WARNING: Extremely cranky.
I believe in the following version of Six Degrees of Blog Separation: starting at any webjournal, it is possible to get to a webjournal in which the author claims to have some form of serious mental illness in six jumps or less. Usually it only takes two to four.
Some of those people are undoubtedly truly mentally ill. Psychiatrists estimate that approximately one percent of Americans are schizophrenic; in theory, that means that one out of every hundred blogs is, indeed, written by someone with serious mental problems. Furthermore, several other mental illnesses both mild and severe would in no way prevent their sufferers from having and posting in a weblog. Fine, accepted, understood. And if you're one of those people, hi and welcome, and please believe that none of this is aimed at you.
Now, to piss everybody else off.
Do you remember how, in high school or college, people would play the Pity Me Game? Here's how it works: you and a bunch of your friends sit around a table at lunch. One of you starts the game by saying:
I'm so overworked. I have two more tests this week and a paper due on Monday.
Two things happen. One, you get an outpouring of pity, which you bathe in. Two, someone else ups the ante.
You think that's bad? I have two tests tomorrow and I've had three hours sleep in the last two days...
More pity, and up the ante goes again.
I think I'm going to fail two classes, and I have a forty-page paper due tomorrow that I'm just so stuck on, so I'm going to have to ask for an extension which I won't get, and I haven't slept well in months...
And so on. It's all about impressing people with how bad your life is, and being the best at having it the worst.
And of course, what's the first half of the Pity Me Game without the second half? Someone will up your ante.
(And unfortunately, that's not half as dirty as it sounds. 'Upping your ante' sounds like a great euphemism for buttsex. Er. Okay, going back to my point.)
It's sad to see mental illness trivialized like this. So many people suffer so badly at the claws of the very mental disorders that angsty teens affect in order to Win Pity. By playing the Pity Me Game with mental illness, by affecting serious fucked-up-ness in order to make yourself special, by transforming yourself into an MPD sufferer just to compete with other bloggers, you have turned a serious problem into just another fucking blogmeme.
When the blogmeme is multiple personality tests, it's nifty and fun and harmless.
When the blogmeme is multiple personality disorder, it's not.
You know what? If you feign having a mental disorder on your blog, if you slavishly categorize the drugs that you pretend to be on, if you know that you're healthy but merely want the cachet of Pity to cloak your blog, if you are a sheep and give in to that blogmeme, you are admitting to every single one of us who reads your blog that you are nothing special at all.
But you know what? By giving in to that blogmeme, you have proven that you have at least one mental disorder. You suffer from SID. Not to be confused with SIDS, thank you.
SID. It stands for Self-Importance Disorder.
Wear it like a badge of dishonor, blogsheep.
I cannot take credit for the term 'SID'. It was coined in discussion this afternoon by Arielle of Technomancy, and I gleefully stole it to hit people with.
Replies: add your comment: currently 9 comments
There's a pretty interesting range of psychological disorders that make people do weird shit for attention... for example, Munchausen Syndrome, where the patient will either claim illness or actually cause illness in themselves, by cutting themselves and smearing fecal matter into the wounds, or Munchausen by proxy, which is when a mother (or other guardian figure) makes their child sick because without a sick child their life is meaningless and with a sick child everyone gushes over what a wonderful mother/parent/person they are. Sick, huh?
Of course then you have... shit... nevermind, I'd better go study some more because right now because I can't remember the names of the disorders... but there's a lot of "faking it" disorders, and generally, it just means that people are lonely as fuck, and, well, there's no helping that. A lot of people, you take away their soulbonds, their "soulbond community", or their "mental disorder", and hell, their life is shit, which is not so cool. I don't agree with it and I certainly would never claim to have a soulbond or a mental disorder, but I can understand why some people would. It's a sad sad world, if you let it be that way.
Posted by ghostboy @ 12/16/2001 10:35 AM EST
whoops. uh, the reason i need to study is b/c i have a final in abnormal psychology tomorrow at 2 p.m....
Posted by ghostboy @ 12/16/2001 10:36 AM EST
Wow, I actually got a crick in my neck from nodding in agreement while I read... Hum!
I've noticed the mental disorder thing quite a bit too, and it surprises me that so many people would make such claims (well, it doesn't surprise me.. it does gain the blogger much attention), but isn't it common knowledge that those with true mental disorders spend all their time claiming they're perfectly normal? So who do the "mentally unstable blogger" think they're fooling? ... Hum indeed. O_o
That's something I'd like to see. Someone blogging "I'm perfectly normal! Honest! Leave me the hell alone!"
Posted by Faith @ 12/16/2001 03:59 PM EST
Ahhhgh, I loved the Technomancy (or whatever it's called) blog about this. It's true, and it's not just in soulbonding; I think there are armies of them in the roleplaying community, too. (Not RPG's, I mean the "get in a chatroom and pretend you're a long-lost half-elven princess" variety).
M'eh. It's all true, but I don't know what's going to stop them until they just get over the fad. People tend to get defensive and just get this "The world doesn't understand!!!" thing, which only entrenches it really. People are so aggravating.
- StB, whose mental problems are on her blog, but who was actually diagnosed by a real live doctor, thank you ^_~
Posted by StB @ 12/16/2001 04:03 PM EST
Faith: try here.
Well, I'm not normal, but I'm at least sane. :D
Posted by Moonshine @ 12/16/2001 05:39 PM EST
Well done, once again, Moon. You have a right to be cranky about this, Moon, because it's true. There are people who had SID and well...they don't seem to want to get off of it anytime soon. And it does get annoying.
You really need to publish a book of some kind with all your observations in it. Heh.
Posted by Wolf @ 12/16/2001 11:25 PM EST
OH MY GOD, MOON! How can you say such horrible things?? YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND! You could never understand how hard it is! I have all this reading to do and it's so boring and horrible I'll never get it done, and I'm going to fail all my classes because I'm so stupid and don't you realize that I'm MENTALLY ILL? *SOB*
...okay. Sorry. You know it's gonna happen eventually; I might as well make everyone feel silly about it in advance!
Posted by Ed @ 12/17/2001 11:56 AM EST
Interesting. There is a trend going around about having mental illnesses, but considering how about 48% of all people out there do, did, or will suffer from a mental illness, then perhaps instead of saying that one in a hundred bloggers suffer from a mental disorder, then we should say that almost half of all bloggers have something wrong with them. Then again, maybe most of that 48% is staying away from the public eye. Who can really say what goes on within the human mind?
Posted by Beccish @ 12/17/2001 11:39 PM EST
Hm, does that 48% include comparatively mild things like depression? There are a lot of people who claim MAJOR problems, not the "unsexy" mildly-messed-up problems. :P Just wondering.
Posted by StB @ 12/18/2001 01:13 AM EST
