From issue 2583 of New Scientist magazine, 20 December 2006, page 34-37
Hello, my name is Richard and I am an egosurfer. The habit began about five years ago, and now I need help. Like most journalists, I can't deny that one of my private joys is seeing my byline in print. Now the internet is allowing me to feed this vanity to an ever greater extent, and the occasional sneaky web search has grown into a full-blown obsession with how high up Google's ranking my articles appear when I put my name into the search box. When I last looked, my best effort was a rather humiliating 47th place. You know you have a problem when you find yourself competing for ranking with a retired basketball player from the 1970s.
Not that I'm alone in suffering from a dysfunctional techno-habit. New technologies have revealed a whole raft of hitherto unsuspected personality problems: think crackberry, powerpointlessness or cheesepodding (see "Modern maladies", bottom). Most of us are familiar with sending an email to a colleague sitting a couple of feet away instead of talking to them. Some go onto the web to snoop on old friends, colleagues or even first dates. More of us than ever reveal highly personal information on blogs or MySpace entries. A few will even use internet anonymity to fool others into believing they are someone else altogether. So are these web syndromes and technological tics new versions of old afflictions, or are we developing fresh mind bugs?
Developing a bad habit is easier than many might think. "You can become addicted to potentially anything you do," says Mark Griffiths, an addiction researcher at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, "because addictions rely on constant rewards." Indeed, although definitions of addiction vary, there is a body of evidence that suggests drug addictions and non-drug habits share the same neural pathways (New Scientist, 26 August, p 30). While only a hardcore few can be considered true technology addicts, an entirely unscientific survey of the web, and of New Scientist staff, has revealed how prevalent techno-addictions may have become.
The web in particular has opened up a host of opportunities for overindulgence. Take Wikipedia. Updating the entries - something anyone can do - has become almost a way of life for some. There are more than 2400 "Wikipedians", p 36 - you know where to look it up if you don't know what it means - who have edited more than 4000 pages each ("see Confessions of a Wikipediholic", below). "It's clearly like crack for some people," says Dan Cosley at Cornell University in New York, who has studied how websites such as Wikipedia foster a community. To committed Wikipedians, he says, the site is more than a useful information resource; it's the embodiment of an ideology of free information for all.
Then there are photolog sites like Flickr. While most of us would rather die than be caught surreptitiously browsing through someone else's photos, there need be no such qualms about the private pics people put up on these sites. Haliyana Khalid and Alan Dix at Lancaster University in the UK have studied this new practice of "photolurking". Most people they interviewed who used Flickr and similar sites spent time each day browsing albums owned by people they had never met. They do this for emotional kicks, Khalid and Dix suggest: flicking through someone else's wedding photos, for example, allows people to daydream about their own nuptials.
"Photolurkers spent most of their time online flicking through photograph albums posted by strangers"
Email is another area where things can get out of hand. While email has led to a revival of the habit of penning short notes to friends and acquaintances, the ease with which we can do this means that we don't always think hard enough about where our casual comments could end up. This was the undoing of US broadcaster Keith Olbermann, who earlier this year sent a private email in which he described a fellow MSNBC reporter as "dumber than a suitcase of rocks". Unfortunately for Olbermann, the words found their way into the New York Daily News.
Pam Briggs, a specialist in human-computer interaction at the University of Northumbria, UK, says the lack of cues such as facial expressions or body language when communicating electronically can lead us to overcompensate in what we say. "The medium is so thin, there's little room for projecting ourselves into it," says Briggs. "When all the social cues disappear, we feel we have to put something else into the void, which is often an overemotional or over-intimate message."
