You're gonna carry that weight.

• A noticeable change in personality before & after they started getting followers on the internet.
• Rapidly shifting emotions, and an inability to recognize the emotions of others.
• Prideful of their own personality, and may be unwilling to change, viewing any change as a threat.
• Reacts with catatonic withdrawal, aggression and/or violence when confronted with historical details that conflict with their delusion. May rile up followers to attack them.
• Blames their personal failures or disappointments on others.
• Low tolerance for frustration or delayed gratification.
• Obsessive desire for social approval; needs to be center of attention.
• Is emotionally over-invested in an idea of self to the point it visibly overwhelms other elements of their psyche.
• A pervasive pattern of instability in their interpersonal relationships.
• Exhibits insecure, avoidant, ambivalent, or fearfully preoccupied attachment styles in relationships.
• Maladaptive strategies commonly used to regulate their emotions include self-harm, rumination, avoidance, and thought suppression.
• Self-diagnoses themselves with unrelated conditions which they frequently talk about unprompted, such as blaming their cognitive dissonance on things like “Imposter Syndrome”, “Autism”, “Lupus”, “Lyme Disease” or “PTSD”.
• Sees themselves as an essential thought leader to audiences they have no emotional, social or cultural connection with.
• Oftentimes co-morbid with Cluster B Personality Disorders (Borderline, Histrionic, Narcissistic) and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

A spunky brunette with big tits is not going to come save you from yourself.

As of 2026, Cloud Strife Syndrome is the most common neurodegenerative disease and the fastest growing in total cases. The nature of the false memories makes treatment of Cloud Strife Syndrome exceedingly difficult, as patients rarely realize they are even infected with the disease. Those suffering from Cloud Strife Syndrome are so sure of their imaginary reality, that most attempts to remind the patient of their real-life background will be met with aggressive denial and sometimes even physical violence. This means that their friends & loved ones usually have to cut them loose to the internet, lest the patient's delusions destabilize their lives as well.

Left untreated, Cloud Strife Syndrome is usually fatal, as the patient's imagination increasingly runs into conflict with the real world and whatever remains of their support network. Employers will usually have no tolerance for the patient's internet life taking priority over their responsibilities, and eventually fire them. The patient's unwarranted self-importance will eventually become so insufferable that even their own audience will flee. At the end, the patient will only be surrounded by sycophantic parasites, encouraging all of his/her delusions & vices, until eventually they unceremoniously die by misadventure.

A minor percentage of patients (less than 1%) have what is known as High-Functioning Cloud Strife Syndrome, where they are still able to maintain a stable career & personal life. This rarity is usually because of mysterious financial benefactors that shield them from the blowback of their actions, and is not an indicator of any kind of “hope” for those suffering from the disease.

The internet has no shortage of eccentric personalities & attention whores suffering from Cloud Strife Syndrome. Trying to document them all would require a whole dedicated wiki unto itself. So here are just a few that are notorious in my little corner of the internet:

It can happen to anyone, even your children. (Image credit: foolibuster)

• Binjamin Wilkomirski, the “textbook case” of the condition, was a Swiss man who wrote an entire book about growing up in Auschwitz. His book, “Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood” won The National Jewish Book Award for Autobiography/Memoir in 1996, alongside several other awards, before being exposed as a fraud. He was studied by scienticians afterwards, who came to the conclusion that actual memories of childhood trauma in Switzerland had somehow been affixed to the Polish Front. The term “Wilkomirski Syndrome” essentially refers to the pre-internet version of Cloud Strife Syndrome.
• Aubrey “Kirtaner” Cottle, a Canadian intelligence asset and avid steroid user who genuinely believes himself to be the founder of Anonymous, because the CIA covertly sponsored a Netflix documentary & Atlantic article about him.
• Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who convinced herself she was black after wearing blackface for years, and eventually got exposed after she somehow became President of the Spokane, Washington chapter of the NAACP.
• Hasan Piker, a nepo baby who genuinely believes himself to be a hero of the proletariat, despite having no emotional connection with them whatsoever. Thinks of himself as an intellectual, but can only respond to criticism with logical fallacies & juvenile insults.
• Celine Kasem, a USAID-sponsored counterintelligence asset who genuinely believes she somehow saved Syria, despite pushing for sanctions that starved vast swaths of the population to death, while her ISIS allies genocided vast swaths of the countryside.
• Bernie “Martin Random” Goldsmith, a former lawyer for Sullivan & Cromwell and the Obama Administration, who built a community centered around suicide-trolling that ruined the lives of innumerable people. Genuinely believes his life fell apart after this solely because of “a stalker” and “lupus”. Worked on the Obama-era bailouts for megacorps, yet is convinced he is a communist.
• George Santos, a US Congressman whose entire life backstory turned out to be a largely idealized & fabricated version of his past. Later expelled from Congress and convicted of fraud.
• Jim Stewartson, an “alternate-reality game” - or ARG - developer, funded by Peter Thiel's friend Patrick Soon-Shiong, who genuinely believes himself to be a “decelerationist” while he still lives in the Year Zero ARG he helped create for Nine Inch Nails in 2007.
• Christon Weston Chandler, a paranoid-delusional schizophrenic who genuinely believes himself to be the second coming of Jesus Christ.

• Main Character Syndrome