i still don't really get why special characters, different cases, and numbers are required for setting a password

you could just make the password a little bit longer to get the same effect? also the attacker would have no clue whether you required it or not so they'd have to try all possible characters anyway

@operator & /operator | BCI, bioinformatics, search, chaos, decentralized AI

social engineering as an attack vector

your brother or wife can likely guess your word-based password

your brother or wife are less likely to guess which special characters made you least angry at the moment you had to create a new secure password