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Comment by Sonicmouse | Hacker News Reader

After a few minutes of Googling, apparently she was in jail for violating a court order that stemmed from her stalking famous cartoonist John Kricfalusi. He kept getting harassed by Elana and that he had to get a restraining order against her.

Read her comments on his personal blog: http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2014/03/more-mileys-for-your-...

She's a delusional stalker who blatantly rips off Kricfalusi's style of illustration.

Basically, she's fucking crazy.

"Okay, the last thirty-seven comments didn't win him over, but the next one is going to totally make him want me!"

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Why is it that when HN talks about the TempleOS guy, we're all careful with our terminology, but now we're totally cool to call this person "fucking crazy"?

I get that in the former, the man fits the mold of "misunderstood bit-twiddling genius" or related mythologies of the craft, but the latter is no less of a person. Show some humanity.

Besides, what did putting this person in 2 months of jail do? I doubt this accomplished anything other than spending more of taxpayers dollars. If she's "fucking crazy", then do you think 2 months of jail is a deterrent to stalking somebody? Or just something to make sure she's more careful when stalking?

Throwing people with mental illnesses into jail is as effective as spanking a baby. Sure, they might be conditioned to associate certain behaviour with punishment. But it won't fix underlying causes like behavioural patterns, addiction, or value systems.

The comment you're replying to is word-for-word copied from a highly upvoted comment on reddit yesterday (but is now deleted) by a user with a handle I won't repeat here. [1]

So what you're seeing is cross-pollination. I'm honestly surprised to not see this comment down-voted, as it's pretty impertinent to the conversation and is textbook ad hominem. ("Crazy lady says prisons are terrible: who cares she's crazy").

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/2r7y8h/when.... You can see it with something like http://uneddit.com/

edit: oh, I see my second paragraph basically did happen already in some flagkilled posts.

TempleOS doesn't victimize people; stalkers do.

templeOS guy hasn't stalked anyone?

Bingo

> Why is it ...

Because it fits the gender stereotypes people use. Male stalkers don't need to be attributed as crazy, since all males are portrayed in culture as stalking rapists. A female stalker cant' be directly explained by her gender, so the attribute "crazy" is used instead, which then fits into an other gender stereotype.

What? When is a stalker ever not referred to as crazy? I've heard about plenty of stalkers of either gender, and while male stalkers are portrayed as more dangerous I have not seen them portrayed as any less 'crazy'.

Being a stalker doesn't make you crazy. In our pop-culture world we have plenty of stalkers and I'd bet they're not completely out of their minds; just suddenly obsessed over a particular person(s).

Also, I don't know how many HNers have actually interacted with a person who is locked-up because they've been labeled insane. I can say that my dad & wife have interacted with many in their line of work and what I've learned from them is that even a lot of those that are locked up are not totally out of their minds. Usually it's some kind of environmental stimulus that triggers their "madness". But in a controlled facility (sometimes with medication as well) they can tell very coherent stories of their childhood, what school(s) they went to, what they did yesterday, about their parents/siblings, etc.

Don't automatically discount the views of a crazy person. More often than not they're not totally 100% crazy, just have certain issues that make them unable to function in our society.

I personally believe her illustrations are mostly accurate if for no other reason than the "unnatural" rush of comments trying to discredit her.

I don't care one bit for what got her in jail or how terrible a person you think she is. What matters is that she went there and that either what's in those cartoons is a credible representation of what being in jail in America as a woman is like. If it is then those images should be reason for wholesale reform.

Even if she was a murderer it would still be reason to go and make some drastic changes.

Even if they're inmates, they are still people and with the number of people in American jails running in the millions and taking into account that the men probably won't have it any better it's a thing to be very much ashamed of.

Whatever she did has nothing to bear on the information in the article, it's either true or it isn't.

I don't think anybody can fault her for lifting the Ren and Stimpy style - everybody has influences and she's obviously a fan. It's not like she stole his characters.

And yeah, she broke the law and is in jail. I figured she wasn't there for cartooning. So it was stalking. Okay, right then.

Still tells a good story and makes nice illustrations to accompany them.

No one deserves the inhumane conditions she (and others) have experienced in American jails.

One cartoonist gets obsessed and implements the creepy-stalker pattern on another cartoonist, which results in having to stay in a creepy American jail.

The NSA, Facebook, Google implement regular creepy-stalker patterns (sometimes milder, sometimes more worrying) as part of their regular {mission,business plan}, and they are awarded with profit?

> "Okay, the last thirty-seven comments didn't win him over, but the next one is going to totally make him want me!"

Ahh, yes, we can't forget to include the Comcast-style marketing department and their robo-dialers.

/* /sigh/ stalker behavior isn't good, of course, and the comparison has several flaws. Regardless, dual-standard still exists. */

Yes, but you forgot the other important part in her article where she writes:

>But because I had no money and an overworked...

Time = money in the US so it makes sense that if you don't have the money, you gotta do the time.

That being said though, I sincerely hope her publication of her jail adventure and her kick-starter take off so she can derive some value from this otherwise dismal experience.

Did you have any thoughts to share on the article?

> Basically, she's fucking crazy.

This is hate speech and has no place on HN.

This comment received a bunch of up and down votes - roughly seven each.

I stand by it.

"She's fucking crazy" is not an accurate description of her. It assumes her behaviour is pathological when there hasn't been any suggestion of illness from any source. It then assumes a narrow type of illness, when stalkers could have any of a wide variety of mental illness (or no mental illness). So, it's pure bullshit speculation that is inaccurate about the person and inaccurate about mental illness.

Worse is the blatant stigmatisation of mental illness. This is a simple logic fail. You hear the behaviour and think "stalker with a mental illness" and not "stalker". This is the "conjunction fallacy". The clearest explanation of that fallacy is "the Linda problem" where readers are presented with a short bio of a young woman ("Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.") and are then asked to select the most likely of two options ([1] Linda is a bank teller or [2] Linda is a bank teller and a feminist). People usually chose [2] even though [1] is more likely.

Speculation on the mental health status of an offender is as ignorant as suggesting that an offender is probably black.

Nice. It was obvious they were leaving that out for some reason.

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