In 2008, Cori Shepherd Stern, alleged architect of The Human Line Project’s meteoric rise, posted an entry to her personal blog that included this statement:
What event precipitated her seldom feeling “more seen, loved and connected”? Was it a long awaited family reunion? A milestone accomplishment celebrated by her community?
In the immediate aftermath of a shocking, horrific tragedy, feeling or saying “I’ve seldom felt more seen, loved, and connected” is highly unusual. Putting those specific feelings at the center of a public narrative less than 24 hours after a double tragedy—especially a sudden death-suicide that leaves three children orphaned – is a major psychological red flag.
Secondary Gain
In psychology, secondary gain is the positive advantage or benefit a person gets from being sick, traumatized, or involved in a crisis (e.g., attention, lack of responsibility, financial help).
Within 24 hours of learning that a close friend died and her husband took his own life, a typical human brain is usually entirely consumed by the victims and the horror of the situation. A normal thought process loops on questions like: Where are the kids? What did he do? How could this happen? What am I going to do at the funeral? The ego is usually shattered or completely pushed aside by the sheer scale of the nightmare.
In this entry, the horror of the children’s reality is bypassed almost instantly. The phrase “I’ve seldom felt more seen, loved, and connected” reveals that the writer is actively measuring, evaluating, and absorbing the emotional “high” of the attention they are receiving, right in the middle of a fresh catastrophe.
For a typical griever, the influx of texts and Facebook messages is often overwhelming or feels empty compared to the reality of the loss. They might think, “People are being nice, but none of this brings them back.”
For someone with factitious tendencies (like Munchausen by proxy), the secondary gain—the attention and love—is the primary objective. The phrase “I’ve seldom felt more…” is an inadvertent confession that the tragedy has successfully generated the exact emotional currency they crave.
Performance of “Enlightened Grief”
True, immediate trauma is ugly, messy, and disorganized. It involves physical nausea, anger, inability to sleep, and confusion.
Saying you feel deeply “connected to an intricate web of concerned hearts” 24 hours into a traumatic event sounds less like raw human suffering and more like a carefully crafted script. It frames the writer not just as a victim, but as an incredibly enlightened, spiritually evolved survivor who can find beauty in the midst of horrific bloodshed. This “heroic survivor” persona is a hallmark of attention-seeking behavioral profiles.
The Contrast
- Normal Shock response: “I am numb, I feel sick, I can’t believe Kristina and Tom are gone, those poor kids, thank god people are texting me because I am losing my mind.”
- The Post’s response: “A terrible thing happened to someone else, but look at this beautiful, massive wave of love that is rolling across the internet specifically for me.”
Repeating Pattern
Stern clearly enjoyed the outpouring of sympathy she received in the aftermath of a horrific tragedy.
We all seek to repeat the experiences that bring us joy.
A person who enjoys that type of attention may even instigate horrific tragedies in order to create the emotional experience they crave.
A person who craved this kind of attention is exactly the type of person that would try to drive a friend to suicide so they could blame it on AI Psychosis. That story would generate headlines (attention), sympathy (emotional currency), and potentially even profit ($$$) from a lawsuit.
It is also the perfect crime because the perpetrator would never get caught…but only if their target commits suicide. If the target survives and puts the pieces together…well, that may not be the type of attention they were looking for.