The habit of forwarding jokey emails or YouTube videos - think Diet Coke and Mentos fountains - can also say a lot about how people want to be perceived, Briggs adds. "We rarely want to be seen as too serious, so we try to project more of our personality into email." This could also explain why many bloggers expose private information that they would never shout out to a crowded room - another modern trend. Just ask Jessica Cutler, the US Senate aide who in 2004 posted graphic descriptions on her blog Washingtonienne, recounting tales of sexual mischief on Capitol Hill. Or perhaps blogger Catherine Sanderson - also known as La Petite Anglaise - who was sacked this year for her accounts of the everyday life and loves of a secretary at the Paris-based firm where she was employed. It seemed her bosses were less than thrilled that thousands were logging on to www.petiteanglaise.com to read her Bridget Jones-like tales of stuffy colleagues and exposed cleavage during business meetings.
Such indiscretions are not the only way virtual habits feed back into the real world. According to Jeff Hancock, who specialises in computer-mediated communication at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, the way we act and emote online has implications for our offline selves. In a study to be published shortly, he and colleagues asked subjects to pretend to be extroverted either on a live blog or in a Microsoft Word document they knew would not be made public, and then ran the participants through a personality test. Hancock says the group that blogged emerged as more extroverted than the Word group. He says that acting out a particular personality online reinforces the behaviour, making it more likely to be followed in real life. This could start a cycle as our public and virtual selves feed into each other and we become gradually more indulgent, more indiscreet - or perhaps more egocentric. I do hope this article improves my Google ranking.
Confessions of a Wikipediholic
People call me a Wikipediholic, but that's not the way I see myself. I'm in the top ten Wikipedians by the number of edits I have made, and I do mention it to people from time to time - though generally just as an indicator that I'm an experienced editor rather than bragging. Friends and relatives are both mildly impressed and mildly amused.
I'd say I spend about a quarter of my spare time on the site, about two hours a day on average. I've set my browser so that every time I open it I'm presented with a random article. Often it'll need some little tweak to formatting or style. It's a cycle: I'll be searching Wikipedia for information about some subject and then when I get to the article I want, I'll find it needs some major work or is otherwise inadequate. I can get sidetracked for hours on this sort of thing.
Three major factors come to mind about why I spend so much time on it: the instant gratification of being able to fix something that's broken or unpolished, the ability to explain to the rest of the world things that I know, and also how I learn new and sometimes unexpected bits of information along the way.
My idea of what it takes to be a Wikipediholic? Obsessive tidiness, at least where it comes to organising information, is a good sta
rt.
Bryan Derksen is a scientific equipment salesman who lives in Edmonton, Canada. He has made more than 70,000 edits to Wikipedia entries
Confessions of a MySpacer
I don't mind that many people seem to think they are friends with the real David Attenborough. Hardly anybody has asked me if I am really him.
I set up David's MySpace page because I've been a fan since I was a kid, watching his ground-breaking series like Life on Earth and The Living Planet. David has been an inspiration.
Generally, I spend a few hours a week on MySpace to answer questions, and update my page with news and more content, such as video clips and news of his latest programmes. I certainly never express my thoughts or message people claiming that I'm David.
I think most people understand the nature of MySpace: it's for fun, so it doesn't matter if it's "real" or not. People don't ask David if they can have his phone number; everybody just light-heartedly wants to give him praise. It's his virtual avatar - a sort of a shrine where people come and share their thoughts and admire his incredible body of work. People address Charles Darwin on his MySpace page as if he were alive and well.
Have I intentionally made it look as if David could have posted it himself? Yes and no. There is a certain role-playing aspect to it. On MySpace as in other online social interaction we depict our personalities in the way we want others to see us.
Peter Vaht is a computer artist who lives in Westchester, New York. He (and David) can be found at www.myspace.com/dattenborough
Confessions of a cyberchondriac
It starts with a heart palpitation. My doctor tells me it's just my 12-a-day espresso habit. But ask the internet and you get a different picture. Just put in the terms and follow the leads: cardiac arrhythmias, hypertension, angina, I've had the lot. It's addictive.
Of course, there is one obstacle for the committed cyberchondriac. Most responsible health websites advise you to "visit your doctor". This leads to an endless game of diagnostic tennis as I bounce back and forth from net doctor to real doctor, one insisting that I need urgent medical treatment, the other telling me I am fine.
