6 New Personality Disorders Caused by the Internet

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Twitchy

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(long article but worth a read)

Cracked.com is a comedy website that usually specializes in irreverant humor about celebrities, politics and occasionally your mother. However I found this article falls under the category of "truth is stranger than fiction" and I post it here for all to see. I've summarized things a bit and clipped out the bits that use excessive profanity. Despite the fact that it was funny.

I'm sure some of you have suffered or have known people that have suffered from one or many of these disorders. I've certainly had my share. It's worth mentioning that none of these things mean you are a horrible person in reality. It just means you need to change your online behavior and maybe even get away from the computer for awhile.

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6 New Personality Disorders Caused by the Internet
by Jonathan Kimak


The Internet makes people crazy. We all know this. The guy on the message board who just called you a shitclown for owning a different video game console than him probably would have been perfectly polite had you met in real life.

In fact, we're thinking it's time they updated the psychological diagnostic manuals with this list of new disorders that only seem to kick in once the person opens a web browser.

#6 Online Intermittent Explosive Disorder

Like serial killers, these people seem pretty normal at first. For hours or even days, they'll carry on funny, charming conversations in a forum or comment section. But then something, anything, sets him off and he devolves into a tantrum that would make Christian Bale say, "Dude, calm down! Jesus."

In Real Life it's Called...

Intermittent Explosive Disorder

Out in the real world, IED is an impulse control disorder that can make a person act like their entire family has been murdered just because Burger King forgot to put their fries in the bag. They're prone to fits of uncontrollable rage in situations that don't call for it.

So Why Does it Happen on the Internet?

First, there's the obvious: Most of us suppress our real-life spurts of rage for fear of getting punched in the face by the person we're screaming at. Second, on the Internet, where your looks, job, income and fancy clothes won't buy you any respect, some people seem to think they have to protect their reputation like an old west gunslinger: shooting down anybody who calls them out.

But then there's the third, and least obvious reason, which is that without tone of voice and body language, it's hard to convey mere annoyance or mild anger, without the fear that the person you're conveying it to just plain won't notice. So they think they have to crank it up to a 10 every time they're crossed, even if they don't mean it.

#5 Low Forum Frustration Tolerance (a.k.a. The Frantic Browser Reloader)

This is the guy who makes a new thread, knowing he's just written the absolutely perfect post. A post that should be heralded across the Internet for its beauty, comedy and insight. It is such a good post that the guy is checking every five seconds to see if there is a new response. If he gets a response he quickly dashes out his own reply that will appear half a second later.

If there are no responses to his perfect post then he will wait an eternity of five minutes before replying to his own thread with, "What, nobody has a comment? Helloooo???"

In Real Life it's Called...

Low Frustration Tolerance

LFT is defined as a person seeking immediate gratification or the avoidance of immediate pain. At first this sounds like the behavior of any whiny seven-year-old who wants a toy and will scream and pump his fat little arms until he gets what he wants. But unlike a kid, a quick smack to the back of the head won't shut this guy up.

So Why Does it Happen on the Internet?

There never has been an engine for instant gratification like the Internet. Our parents thought television killed our attention spans, but hell, with TV you still had to wait for the shows to come on, and they played at their own pace. On the Internet, the videos start when you ******* tell them to. If they don't, off to another site. It's like a faucet: you turn the knob and you expect an immediate flow of lolcats.

It trains all of us to be impatient.

#4 Munchausen by Internet (a.k.a. The Sob Story Teller)

These are the people who lurk around innocently enough, and then, one day, tragedy strikes. Their dog, or parent, or maybe a close friend died. Maybe the poster themselves found out they have a terminal disease. And unless you're on 4chan, the group will generally rally around and shower them with sympathy. You send this person your prayers and well wishes, maybe a few dozen kitten pictures and you hope they will get through it.

Then, a few months later, another tragedy strikes them. Their best friend was raped, or paralyzed in an accident, or both. A few months after that, their father dies. Again. Soon it becomes apparent that they are either living under an ancient Egyptian curse, or they're making it all up.

In Real Life it's Called...

Munchausen Syndrome

The basis of need here is the same as the attention-seekers above, only these people will only settle for the positive and sympathetic attention that comes with being sick or some other kind of distress. You know, without the whole "actually being sick" thing to bog them down.

