Sunday, December 9, 2007

Googlereaderphobia

Googlereaderphobia* (from the Greek φόβος "Phobos," meaning fear) is defined as an irrational, persistent, and intense fear of checking Google Reader. This fear motivates the avoidance of Reader. When avoidance is not possible, intense anxiety results. Such anxiety increases as a function of the number of posts labeled "new" or "unread"; if this number equals or exceeds 100, efforts to avoid Reader may become frantic and cause significant impairment in one's social and occupational functioning.

Anxiety may be relieved, albeit temporarily, by marking unread posts as read, although this behavior is recognized by the sufferer as illogical and dysfunctional. A small but substantial group (on the order of 15 percent) of patients reports paranoid ideation to the effect that on the rare occasion that there are no posts remaining to be read, a new post pops up within seconds. This same group tends to view Google Reader as a malevolent entity, with startlingly and recognizably human features.

The only known treatment is the total disabling of one's feed aggregator(s).

*also known as Bloglinesphobia or feedreaderphobia, although these appellations are used less frequently.