Here's what happened in the General Forum:
1. User posts topic titled "Psychopaths in games"
2. I post Jon Irenicus (from Baldur's Gate 2, of course) as an example
3. My post gets "low rated", which indicates that something is wrong with the post

Since the only thing in that post was the suggestion that Jon Irenicus is a psychopath, he must not be one.

If this is the case, how are his actions *not* those of a psychopath? Even in just the part of the game I played (up to the Underdark, actually), he certainly did seem like one.

(And, as a side note, some versions of him are actually Chaotic Good. Does that even make sense?)

I think you are right this time.

It indicates only that this is the internet (**). You've pissed people off, for whatever reason, so they take every available opportunity to strike from their 'oh-so-cosy' anonymity.

** There's nothing wrong with your suggestion, other than it's debatable whether he *is* a psychopath.

Yeah, I doubt it had to do anything with content of your post.
I think you just piss many people off with your posting and some of them are so vindicative that they will downrate any post of yours they encounter.

I was about to say that. You shouldn't be discouraged from posting your opinions online though.

Like others have said, it's because you've pissed a lot of people off and anything you post will be down voted. As far as I can tell, this is happening for two reasons:

1) You constantly derail threads, usually in the exploit direction. Minor problem to be sure, but.....
2) ....being pretty open about your SJW politics isn't a minor problem. More than likely, this is the reason for your down votes.

**This post of yours just reeks of SJW politics

**Here you seem to have some admiration for Anita Sarkeesian saying she borderlines on the good alignment. I'm positive I saw you post in another thread that Anita Sarkeesian was all for women's rights (when she really isn't) but I can't find it.

BTW, I have never down voted a post of yours and not everything you post falls into one of the above categories. You have made some good posts which others have found helpful. However, I would be a little more mindful of what and how you post in the future though.

On topic, I disagree about Jon Irenicus being a psychopath though sometimes he did exhibit traits of a psychopath. There was some dialog in BG2 that pointed out other sides of Jon Irenicus but I forget what they were exactly. I'm pretty sure one was regarding Bodhi and the other was in a dialog with an elf (forgot her name) after leaving the underdark.

I think Jon Irenicus was a psychopath and also had some soft spots.

I disagree. One of the key 'features' of a psychopath is the inability to plan, especially long-term. Irenicus is a long time master planner, being a powerful mage at the court of queen Ellesime, and whose planning (to enter the Elven Pantheon) got him exiled and stripped of his immortality. He then goes on to plan the events of BG2. In my book, that makes him a megalomaniac, certainly, but not a psychopath.

When you put it that way then you right,for me a psychopath is just a fruit salad waiting to explode.I may not understand the word completely and don't really care as the only Psycho was (1960 film) in my thinking.Been a very long time since I played BG but I do remember he had a couple of soft spots.

Interesting concepts...;)

My own central definition of a "psychopath" is a person who has no natural feelings of conscience or remorse--a person who, in a sense, has these capacities "burned out" of his mind and emotional makeup. Whereas a normal person might feel bad/remorseful to walk up to a beggar sitting on the street and start thrashing him with a cane and hearing him scream in anguish--a "psychopath" would feel...nothing at all after doing the same thing. Just nothing. Empathy would be a word to him without substance or meaning. Such persons learn how to present a facade to the world that enables them to survive by pretending to remorse, etc., publicly, but when left to their own devices they feel no difference between swatting a fly and running down a pedestrian with an automobile. Irenicus seems to me to be a penultimate bad guy and he does exhibit these tendencies to a "T"....;)

That is only one facet of a psychopath -- there are many. It takes more than just a lack of empathy to make a person psychopathic. You can be a totally uncaring asshole and still not be clinically psychopathic.

Okay and Silence of the Lambs's Dr. Hannibal Lecter was a psychopath but did have some soft spots in his nature.We can only form an opinion of someone else's brain until the day a transfer of brains can be done before anything certain can be attained (and then the transferred brain could lie) :-)

If you are interested, Psychology Today had something a couple years back about how the DSM-5 categorizes psychopathy and sociopathy, and what that particular author thinks distinguishes between them (Though many shrinks think they are one and the same). I've always thought of politicians as somewhere on the sociopath scale, but this author thinks they are more on the psychopath scale.

How to Tell a Sociopath from a Psychopath

Quoting from that article:

"Sociopaths ... are likely to be uneducated and live on the fringes of society, unable to hold down a steady job or stay in one place for very long.
...
Psychopaths, on the other hand, ... are often well educated and hold steady jobs."

That's social pigeonholing bullshit. It's no wonder so-called 'experts' can't agree.

The guy has lost his soul. That is why he comes off as a psychopath. Hence why he steals yours.