So Why Does it Happen on the Internet?

As easy as it is to pull off in real life, it's 10 time easier online where there's no simple way to fact-check the claims. So it doesn't take a balls-out liar or con man to pull it off. Hell, all you need to do is know how to type, and you have access to that same outpouring of sympathy all Munchausen sufferers get addicted to.

#3 Online Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (a.k.a. The Grammar Nazi)

We all reserve the right to mock people who post 500-word blocks of misspelled nonsense. But then you have the situation where somebody posts a perfectly clear and clever message but within their well-articulated points they dare to confuse "your" with "you're." And then somebody will flip the fresia out.

Like a Mossad agent in rural America, you quickly discover that you've found a Nazi. Of the Grammar variety.

In Real Life it's Called...

Obssesive Compulsive Personality Disorder, or OCPD

OCPD should not be confused with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (or, "The OC Disorder"). OCPD shares the obsessive component of OCD, but it is different from OCD in that OCPD has the letter P in its name. That and people with OCPD do not perform the weird ritualistic actions of OCD'ers, like opening a door four times or having to always eat Pringles with the concave side up.

So Why Does it Happen on the Internet?

At the heart of the real-life OCPD sufferer seems to be an irrational fear that the rest of the world is sloppier, dirtier and more disorganized than it should be, that it's rapidly getting worse, and that the world will fall to pieces unless someone straightens it up.

On the Internet, five minutes spent reading YouTube comments can convince even an average, level-headed person that the Internet is about to suffer the same fate. The old-fashioned holdouts who insist on typing in actual sentences see what seems to be an inexorable move toward a language based entirely on texting abbreviations. It's not hard to feel the desire to take up arms to defend language at all costs. Srsly.

#2 Low Cyber Self-Esteem (a.k.a. The Guy Who Everyone Hates but Who Never Leaves)

There's a place for everyone on the Internet to feel at home. When you can fill a message board with fans of The Wonder Years porn, there should be no such thing as an outcast.

Yet, each forum, chat room or other online community seems to have a person or people who just don't fit in. It's not that they are necessarily horrible people, they're just the square trying to fit into the triangle hole. They get ridiculed constantly.

Now you may figure this is no different than the picked-on nerd in high school, but unlike that kid always getting squished into a locker, these people are free to leave the website at any time. But they never do.

In Real Life it's Called...

Self Abasement or Attention Seeking Behavior

If taken to an extreme, it can even turn into Online Erotic Humiliation where the abuse turns into sexual arousal. So the next time you tell someone to go fresia themselves, you might have just given them the material to do so.

So Why Does it Happen on the Internet?

So we've established that when you say, in person, "Jimmy, go away, you're a retard" that Jimmy is just happy that somebody used his name and acknowledged his existence. Even if the only reason you used his name was to tell him to go die in a fire.

But when you type it on a message board, it's that much better. This isn't just attention, but attention that's being broadcast around the globe via the World Wide Web. The "we hate Jimmy" thread on a popular forum might be read by thousands of people. If that many people are reading about him, he must matter (hell, think of all the TV personalities who have made a career out of being hated).

#1. Internet Asperger's Syndrome (a.k.a. The Troll)

The utter loss of all social rules and empathy that seems to hit some people for no other reason than that they happen to be communicating via keyboard and monitor at the time.

We don't need to retell all of the horror stories. A kid commits suicide on webcam while the trolls cheer him on, Anonymous mocks a suicide victim, some kids fire a baby out of a giant slingshot for a YouTube video (we're not sure if that last one actually happened but it's really just a matter of time).

Normal kids, good grades, no criminal records... but get them in a chat room and suddenly it reads like the transcript to a Charles Manson parole hearing.

In Real Life it's Called...

Asperger's Syndrome

This rarely diagnosed but often claimed disorder is a mild form of Autism that comes with what seems to be a biological inability to show empathy for other human beings, as well as (and maybe stemming from) an inability to recognize nonverbal cues. They continually do weird, upsetting things because they don't know it's upsetting you. That part of their brain is broken.

So Why Does it Happen on the Internet?

When the ability to see nonverbal responses and facial expressions goes away, so does empathy. Soon the thing you're communicating with isn't a person, they're just a bunch of words on a screen. A bunch of words that the little ******* didn't even bother to spellcheck.

(source)

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