this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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I suspect that the difference is to no small degree correlated with a person's isolation/social-integration.
People who aren't socially integrated have always been more vulnerable to predatory cults and scams. It's because human interactions is a psychological need that's been hardcoded into us by evolution.
Some people say "I don't need human interaction, I enjoy my time alone!" But that's because they have the privilege of enough social acceptance and integration that they get to enjoy their time alone. It's well-established within the field of psychology that true isolation can have a range of deep and far-reaching impacts on a person's well-being.
When people are developing, they need to socialize with their peers; and being unable to do so leads to maladaptive behavior patterns. Even as adults, people need regular social contact or their psychological state can quickly deteriorate. That's why solitary confinement is considered a method of torture in some circumstances, when it's used to depersonalize and destroy a person's sense of self-identity.
So that's why I suspect that people who are well-integrated with friends, family, acquaintances, and coworkers are probably less vulnerable to these sorts of delusions and can treat AI as "just a tool."
But for someone who hardly has any social interaction in a day, has no friends or family to talk to, and maybe their warmest interaction all week was with the clerk at the grocery store, then yeah I'd say it's predictable that they would be vulnerable to getting sucked into this trap of relying on an LLM for their social interaction.
It might be superficial, but it's a way of patching a hole. It's an expedient means to fulfill a need that they're not getting from anywhere else.
If we don't want this sort of stuff happening to people, then maybe we shouldn't ostracize them for being "weird" in the first place. Because nobody learns how to be "normal" by being alone all the time.
Social isolation is definitely a factor but people also have different tolerance to it.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/mar/26/ai-chatbot-users-lives-wrecked-by-delusion
This guy for example was married, had daughter. He wasn't some lonely guy living in a basement. For him working from home was enough to fell isolated fall for AI psychosis. Other people can be significantly more socially isolated and still not be susceptible to it. I think understanding how LLMs work helps. For sure there are more factors.
Are you suggesting this only happens to people ostracized and somehow excluded from society? Because that's definitely not true. It can happen to anyone. Some people have genetic predisposition to mental illness, some people are just dealing with difficult moment in their life. You don't know if you're "immune" until you try it.
I didn't say it was the only factor, but it definitely contributes.
Smoking causes cancer, but not everyone who smokes gets cancer, and some non-smokers and even olympic athletes do...
This is really good. Thank you for taking the time to write it.
Thank you for understanding. So many times when I discuss things that are adjacent to this topic, I get flamed in the comments with people accusing me of being some sort of redpiller from the manosphere.
Like, no, social isolation is a problem, and it's getting worse due to a variety of factors. To name a few, there's social media algorithms designed to keep people dependent on their phones; there's the long-standing consequences of the pandemic and the collective trauma that had in addition to the atrophied social skills due to quarantine; there's widespread political polarization which keeps tensions high and makes it difficult to navigate new situations if you can't prove you know the right social scripts and avoid any faux pas; there's the whole toxic influencer culture who are grifting on inflammatory rhetoric, ragebait content, exploiting people's vulnerabilities, and radicalizing them (which is a vicious cycle, because they prey on people who are already isolated!); and that's just to name a few!
But if I summarize all that as a "loneliness epidemic," then people call me an incel and act like I'm trying to coerce women into having sex with me simply by acknowledging the fact that social interaction is a deeply-set human psychological need.
Like, using "incel" as an insult is part of the problem. It feeds into this culture where "if you're a man, you must get laid, or else you're worthless." That's literally promoting toxic masculinity!
And it forces these people who are already isolated and vulnerable to go identify with these groups of similarly ostracized people in echo chambers where they're insulated from those insults, where those predatory "influencers" then have fresh pickings of new losers to neg and radicalize.
But somehow, if I point out the problem here (because how can we solve a problem if we can't talk about it?), then to most people's view that makes me part of the problem! Even though, why would I be calling out the pattern if it was something I identify with?
The people radicalizing these vulnerable "losers," yes they should be torched. But the vulnerable "losers" being radicalized need to be treated with compassion if they're ever going to be redeemed. It should be pretty easy to identify who's who, seeing as they have an entire social structure based on hierarchies of dominance and submission...
Starting with: I have found a great many of "those people" to be highly insecure, living in denial and fear that they themselves may be such a "loser" but are putting on the bully face for the world to misdirect people away from the fact that they themselves are very much the same as the people they are bullying.
True, but there's a line and once they've crosses it, they're the bullies.
Where exactly that line is and how to draw it is a matter for debate. Maybe there's another line where "This person is a bully, but still redeemable if he demonstrates willingness to change."
But anyone who's unapologetic and unwilling to change obviously needs to be shunned at the very least, and see consequences for the harms he's caused.
That still doesn't mean the majority of those vulnerable and radicalized people are irredeemable. Some are just uncritically following the trend. Which is wrong, but not as bad as being ideologically devoted to it, and their redemption can be as simple as showing them there's a different way to be.
The main focus should be on helping vulnerable people before they become radicalized, but at this point I suspect everyone has already been corralled into one camp or another... Unfortunately no one was willing to listen to my soap box years ago, back when it was still possible to avert this calamity, at least to the same degree.
Oh, hey, you're much more forgiving than me. Exposing the bullies for being exactly what they are using as an excuse to bully other people is just the first part of the "torching." Forcible restraint, treble-damages penalties, and public shaming are top of my list for responses to bully-bad actors.
However, you are right that reconciliation and acceptance of all people, not exactly for who they are when they're bullies, but for those aspects of themselves that are compatible with a society in which we at least don't harm each other is always important to do when possible.
Based on my childhood experiences, until those compatible aspects are found and the incompatible aspects removed from their expressed behaviors - forcible restraint and removal from the situations in which they are causing harm to others should be the norm, not the exception.