Saturday, November 20, 2010

Facebook can give you asthma

A treat was truly in store for readers of Dublin's Metro Herald yesterday (19 Nov), the top of page 11 ran the headline "Warning: Facebook could trigger an asthma attack".
Very informative piece altogether; the article repeated the title almost word for word as the first sentence - stirring repetitive rhetoric, there were additionally plenty of solid irrational claims from arcane sources - "Now doctors fear social networking websties such a facebook may be a 'new source of psychological distress"...... "doctors"... really.
There was some great second-hand anecdotal evidence in the piece also - it was reported a teenage male who was dumped by his girlfriend created a new profile under a pseudonym after being de-friended by his ex, who accepted his new persona. The dump-ee then noticed she was "friending" new men. Yes, the paper had friending in inverted commas, and no, I cannot actually figure out whether 'friending' is but an obscure euphemism for something or a an attempt to denigrate the meaning of the verb in order to enforce a view. My gut tells me it may be latter.
Interestingly there is no description in the slightest of any asthma attack in the article (why would you need the text to correspond to the headline anyway!?), though it does mention the 18 year-old "used an inhaler to keep his asthma under control". The Metro Herald could be onto something here, what if this "inhaler" device was readily available to all those suffering from asthma?.... wow.

Indeed, the metro herald seems to have unearthed something truly unique in the field of human psychology. "Doctors" to quote the source, are said to be baffled by this new phenomenon, and have admitted that previous attempts to explore this arena, including the age-old concept known as 'unrequited love' are obviously unrelated, obsolete and pure nonsense. Trustees of the works of Dante, Dickens, Shakespeare and Hugo are expected to issue apologies on behalf of the authors, for prohibited, tactless and extensive usurping of the Metro Herald's unique concept of love related stress in their works.

Psychologists and literary critics alike eagerly await further developments into the Metro Herald's study of this unexplored realm of the human condition.

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