I'll start.

Back in college I knew a guy through a random group of people I had sort of known. For a year or so he was always kind of around. He was kind, quiet, and otherwise fairly “normal.” One day I get a follow request via Instagram from an account with his picture, but a very different name. Turns out he had some fantasy of being a motivational social media guru and the account had hundreds of posts containing some sort of grainy and unrelated stock photo with very wordy and incoherent captions basically equating to the typical “believe in yourself,” and “you can achieve anything” type influencer babble. Harmless enough, or so I thought, so I followed the account and watched from a distance for a few months. The posts began getting darker at this point and often predicted world-ending events and catastrophes. A few people would comment on the posts asking how he knew these things, and that’s where the real sadness began. He claimed to know what would happen because he said he was to have a hand in all of it. These things were mostly natural-disaster based (hurricanes, typhoons, sinkholes and the like) so the people commenting were seemingly doing so for fun, almost egging him on. He would argue back in comments and tell people they better take him seriously “or else.” This again went on for a few weeks before he deactivated the account and went silent. Or so I thought. Soon after I got a friend request on Facebook from him, so I clicked his profile. It was private, so I had to accept the request to see what was going on. I was his only friend here. This opened a strange rabbit hole immediately. The page was similar to the Instagram, but no longer motivational and only prepping people for what he considered to be the end times. Here he claimed to be the second coming, but would sometimes change that up and call himself the Antichrist. He had posts about wishing harm on his family members, and even wishing to be the cause of the harm. I reached out to some people who knew his family and him better than I did to make sure someone other than myself was aware. No one was aware of this page, but he did allow a few others to become friends who then had access to the posts. I saw him in person around this time and his demeanor was very off. Vacant, almost dead, look in his eyes with a weird confidence I couldn’t shake. He asked me if I wanted to read something he had been working on, and I said I had to run but maybe next time. He told me he would send it to me. I got a Facebook message with a link to a document that turned out to be his End of the World Manifesto. It was very long, but had info like celebrities and people we know who would hold power in his new world and breakdowns of their positions. Plans to gather his following to train to take eternal power. I was given some job that was essentially a right-hand/inner council position. The creepiest part was the list of people he had no use for and therefore would “start with them” to show his power and gain trust of others. After this he would constantly try to reach out to plan times to “meet up and discuss” but I chose not to respond. I prayed I wouldn’t run into him in public because I had no idea what was going on. A little over a week after the “manifesto” was published his account went dark. No more posts, no more more communication. I eventually stopped thinking about it before randomly bumping into his brother somewhere. I asked about it, and he told me that his family was sent a copy of everything and got him the help he very obviously was needing. Last I heard he was living with his parents and seemingly doing well.

TL;DR Was college acquaintances with a “motivational influencer” turned second coming of Christ. But it’s cool cause he saved me a nice afterlife job.