The Blogger's Syndrome

The Facts - What You Need To Know:

Characteristics:

A relatively new disease that emerged in the late 20st century and is currently on an alarming rise in the year 2006.

There is no stopping it, since it's extremely infectious and once, infected, there is no known cure for it. Destructive and systemic, infected persons are known as "compulsive bloggers", as blogging is a way of life for them.

A vaccine has yet to be found but IT-illiterate ppl are working on it.

Current Status: Already a pandemic.

Vector: "Weblog" (now more popularly known as a "blog"). Active 24/7. Well known vectors since discovered are blogspot, xanga, friendster's blog, blogdrive etc.

Etiology (Causes): Fed by euphoria of ppl reading and acknowledging your writings. Comments left by others greatly aggravates the condition. But can be due to extreme boredom and a need to do something remotely useful too.

Signs and Symptoms:

• "partial paralysis" of the phalanges (fingers) due to excessive typing.

• "exophtalmos" (bulging of eyes) due to immense strain of the eyes from the glare of the screen.

• bouts of "psychosis" when something interesting is happening. [don't you find yourself piecing together a blog post in your mind just then?]

• sudden "amnesia" where you sit down, stare at the computer screen and find out that you've forgotten everything that you've painstakingly planned to write about.

• occasional "hypoxia" of the brain, leading to writers' block, which leads to ppl writing crappy posts like this one. [kinda regret writing that, I think I just ruined my reputation along the way, aikz]

Pathogenesis: Starts when you acquire a blog (vector, rmb?). Symptoms are mild in the beginning, incubation period varies among individuals; but will eventually flare up into addictive blogging. Can never get rid of it, will always remain a latent infection.

Treatment: As mentioned above, no cure yet known to mankind. No vaccine either. The best way is to just delete your blog forever and never touch a keyboard ever again. But there is a huge doubt in the scientific community if that way will work.

Epidemiology: Currently almost 40% of the population is affected (correct at press time), found more prominent in people who are tech-savvy and love writing crap.

Prevention: Never expose yourself to the vector! [means don't start a blog lah] No matter how much your infective frenz plead you, be strong.

Take Home Message: Rmb, prevention is always better than cure. If you think you have even ONE of the signs & symptoms above, pls refer yourself to a psychiatrist immediately. Thanks for taking your time to read this. :)