, staying home and making cute posts about being introverts. Sometimes, though, mental health issues cause people to behave badly and cause harm to others, in ways that are not cute or sympathetic or easily understandable. An old friend with a personality disorder once wanted to write about this, on Mental Health Awareness Day: that we're all keen to be Aware of Mental Health when it means someone being anxious or unhappy. But when it's about psychotic episodes -- or even less sympathetic disorders, such as psychopathy or narcissistic personality disorder -- we're less keen. My friend never wrote the post, but I think it's true. For instance: Freddie de Boer, a brilliant and insightful writer on many issues, suffers from bipolar disorder. During a manic period he falsely accused a man of rape and sexual harassment of women, causing enormous harm to himself and the man accused. He holds himself accountable for it and does not blame his illness, but it is nonetheless the case that his mental health issues caused him and others much pain. Or Johann Hari, a journalist who was fired from the Independent after using fake "sockpuppet" accounts to libel other writers as homophobes and racists and antisemites. He was suffering from depression and addiction at the time. Again, it is not absolving him of responsibility to say that his mental health issues were a factor in the disastrous decisions he took. I don't know what my proposed solution is here. But I do think there is a failure -- an understandable failure, a failure born of a desire not to offend or stigmatise, but a failure nonetheless -- to address the reality of how mental health issues interact with our online discourse. Online, it's easy to find causes to join, to give you identity; it's easy to find people who'll cheer you on, even if whatever they're cheering you on to do is self-destructive, or damaging to others -- calling for people to "pick up machetes" to attack women, for instance, even if it is a metaphor. In the case of BPD, apparently, the prognosis is generally a good one : we all grow more emotionally stable over the course of our lives (as children, we are very emotionally volatile, and settle down with age) and by middle age, most people with BPD are leading healthy and happy lives. One study followed up patients 27 years after diagnosis and found that 92% of them no longer met the diagnostic criteria. But we shouldn't pretend that these issues aren't a factor in the sometimes toxic online environment. Puritan attitudes, ideological dogma, hypocrisy and cant are all part of it as well, but, Goldwater Rule notwithstanding, we're missing a part of the story of online discourse if we don't find a way of addressing, sensitively and without stigma, the role of mental health. [ellipse-br] Join the discussion [illustrati] --------------------------------------------------------------------- David Simpson David Simpson says: June 23, 2021 at 4:01 pm I do think a fundamental problem with a lot of this is the use of avatars and anonymity - even people with mental health issues may think twice about going off on one if everyone can see who they are and what their real name is. I have "issues" but I try not to let them dictate my behaviour on line - I lose it occasionally when drunk, but I'm still identifiable, and I accept responsibility for my stupidity, along with everything else. And I would apologise, if that was appropriate. Jon Redman Jon Redman says: June 23, 2021 at 9:52 am But the trouble with trans people is that somehow, for fear of offending them, they have been put in charge of their own treatment. They have been allowed to decide that they're not mentally ill. They insist that the view of the world with which their psychosis has saddled them be affirmed and upheld at every turn. And at any suggestion otherwise, they mobilise a few thousand online Marxists to ruin the life of anyone tactless enough to disagree with their estimation of themselves. I can't think of any other mental health condition where this approach is taken. If I think I'm Napoleon I am not provided with a palace, a throne, armies to command and a retinue of marshals. If I think I'm Admiral Nelson, nobody would propose surgery to remove one of my eyes and arms. The treatment would consist not of surgical mutilation to reinforce my psychosis; it would involve sympathetically getting me to face actual reality, with some drugs to calm me down. Why are they a special case? Who let this happen? Ben Hekster Ben Hekster says: June 23, 2021 at 1:55 pm Simple: because it's not really about the 'trans' people at all. They are just the pawns utilized and sacrificed by the Left. It's about creating wedge issues that can be used to divide the general population and impose more and more confusing and demoralizing rules. It's about getting us all used to submission. Chris Wheatley Chris Wheatley says: June 23, 2021 at 2:07 pm On the whole I agree with you. But I think you have to be careful with the words 'mentally ill' or 'mental problem. Forgetting trans people for a moment, the idea of 'mental problems' has in itself become a woke thing. If I have a problem with people I work with, if I am inconsiderate to other people, if I cause problems in a workplace and the management decides to discipline me - then I just say that the organisation is giving me mental problems, it isn't my fault it's the fault of the system; then just watch everybody back off and try to be nice to me. This happens every day. Bad behaviour is more and more using the excuse of 'mental problems'. Just suppose that 50% of the trans people are just playing along, trying to get attention. All would have to be treated equally and all would be assigned to psychiatrists. Suppose the psychiatrists couldn't cope and get mental problems. Where would we be? David Simpson David Simpson says: June 23, 2021 at 4:03 pm Not censorship - accountability. Who are you, and did you say this? Can we sue you if you're being defamatory? Or section you if being mad? A Spetzari A Spetzari says: June 23, 2021 at 8:01 am Nail on head. It's why left, right, centre are all struggling to come up with any meaningful policy to try and control/mitigate social media. Well, some on the more extreme left allied with Big Tech are doing their own thing - but that is another story... Lesley van Reenen Lesley van Reenen says: June 23, 2021 at 1:23 pm I believe one should have to pay to belong to FB, even a nominal amount. This will immediate stop a whole lot of trolling. Antonino Ioviero Antonino Ioviero says: June 23, 2021 at 12:27 pm Intriguing. Unherd could do an analysis on this using their own data. Unherd's comment sections seems to force people to use their own names rather than pseudonyms. Is the discussion more civil? Alternatively, does paying even a small subscription discourage trolling? That seems to be the thinking of lawyer Robert Barnes and why he has set up his own Locals.com community. David Simpson David Simpson says: June 23, 2021 at 4:07 pm I think Twitter is a waste of space. I was on it briefly, and once made a slightly critical and perfectly reasonable/rational remark about someone being islamophobic. My own brother abused me! In a private conversation, fair enough - and I'd have abused him back. In a public space it was grotesque. Douglas McNeish Douglas McNeish says: June 23, 2021 at 6:44 pm The triviality of the multitude of social justice issues and their microaggressions creating presumed victimhood are reminiscent of the fierce debates about the nature of God which consumed Christianity, and led to riots in the streets of the late Roman Empire - all while their civilisation was being deconstructed by mercenary armies run amok. To get involved in the discussion and stay up to date, become a registered user. It's simple, quick and free. 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