RSS Anxiety Disorder?
Just how many types of anxiety are there, anyway? I got to thinking about this as I read a blog that mentioned "RSS Anxiety." For those of you who have not yet come face-to-face with this little acronym, it stands for Real Simple Syndication and it spreads whatever you want all over the internet, virtually creating an immortal life all its own.
Can you kill an idea once it is out on the internet? No. Can you try to correct it? Yes, but you'll never accomplish this goal. Why? Ah, I try never to answer or ask "why" questions, but this time I'll let you get by.
Think of it as you would a front page headline in your daily newspaper. Something like "Mary Smith Ax Murderer" and later it turns out that Mary Smith is not an ax murderer but only a woman who won't have axes around her home because she dislikes tools of that type.
Where will it go and how many people will see it? The story will probably make the back pages, unless Mary, in her infinite wisdom, decides she would like some compensation for her ruined reputation. She then gets an attorney, files a suit and it drags on for who knows how long. In the end, just as it does on my favorite TV show, Boston Legal, Mary will sit in a conference room and come to an out-of-court settlement with whoever she intended to sue. Denny Crane will take care of it. No headline, no news, nothing.
So, to my mind, there should be some sort of anxiety associated with RSS, not because it's a bad thing, but because it can be very problematic if it gives the wrong impression about a product, service, person or whatever. And it lives on and on and on.
I'm also reminded about the popular belief that you shouldn't wear anything opal unless it's your birthstone. This wonderful bit of urban legend was dreamed up, as I heard from a jeweler many years ago, by the people who were selling pearls. Seems that opals were becoming far too popular and the market for pearls was suffering from it. How to handle this? Do a bit of PR management on the opal, create a good bit of anxiety, and here we are today with people still thinking that opals are "bad luck" unless it's your birthstone.
Do you believe this one? I don't. I like black opals and don't buy them because they are far too expensive for me, so I admire them from afar.
Just as I've thought about types of anxiety, and we're about to get a new DSM, so we'll probably have other disorders, too, I think about phobias. Once, when I was studying French in college, I couldn't resist coming up with a phobia with a French name. If it were said in French it might have sounded so nice. So, I had La Femme dans la Chevy Phobia (fear of women in Chevrolets). French scholars, please do not correct my rusty French here and tell me it should be "en" instead of "dans." I admire you for remembering all of those rules.
The idea of a new phobia concocted by moi was motivated by the fact that I'd just seen, in a psychology book, that there were something like 1,100 phobias in the 1930 and people seemed to be falling over their feet trying to come up with new ones. Did it help anyone? I doubt it, but it may have gotten some people to think someone was awfully smart, which he was, of course, but not in the way they thought.
The moral of this story is that you should always take everything with, if not a pinch of salt, a grain, as they say.
Related Topics: WebMD Daily: Too Scared: A Tale of Social Anxiety Disorder, The Fear Factor: Phobias
Technorati Tags: RSS, anxiety, phobias
Can you kill an idea once it is out on the internet? No. Can you try to correct it? Yes, but you'll never accomplish this goal. Why? Ah, I try never to answer or ask "why" questions, but this time I'll let you get by.
Think of it as you would a front page headline in your daily newspaper. Something like "Mary Smith Ax Murderer" and later it turns out that Mary Smith is not an ax murderer but only a woman who won't have axes around her home because she dislikes tools of that type.
Where will it go and how many people will see it? The story will probably make the back pages, unless Mary, in her infinite wisdom, decides she would like some compensation for her ruined reputation. She then gets an attorney, files a suit and it drags on for who knows how long. In the end, just as it does on my favorite TV show, Boston Legal, Mary will sit in a conference room and come to an out-of-court settlement with whoever she intended to sue. Denny Crane will take care of it. No headline, no news, nothing.
So, to my mind, there should be some sort of anxiety associated with RSS, not because it's a bad thing, but because it can be very problematic if it gives the wrong impression about a product, service, person or whatever. And it lives on and on and on.
I'm also reminded about the popular belief that you shouldn't wear anything opal unless it's your birthstone. This wonderful bit of urban legend was dreamed up, as I heard from a jeweler many years ago, by the people who were selling pearls. Seems that opals were becoming far too popular and the market for pearls was suffering from it. How to handle this? Do a bit of PR management on the opal, create a good bit of anxiety, and here we are today with people still thinking that opals are "bad luck" unless it's your birthstone.
Do you believe this one? I don't. I like black opals and don't buy them because they are far too expensive for me, so I admire them from afar.
Just as I've thought about types of anxiety, and we're about to get a new DSM, so we'll probably have other disorders, too, I think about phobias. Once, when I was studying French in college, I couldn't resist coming up with a phobia with a French name. If it were said in French it might have sounded so nice. So, I had La Femme dans la Chevy Phobia (fear of women in Chevrolets). French scholars, please do not correct my rusty French here and tell me it should be "en" instead of "dans." I admire you for remembering all of those rules.
The idea of a new phobia concocted by moi was motivated by the fact that I'd just seen, in a psychology book, that there were something like 1,100 phobias in the 1930 and people seemed to be falling over their feet trying to come up with new ones. Did it help anyone? I doubt it, but it may have gotten some people to think someone was awfully smart, which he was, of course, but not in the way they thought.
The moral of this story is that you should always take everything with, if not a pinch of salt, a grain, as they say.
