Now I Understand

I was reading this post on BlogHer when I followed a link to an article about "death bloggers". I had never thought of something like Munchausen by Proxy could bleed into the Internet culture. But it makes perfect sense at the same time. There are examples of varying degrees of this sort of thing in all online communities. I think the lesser extent of this syndrome (if it can be called that) is the most common. We’ve all seen it. One person mentions they just bought some outdoor furniture, for instance, and that one person not only purchased the same stuff, but it fell apart on her and caused her to break her leg. And she choked on those same peanuts you just bought and loved. And she’s got your same illness, except so much worse. Put it all together and she was sitting outside eating peanuts when her glider broke and caused her to develop a severe allergy to, well, everything.

I seem to be making light of those two articles to which I linked. I don’t mean to. The issues discussed there are very serious, and the victims/perpetrators need to be examined, exposed and helped. I sincerely feel bad for people that feel they’ve got to exaggerate every day events or blatantly lie to make an impact on other community members. I think that this area of illness should be examined more carefully, because there is something there that could be a “goldmine” for the psychiatric community. There’s help for online porn addiction and online gambling addiction, why shouldn’t there be help for “Look at me!” syndrome?

This also caused me to look at certain people differently. When I say “certain people” I mean those people in online communities (specifically forums) that will write just about anything to get the other members of the community to notice them. They’re pretty irksome to me. Especially those that seem to adopt the “authority” voice for a forum, but in fact are not the authority. These are the folks that are present in every single thread, who give advice and never admit when their advice is completely contrary. These are also folks that find themselves getting angry when they’re ignored, getting more biting and frustrated with each posting (I’ve recently seen this behavior on Twitter too).

Prior to reading the above referenced post, I was considering leaving a forum that I’m a part of because the frequency of these sort of people popping into the thread. “LOOK AT ME!” was making me want to find a whole other community and make a bunch of new connections. But now I know. Now I know what’s going on and it saddens me a little bit. I’ll certainly be more thoughtful, suspicious and understanding when I see this kind of behavior in the future.

Of course, one could argue that I too practice this. I am, afterall, writing about it on a blog that is exclusively comprised of my writing. Aren’t I hoping that someone will please take notice?

Sure. In a way I’m like that. Aren’t all bloggers just a tad vain? Don’t we all think a little more of our own importance than is real? Absolutely. We wouldn’t blog otherwise. However, I’m not very active in forums as I like to read mostly. I go in to get both support and gawk at all the funny drama. I’d love to have more readers on my blog, but I don’t think of myself as suffering from any type of Munchausen. I hope to someday write well enough that my real-life mundane stories become interesting to readers who are passing by. And I’m way to busy to put that much effort into such elaborate tales. Or to think of ways for people to interact with me.

I don’t feel like anyone should just “get over” this sort of illness, of course. I’m not even sure it’s considered an “illness” by any kind of medical profession. I do know that I recognize it for what it is now and am laughing at myself for taking these particular people so seriously. They aren’t trying to drive people from the community, as I initially thought, but are trying to be thought of as the people to go to—the important people. Good for them. I hope they find what they’re looking for. As for me, I have lilies to plant.

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