Twitter largely took away blue checkmarks from legacy verified accounts yesterday, but Stephen King, William Shatner, and LeBron James' checkmarks remained.
There was a time when Michael Laudor was one of the most prominent mentally ill people in the United States, and by extension, the world. The youngest son of an upper-middle-class family in Westchester county, Laudor was marked as a brilliant mind from childhood, frequently referred to as a genius. He breezed through the curriculum in high school, impressing everyone around him with his eccentric and sharp mind. He finished his undergraduate education at Yale in three years, then got a job with the prestigious (and well-remunerative) financial firm Bain Capital. But in his early 20s, Laudor was beset by hallucinations and paranoia, experiencing sometimes-violent delusions that frightened his devoted parents. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent eight months in a psychiatric facility. Undeterred, he emerged to attend Yale Law School, where he became a favorite of the dean and championed by the faculty. He was profiled in a glowing