Related Topics: WebMD Daily: Too Scared: A Tale of Social Anxiety Disorder, The Fear Factor: Phobias
Technorati Tags: RSS, anxiety, phobias
4 Comments:
It is amazing that we make so many excuses for not growing up in life. Instead we make names for every problem we have or comes into our lives. I strongly belive that RSS Anxiety Disorder is an excuse to live our childish lives instated of simply growing up. It is like leaving a mess on the floor or somewhere and say that they have some kind of disorder that causes them to be this messy.
The right thing to do is to clean the mess and then the problem is solved. Believe it or not RSS Live Feeds is something new to the Internet. Yes it has been around a few years, but it became popular that nearly every business is using RSS Live Feeds. With the computer and especially the Internet, things are growing very fast. What I learn in my classes at a technical school I am going to is almost obsolete with the fast growing of everything that deals with computers.
Computers and the Internet is simply a tool and nothing more. It is nothing magical about a computer. It seems that way because of how much it can do. Even the vastness of how fast things are coming into the world with new technologies makes it even more interesting. Computers themselves are DUMB. They cannot think or do anything with out instructions. These instructions are called program codes.
The complexity of how computers operate has to do with these program languages. They are a great deal of program languages that have been used and are being used today. It is these program languages that make the computers that we use seem to be magical. Computers cannot program themselves. They cannot think spite all the science fiction that tells otherwise.
The main reason for committing on this blog posting is that I believe that psychiatry is interfering too much in the idealogy of life itself. The solution to all of our problems is to grow up. Do not get me wrong. They are cases that chemical in the body and other physical abnormalitiesd can cause problems that do need to be addressed, but for the most part life problems can be controlled by will power. That will power is thinking and acting like an adult.
It is true that when we make bad choices in our live over and over, we come to a dead end that we may not get ourselves out of. These individuals do need help in getting back on track. The proplem I see is that the medical field does not label the problem as "self induced missery." I think this is what should be labled in this blog posting and not "RSS Anxity Disorder."
Our Forefathers lived a life or aristocracy. They were not perfect, but then who is perfect. The point is here our Forefathers made the United States of America based on this acristcracy concepts. It is the degregation of our society that has destroyed what our Forefathers has fought and died for, the American way of life.
Phychiatry need to guide thier patients in growing up then to simply slap a label the problem and hope the problem will go away. Making a compost heap look pretty will not change what it is, a compost heap. What I see in every day life, people wants to change the surface and not deal with heart of the problem. Once we all do that in our lives, then can we start to grow in our day to day lives.
Sky high, seek peace,
Brandon Bowers
Thanks, Brandon. I do believe that we need to provide people with more a sense of personal responsibility and help them make better choices. I don't believe those in medicine think that way because it's alien to their studies. I can tell you that the medical students I've taught were more interested in physical symptons than what the person thought or did in their life.
This is, of course what CBT is all about; learning how to take care of yourself.
Dr. Farrell,
I liked what you said on the regards to my long comment. The ideology behind what I have said has a lot to do with the knowledge of the Word of God that I have learned from a pastor-teacher and clinical psychologist by the name of Dr. Stanton E. Samenow. From his book "Inside the Criminal Mind," I have learned a great deal of respect from what he has written in regards to pyychiatry itself and what you have written.
It is ashame that people at a whole do not want to simply take responsibilities for their own actions. From the criminal stand point, I see a lot of criminals getting off too easy do to playing the "I was out of my mind." As Dr. Samenow has stated that criminals do know right from wrong.
In what you have written, I simply wanted to state that some if not a good many concepts of disorders and what nots have to do with the way we think. For instance: I have one more class to go to complete my training in the computer field at Lanier Technical College in Oakwood, Georgia. I have received a certificate in PC Operations, a diploma in Microcomptuer Specialist, and a diploma in Computer Networking. When I take this last class, I will have a diploma in Web Page Design.
It is not easy to get an entry level job in any field. At my age of 39, it is more fustrating in getting a job. I need an income for all sorts of reasons. For me I am relaxed and waiting for a change to apply. I could simply give up and though in the towel. Because of my thinking in the right diretion, giving up on life and myself is not even an option less alone an idea.
I do watch the television show "Cops." I have seen one person that wanted to jump off some high place because he said, "He could not get a job." My point is simply that how one thinks makes all the difference. From others sources that I have come across, most of our disorders and other problems that allow to enter into our lives is cause by our own choices. As William Shakespeare stated in "Julius Caesar:" "Our faults do not lie in our stars, but in ourselves."
I have heard too much of pyschiatry stating all sorts of reason for our negativities in our lives without stating that we are to blame for our own actions. Everyone including the people in the United States of America is becoming to childish towards life itself.
I thank you Doctor for your time in reading my comments and hope that you can train other in the field of psychiatry to see these views and ideology.
Sky high, seek peace,
Brandon Bowers
Are you suffering from techno-stress is an IT Migraine looming. I produce conferences and expositions in the information and technology space, as a "tongue in cheek" I created the "IT Migraine"
www.itmigraine.com. It has been so much fun that I revised it for our Syndicate Canada conference -
www.syndicate.plumcom.ca. Are you suffering from techno-stress is an information migraine loomine. In reality I find that technology can certainly bring more headaches than relief and sometimes adding humour helps. Thanks for a great article.
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