• I think the headlines play on mushrooms for outrage and clickbait. It makes readers feel better that there is something tangible that can be “controlled” rather than a hard to define cause of someone’s seemingly functional brain misfiring badly.

    •  frog 🐸   ( @frog@beehaw.org ) 
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      148 months ago

      The article says it was the guy’s first time using mushrooms - which means he didn’t know what effect they would have on him. So on one hand, this was not foreseeable because he wouldn’t have had any way of knowing that taking mushrooms would cause him to not sleep for 40 hours. On the other hand, given that mushrooms can have adverse effects on some people, and he had no way of knowing if he’d be one of those people, taking mushrooms shortly before getting on a plane probably wasn’t the best decision. “Guy makes stupid decision” is definitely the headline here, rather than “mushrooms are bad”.