So, this guy, Martin Pistorius, fell into a coma when he was 12 years old and eventually awoke completely paralyzed, at least physically. He was misdiagnosed. Doctors believed he was in a completely vegetative state, but in reality, he had regained full consciousness and awareness. He just didn’t possess any motor function, so he couldn’t communicate to anyone that he was alive in there. He lived this way for 12 years before he overcame it by sheer force of will and was given the tools to communicate. He tells his story in his book, Ghost Boy. Since then he’s also been the subject of the first episode of Invisibilia on NPR and had his own TedTalk.
Anyway, the breaking point that incited his plan of escape was being forced to watch Barney reruns all day, everyday at his care center. Sitting in front of the TV, he learned to tell the time by the shadows on the wall. If he had time he could know when Barney would end. With the ability to measure his days, he was able to pull himself out of the void and ultimately start down the path to recovery. Today, Martin can communicate whatever he wants with the help of a computer program, but there’s one thing he can’t articulate: “I cannot even express to you how much I hated Barney.”
So it turns out that the primal hatred people have toward Barney is strong enough to pull a disembodied consciousness out of the abyss of existential despair and into the physical world out of pure spite
