>>185401People who hold attachment without forming any kind of bond are just lying and being temporarily infatuated just due to beauty or whatever. Typical guy thing.*
That said, if you connected deeply with a person (without meeting them IRL) online, as in, shared voice messages, long convos, planning to meet, etc. Then it hits much harder and (according to psychiatry) you are like a co-dependent to the person (nearly like close family and friends).
One more thing about Katie. It's clear to me, understanding a bit more, that she was very lonely in life. She had clearly serious mental illness, it wasn't just the drugs. So lots of people in her circle (uni, parties, whatever) who got to know her, many parted ways immediately. She seemed to have a couple (single digit) close friends and ofc her family but alienated others because of weird/extreme behaviour.
Reading comments by her sister, it's pretty clear to me that her mental illness was very tough on her sister and family. Father seemed to have no connection to her (fatherless home maybe?) which IMO probably made it worse. No authority figure in the house. Due to mental issues she took risky behaviour. Meeting low level guys, drug use, parties with drug use, and ofc spamming twitter with too much info and visuals (most people in comments seem sympathetic but let's be real twitter also has tons of predators).
I know another girl just like her with same symptoms, and thankfully the parents intervened and cut off her internet and social media, and had her interned in a closed hospital. That's how you protect these people.
Honestly with Katie's symptoms (clear BPD, levels of paranoid schizophrenia, propensity for risky behaviour and drug use), this WAS NOT a child I would have allowed to roam free and go to uni. She needed to be in a closed hospital and put under therapy. I also see in her last tweets that she stopped taking anti-psychotics. As someone who knows people like that, I can tell you that's a recipe to have an episode and commit suicide.
I call this entire episode a systematic failure of the system and family to properly care for an extremely vulnerable person.
I communicated with Katie a bit online, and I didn't realise all this shit (i didn't really care too much about her or others online) until I researched it all.
It's absolutely tragic but part of me thinks that with her symptoms, she would have a very very hard life to keep going for years and years. I think suicide or institutionalisation was inevitable.
Just speaking out lout about this subject because psychology and psychiatry are of interest.