I once read a piece of text whose contents was so vividly horrific that it caused me to momentarily pass out, falling out of my chair. Granted, it passed throug

I once read a piece of text whose contents was so vividly horrific that it caused me to momentarily pass out, falling out of my chair. Granted, it passed through an intermediate representation in my brain, but I would still count it as an adversarial input to my vision that caused lasting damage. The damage in Snow Crash just happened to be more severe than "short-term distress followed by periodic unsettlement".