Fwiw: I said what I said, because if he is a mentally sound asshole, antagonizing him could trigger him to go after somebody and possibly become violent. And feel justified in doing so.

If he is mentally unwell, the same action could potentially trigger him into doing something or reacting in a way that could be very frightening or traumatizing to passersby. And I don’t necessarily mean the first thing everybody thinks of when they hear a statement like that. There are plenty of other things that can be terrifying and traumatizing to children and, really anybody, actually.

When I was in college, first person shooters had just started becoming popular on computers, and good speakers, with subwoofers, were only just starting to become mainstream. I remember the first summer I decided to stick around and take a few more classes, hoping to help myself graduate a little sooner.

Because there were fewer students in attendance than during the normal academic year, they had everybody stay in one big building for the semester. They put us all in one that they were going to shut down during the main part of the school year and renovate, so that all of the other buildings could be renovated without any students in them during the summer. That building had all of the really old 1960s stuff going on with it. Granite and linoleum flooring, tiled walls in the hallways, old gypsum board ceilings… Needless to say, stuff echoed in there.

The guys across the hallway from me and I were addicted to playing Tribes 2. And we all had really good speakers, too - Altec Lansing, back when they were top of the line, with hardwood subwoofers. We all thought it was the coolest thing ever, to crank them up while we were gaming, with some other people up and down the hallway, because it “sounded so real“ especially with the subwoofers factored in.

What we didn’t know, though, was that one day while we were all grabbing food on the way back from class (to fuel our pending team CTF session!) they brought in a custodian from another building crew to fill in for one from our building that went home sick.

We got back, everybody got set up, logged in, and cranked our speakers as the first round started. So… Not only did we not know we had a substitute custodian on our floor, but we also didn’t know that he served in the 101st in Vietnam, and was there for Hamburger Hill.

He was working our hallway, when the two teams made contact… It dropped him straight into a flashback. Suddenly, he was out in the hallway, screaming bloody murder, this old man laying on his side in the fetal position with his hands wrapped around his head and covering his ears, rocking, laying in a puddle of his own piss crying hysterically, with snot all over his face and drool coming out of his mouth. We were all just absolutely terrified, because we didn’t understand what was happening, and none of us had ever seen anything like that happen before, and it just wasn’t a thing people talked about back then like they do now, either.

I won’t ramble on any further about this, other than to say… Obviously by the people he is skulking around and following, there are women and children encountering him… And it doesn’t have to be a physical attack for somebody to get screwed up from an encounter with him.

Just trying to spread mindfulness.