Thursday, June 21, 2007

Online Illnesses?

The Closet Grandmaster is worried he might suffer from Narcissistic Blog Disorder, "in which the individual consistently denigrates not only the opinions of others, but the very fact that others have opinions... 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."

I've never heard of Dave, so I guess I'm free from that particular sickness. But a close look at my profile and its photo might indicate that I instead am afflicted by 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.
Do I need a Doctor? What's your diagnosis?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that because you recognise the fact that you are participating in a fad, means that you can't be suffering from Atemporal Fad Disorder.

It might be an as yet unidentified disorder, because the sheer amount of blogging you do can't be natural! Perhaps we could call it "Obsessive Fad Disorder"?

In any case, I don't want to see you cured, because I quite enjoy reading your blog.

Tom Chivers said...

Thanks Ed... Maybe just Fad Disorder (General) - I'm not sure I like 'Obsessive' so much!

transformation said...

* please see this post for detailed diagnosis:

http://dk-transformation.blogspot.
com/2007/06/prolegema-to-any-future-chess-blogger.html

* and this persons interpretation:

http://temposchlucker.blogspot.com/2007/06/dk-transformation.html

:)

warmly, dk