What if one day someone here discovers something so strange and so shocking that it causes any reader to go mad just knowing the information? Think like, H.P. Lovecraft (for any who have read his short stories would know what I'm talking about) and theres some crazy description and then depiction of something so utterly unreal and fabulous that no sane mind can stay so if it knows the information it didn't before.

Maybe it's already happened?

i would have to assume that if someone discovered it, they would go insane.

and seconds later there would be 18,000 websites dedicated to it

People come unhinged all the time when their concept of "Reality" is shaken to it's core. Institutions are so overwhelmed that they turn many of their inpatients away, and without immediate help, many people resort to taking their own lives rather than cope or deal with what they have learned.

I've known people who've gone clinically insane from reading something as innocuous as a Dan Brown novel, or even from reading ATS (my friend that introduced my to ATS is a verified nutter now, tin-foil hat and all to go along with his newly developed OCD/Manic/Schizophrenia).

Personally, it's difficult for me to relate. I can't imagine anything so life-changing as to threaten my sanity. On the contrary, I actually enjoy when everything I know, or thought I knew, is turned upside down and I have to reconsider everything anew in relation to what I have recently learned.

However, for some people there is safety and comfort in ignorance, and when that ignorance is shed, they become lost and their fragile psyche has to cope with that the only way it can, which sometimes manifests in psychosis, just as with any other trauma. Nothing Supernatural is required. Sometimes all it takes is just anything that undermines their belief in who they are and what reality is...which could be as simple as a report of an Archeological dig, or someone's account of a UFO Abduction, or even partial Disclosure. Everyone has their threshold, and each of us has different ways our minds handle new knowledge that is contrary to what we have previously known. For some, it doesn't take much to send them over the edge into the Pits of Despair or headlong into the Cliffs of Insanity.

Originally posted by Sacrosanct
What if one day someone here discovers something so strange and so shocking that it causes any reader to go mad just knowing the information?

Fortunately, there's a shock absorber known as "skepticism". You don't really know the information unless you've experienced the situation. There are already tons of threads here alone that would cause most of us(?) to lose it, if we really believed the info was true.

The likelihood of anyone going bonkers just from reading the information is slim, unless they were well off in that direction anyway.

Hmm, controversial response?

Like if there was absolute proof god(s) didn't exist or there are Aliens?

Maybe it's coming?

I just felt the need to make this topic because I recently purchased a collection of short stories from none other than H.P. Lovecraft... and finished reading "facts concerning the late arthur jermyn and his family" and thought about if this could apply to literally anyone...

Good ol' Howard sure has a way of makin' me think.

Over here in NZ we had a strange phenomenon where huge pine trees would suddenly be stripped bear and a cone would be placed on top. No noise or evidence of shananagans just normal tree one day stripped bare the next.

When it was reported on the news a police officer stated flately "this has been done by aliens, we have had contact with them'.

Now this is most likely a hoax of some sort. But supposing this did happen and you really did have contacts with aliens, wouldn't it be a ridiculous scenario to be able to have an authority state it plainly on national tv and not have anyone beleive?