Wednesday, June 20, 2007

New Blog Widget Announcement

Don't pretend like you didn't notice, you totally did, I saw you look over in my sidebar.

Moving on.

The absolute BEST thing on the internet today--seriously, you can skip everything else, except maybe perusing my webspace--is this article in Wired. I have reprinted the entire thing below, because the risk that you might not read it if I left it as a link was just too much to bear.

Narcissistic Blog Disorder and Other Conditions of Online Kookery
Lore Sjöberg

The AMA recently suggested that perhaps gaming addiction should be considered as a sub-category of internet addiction. This is a step in the right direction. Clearly "internet addiction" doesn't begin to cover the realm of bizarre and pathological behaviors the internet inspires. Herewith a list of afflictions and syndromes I feel should be added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV, or perhaps the DSM IV.Ib.

Narcissistic Blog Disorder


This disorder is characterized by the creation of a blog in which the individual consistently denigrates not only the opinions of others, but the very fact that others have opinions, saying things like "nobody cares what some overpaid starlet has to say about global warming" and "nobody cares what some crusty career politician thinks is wrong with society today." Simultaneously, the individual assumes that people do care about what he or she has to say, in spite of the individual's only political or activist experience being watching the movie Dave twice.

Bookmark Loop Disorder


Web bookmarks remain a popular way to waste time when one should be working. You check a site or two, get something done for a little while, then check your bookmarks again. Careful research, however, has shown that at a certain point the list of bookmarks grows, the "get something done" period shrinks, until the reader goes directly from the end of the list back to the top, just in case there are new updates. Once entered, this "bookmark loop state" often cannot be broken until a couple hours after a sane bedtime.

E-mail Gullibility Syndrome

Adults who preserve a healthy skepticism when people knock on their door asking for assistance or political support often lose that sense of suspicion when they first receive an e-mail account. Every caution about the dangers of kiwi fruit, every warning that the U.S. Congress is about to outlaw Santa Claus and every plea for assistance from deposed royalty is treated with utmost credulity and, where appropriate, forwarded to a dozen of the recipient's long-suffering friends and family members. Luckily this is usually a self-resolving disorder, disappearing after two years or $30,000 lost, whichever comes first.

Atemporal Fad Disorder

The desire to participate in an internet fad is considered by psychologists to be a natural, if sometimes unfortunate, aspect of human nature. Some individuals, however, appear to have a clinical inability to recognize the fleeting nature of fads, and continue to attempt to participate after everyone else is sick to death of the whole thing. The current diagnostic criterion is "the use of the phrase 'all your base are belong to us' in any non-ironic context" but in 2010 it is expected to be expanded to include any suggestion that a photo depicts a cat interacting with an invisible object.

Pugilistic Discussion Syndrome


In this curious form of aphasia, the subject is unable to distinguish between a discussion and a contest. The subject approaches any online forum as a sort of playing field, and attempts to "win" the discussion by any means necessary. The rules of the imaginary contest are apparently clear to the individual as he or she will often point out when others break them, but when asked to outline these rules the individual is reluctant, perhaps not wishing to confer an "advantage" on any "opponents." The conditions for winning are similarly difficult to pin down, although in some cases the individual will declare himself the winner of a discussion that, to all others, appears to be ongoing.

Amusement Identify Disorder


This is a sort of inverse cousin to Pugilistic Discussion Syndrome, in which the individual has difficulty distinguishing between an online game and real life. The individual sees his or her online character as being as "real" as the individual's real-world self, if not more so. One manifestation of this disorder is the tendency to treat game accomplishments such as impressive magic items or guild leadership as the equivalent of real-life accomplishments like pursuing a successful career or raising a family. In addition to impairing the individual's personal growth in the real world, this disorder also makes them extremely boring at parties.

Huge props and credit to Lore Sjöberg, in case you didn't notice his name earlier. According to his bio, Lore was born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjoberg eventually overcame these handicaps to suffer from at least two of the above afflictions.

The blog author herself also suffers from at least two specific afflictions in the list above.

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