The result is inevitable: giving up on the human doctor for remedial advice and instead digging deeper into the internet to find my own cure. And here is where the real dangers begin: internet links take the place of intellectual links; following them leads to a numbing of rational thought, but also to curious websites advocating obscure and spurious holistic remedies. Soon I forget that it's 4 am and I am entangled in the darkest depths of obsessive self-help.
Fortunately, my cyberchondriac worries burn out in the end. It's usually at the point where I own up to falsifying my answers on internet questionnaires to get the condition I want. And I admit I do feel a lot better now I am on the decaf.
Paul Sloman is a freelance designer and editor living in London. He is currently Googling for "Ebola virus"
Confessions of a cheesepodder
It started with Africa by Toto, a song so cheesy that you could cover it in plastic wrap and sell it at the deli counter - yet also one of the outstanding soft-rock moments of the early 1980s, if not all time. It was late and I was drunk, mucking around with my iTunes library, when for some reason it hit me. I needed to hear that song, right now. Just 79 pence later it was mine.
We've all got them - cringeworthy songs that we would never admit to liking, at least not while sober. In the past, owning such shameful material entailed possessing a CD, tape or vinyl album that might be discovered and ridiculed by your friends. Not any more. Not in the age of the MP3 player.
After that the cheese flowed thick and fast. More Than a Feeling by Boston. Down Under by Men at Work. And a few I'm not telling you about.
I call my habit cheesepodding, and since I discovered it I have found I am not alone. In certain circles there is even an ironic cool to be had from out-cheesing your friends. There is a problem, though. As with all addictions, you end up needing bigger and bigger hits to get the same buzz. Once I started downloading Celine Dion power ballads, I knew it was time to stop.
Fortunately, I have found a variant that is, if anything, more entertaining. I download songs I know my wife hates and put them onto her iPod while she isn't looking.
Graham Lawton is the New Scientist features editor
Confessions of a Google-stalker
Much of my recreational Googling is simply to snoop on friends and acquaintances. I enjoy Googling people I've lost touch with to find out what they are up to without having to risk actually contacting them. Often the impulse is fed by professional competitiveness, sometimes by pure inquisitiveness. I Google-stalk people who may have fared worse than I have in the years since I last saw them: fellow interns who didn't "make it", university chums who dropped out, even friends who suffered illnesses and accidents.
Other times I like to Google people I'm not really supposed to know much about - an uncle's mysterious son from a previous marriage, for instance, or a friend's supposedly secret lover. I've never met these people and probably never will, but I do delight in figuring out who they are and where they live, and glimpsing their sporting achievement (fourth place in a wrestling tournament) or success in the job market (still untenured).
Once, I incited my mother to Google an old friend of hers who'd deserted his wife back in 1963, while she was in hospital giving birth. As she tells it, he "disappeared into thin air". These days the air is not so thin. We found out where he was living, and even a telephone number where we could ring him. We didn't, of course. That would be crossing the line.
Alison Motluk is New Scientist's Toronto correspondent
Modern maladies
Blog streaking Revealing secrets or personal information online, which for everybody's sake would be best kept private
Crackberry The curse of the modern executive, not being able to stop checking your BlackBerry even at you grandmother's funeral
Cyberchondria A headache and a particular rash at the same time? Extensive online research tells you it must be cancer
Egosurfing When "just checking" gets out of control
Infornography You're beyond being a healthy "infovore": acquiring and sharing information has become an addiction for you
You Tube narcissism Not even your closest family want to see hours of your holiday videos
Google-stalking Snooping online on old friends, colleagues or first dates
MySpace impersonation Many of us pretend to be someone we're not when we are online, but some will pretend to be a well-known figure
Powerpointlessness One too many flashy slides
Photolurking Flicking through a photo album of someone you've never met
Wikipediholism Excessive devotion to a certain online collaborative encyclopedia. You can test whether you're an addict at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Are_You_a_Wikipediholic_Test
