And that reminds me of an anecdote with one of the products our customers usually use. There was a problem which was kind of common and it had a discussion thread in the forum on the vendor’s website where somebody suggested that the solution to the problem was rm -rf /var/lib/rpm
.
Needless to say, we had a customer who ran that command because they had read on the Internet that it was the solution to their problem without understanding what that command was going to do. And of course they ruined that server which needed to be fully reinstalled.
Until I notified the vendor to delete that malicious advice from their forum, that answer lasted there for years and who knows how many people ran the same malicious command without trying to understand first the disaster they were going to cause.
Yes, there are red flags there IMHO.
You know, I’ve seen similar behaviours so many times from people that they tell you how many problems they have and they kind of put the burden on you to deal with their problems. I don’t mean you cannot be supportive of them if they really have problems they are trying to fix, but you shouldn’t be dealing with someone else’s problems if they don’t want to do anything about them themselves.
I usually listen to them, tell them that I understand they are going through hard times and that I understand how tough that is being for them and all that supportive stuff… and then I tell them to go to therapy.
We cannot be someone else’s therapists. Unless, you know, we are actual therapists. And even in that case, they would have to go through one of our formal therapies. I don’t think even therapists get into relationships with someone just to fix them.
Some people will take the advice and consider getting help while others will not even consider it because they just want to take you hostage of their emotions. It’s not worth putting any much more effort into someone who is apparently crying for help but doesn’t really want to make any change and just wants to manipulate you instead.
And punching other people? Yeah, I don’t care how “honourable” his reasons were, that’s also a red flag.