i think a lot of attention is rightly attributed to like, i dunno say tiktok/ig "influencing" and how that can send people who gain a lot of notoriety off the deep end. it absolutely has. but so do software projects.

not enough people talk about how software projects also offer up a similar kind of atmosphere: you're suddenly hyperconnected with a whole bunch of humans you don't know and are receiving feedback from people outside of your immediate community. "hackers" for all the interesting ways they've contributed to computer science over the decades also have branches spawned from the original chronically-online, highly-opinionated and sort of antisocial and poorly adjusted sects of civilization. being the face of a project is like pouring rocket fuel on whatever predispositions you might have, and on more than one occasion we've seen people go from occasionally unhinged person to seriously unhinged.

this comes with a lot of bad outcomes for quite a few people, primarily it always has some serious amplification qualities to egos and narcissism. and for genuinely good and kind people who are just trying to share their value/contributions and are suddenly jettisoned into spotlights, we often see them suddenly step back and discontinue work on a project entirely.

we often see these departures and think solely "must be burn out" and don't put much more thought into what that means. but we don't do enough to frame how software projects just elevate people into a position that most people don't do a good job in mentally and socially, and how it deteriorates the pieces of them that make them feel like they're valuable members of a community/tribe. some have luck making their project communities their tribe, but that's obviously a risky step to take. for many who have a successful project, sometimes it starts as the most validation they've ever received and then they don't know how to reconcile with the exponentially-widened audience when negative reception starts pouring in.

daniel micay is just one of like.. many in these sorts of projects i've seen who are simply unfit for the role. for many reasons, i don't think he's a pleasant person at all. i don't have any answers here. i also see this in homebrew scenes for gaming, it's like my least-favorite human petri dish of software development enjoyers. lot of oddball developers in that space and quite a lot of incredibly dramatic fallouts and theatrics that seem to come with the anonymous nature of not tacking your real name / identity to a project, and a consuming audience that has zero idea what goes into development so the negative feedback/demands that come in are in their own way unhinged.

I'm well familiar with what you're talking about. I see it in the emulation space as well. Famously so with byuu/near.

We have all of the parasocial behavior from bystanders as well. Cult mentalities and hero-worship. It's quite a strange phenomenon.