Yesterday a person started sending me emails. Confused, incoherent emails that make no sense. Ramblings. All of them a reply to its previous. A stream of statements from someone clearly not doing well.

Now approaching 100 emails in less than 24 hours from this person.

I have not replied and I don't intend to.

@bagder I get similar (as well as business proposals) ... also getting random fone calls ... for business proposals ... big uptick from a few months ago ... I worry the fone calls are trying to get enough example of my voice to do bad stuff ... I am paranoid.

I get those all the time on the Mailman admin page that I look after. In my case it's AI spam.

@bagder

@richardibbo this is different. Of course I get all the usual spam as well.

@bagder It is instructive to have experienced (in real life) someone having a psychotic episode. And through the internet, we now all have the opportunity to meet people experiencing that disease.

@bagder that's a very familiar story to me (downside of receiving admin@linux.com emails). You can't do anything in this case other than hope this person is receiving attention from someone qualified.

@bagder I'm sorry to hear that. Is there anyone that would be appropriate to refer the person to, to get them some help? (We all need a little help sometimes. I suspect that you may be in a position to make a difference for this person right now, and they might need some kindness.)

@johnlogic @bagder I’ve talked with a number people in situations like that and IMHO as a non-professional it’s really unlikely that you’ll be able to help them. When someone experiencing such an episode starts contacting strangers like that, they’ve spent a lot of time with their thoughts already and getting through that to get them to accept help takes serious skill and a lot of patience.

@jaseg @johnlogic yeah, I fear that I just risk making it worse since then I show that I read the emails and yet I cannot actually help. This is the really dark and deep paranoia the state is hacking and surveilling me kind.

And the person has found me because I do curl, it's not someone I know nor a friend of a friend or similar. I cannot contact anyone on this person's behalf. I don't even know which country he writes from.

@bagder This is why I appreciate email filters.

@bagder by any chance is their name Socrates