A year or so back, I began to feel victimised by another prominent member of the blogging community. Not someone whose name you will ever see in the comments box on this site, but someone who is well-regarded by certain other bloggers, and who occasionally comments on a select number of the blogs I read. I began to notice that whenever I wrote a comment on one of those blogs, expressing approval of a certain artist or song, this particular individual would soon after leave their own comment, not so much rubbishing my opinion, but making it quite clear that they disagreed and that they saw no value at all in the music I liked. After a while, I attempted to deflect this with humour, leaving jokey follow-up comments about how much our tastes differed or faux apologies for inflicting my own noxious opinions on him, but my olive branch of banter was met with a wall of silence.
This is when my paranoid brain kicked into over-drive. Did this blogger really have it in for me? Were my opinions so distasteful that the very sight of my name in a comment box drove him into a rage? If he felt this way, how many other blog readers might I be offending with my awful taste in music? The least I could do was comment less on the blogs he read, so as not to upset him any further. Beyond that, I seriously considered quitting blogging altogether, or at least making my blog private and just writing it for myself... though I knew I'd miss the community and the chance to chat away in other people's comment boxes.
Paranoia is thinking and feeling like you are being threatened in some way, even if there is no evidence, or very little evidence, that you are.
Even more tellingly, they add...
Paranoid thoughts could also be exaggerated suspicions. For example, someone made a nasty comment about you once, and you believe that they are directing a hate campaign against you.
Ouch. That's right on the money, isn't it?
Paranoia, paranoia
Everybody's coming to get me
Just say you never met me
I'm running underground with the moles, digging holes
Apparently up to a third of the population experience paranoid thoughts at one time or another. Paranoia isn't an actual mental health diagnosis - not unless you respond to your paranoia in an excessive way. Clearly it's linked to low self-esteem and intrusive thoughts, both of which we've looked at here before. So it should come as no surprise that "amygdala dysfunction" is one of the key suspects in causing paranoid thoughts.
(On a side note, whenever I start a sentence with "So...", I worry that I'll anger Charity Chic, since it sticks in my mind that he doesn't approve of said practice. God, writing a blog when you're a delusional fruitcake is an absolute minefield!)
Mind tries to reassure me that what I have is mild or non-clinical paranoia, not one of the more serious forms: paranoid personality disorder, delusional disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. But really, what if they're wrong? Am I paranoid to think I might have a more serious version of paranoia?
An Australian Better Health website lists the following as possible symptoms of paranoia. I'm going to try a little tick box exercise to work out just how paranoid I might be. Feel free to copy the table and play along yourself...
Generally, a person who is paranoid may:
be easily offended
✔
find it difficult to trust others
✔
not cope with any type of criticism
What are you saying?
assign harmful meanings to other people’s
remarks
What are you saying?
be always on the defensive
What are you saying?
be hostile, aggressive and argumentative
WHAT ARE YOU SAYING!?!
not be able to compromise
✖(Everything I do is a compromise.)
assume that people are talking ill of them
behind their back
✔✔✔
be overly suspicious – for example, think that
other people are lying or scheming to cheat them
✔
not be able to confide in anyone
Well, there’s you guys…
find relationships difficult
✔
consider the world to be a place of constant
threat
Isn’t it?
feel persecuted by the world at large
I’m not that important.
believe in unfounded ‘conspiracy theories’
No, I only believe in the true
ones.
Not looking good, is it?
Clearly I need to do some more work on this... next week.
In conclusion for today though, I haven't had any recent follow-up comments from my blogging bully, even after I started commenting again on the blogs he frequents. Maybe he's got bored with persecuting me... or he's too busy at the moment... or he's had a change of heart and suddenly realised that Barry Manilow is actually great. Who knows?
I am also prepared to entertain the notion that he never actually had it in for me in the first place, that it was all in my imagination, and that all the negative comments he left as a follow up to my positive ones were purely coincidental. It could just be all in my mind...
You know that it would be untrue. You know that I would be a liar. If I were to say to you... I can't remember the answers to this week's Saturday Snapshots. Although, I did have to puzzle over some of them myself this week: I blame to post-viral lethargy. Or maybe they were particularly fiendish.
Mathematics proves impossible when your head is full of gunge, so I can't work out a winner this week, though everyone had a good go. Thanks for playing as always.
10. Pork from the top of the world leads you into a talent competition.
8. Climbing beanstalks after 10 leads to a sad, horny godson.
After 10 is 11, so that would make him Jack 11. If you're going to tell me it's pronounced Lee-ven, I'm going to say: it's a visual pun, not an auditory one.
4. Sweet on your tongue, a dancing football chant.
At football matches they (apparently) shout "Oggy Oggy Oggy". This is one of the many reasons I do not attend football matches.
The extra clue I gave involved a line from Smokey Robinson's I Second That Emotion, in which Smokey sings "A taste of honey is worse than none at all".
Solipsistic gangsters would say "I Am The Mob" since they would believe that only the self exists and thereby not believe in any other gangsters. Which then begs the question why they would need to be gangsters in the first place, and that is today's homework.
Anyway, if they couldn't wake up, they may be catatonic.
Ah, Cerys, were we ever that young?
This Is The End, Beautiful Friend... at least until next Saturday.
Matt Berninger has little voices swallowing his soul and can't even defend his family with his orange umbrella. What's worse: he doesn't have the drugs to sort it out.
Rockwell was Berry Gordy's son. Paranoid music fans claim that this was only ever a hit because Michael Jackson sand the chorus. I claim bollocks: the verses are far more entertaining.
When I'm in the shower, I'm afraid to wash my hair
'Cause I might open my eyes and find someone standing there
People say I'm crazy, just a little touched
But maybe showers remind me of Psycho too much
Been around the world and found
That only stupid people are breeding
The cretins cloning and feeding
And I don't even own a TV
You may also recognise this as the theme tune to the appropriately paranoid Peep Show.If you're gonna be a one hit wonder, make it a cracker.
Paranoia, paranoia
Everybody's comin' to get me
Just say you never met me
I'm runnin' underground with the moles
Diggin' holes
Hear the voices in my head
I swear to God it sounds like they're snoring
But if you're bored then you're boring
The agony and the irony, they're killing me, whoa!
If you weren't paranoid already, Tony Iommi's relentless riff will do the job. As for why Ozzy's so paranoid... wouldn't you be if you were married to Sharon?
1. Radiohead - Paranoid Android
Having already given this the number one spot in my Top Ten Robot Songs, I thought twice about letting it win this battle as well. But in the end, it's Radiohead's Bohemian Rhapsody. I've have been more paranoid about bumping it down to #2. Plus, it's Thom Yorke taking the piss out of his own image - how often does that happen. Recorded in Jane Seymour's house, named after Marvin (my old nickname) from The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, when I am king you will be first against the wall.
What's that?
See also every single record Morrissey has recorded since The Smiths broke up (and quite a few before that). Far too many to narrow it down to just one choice.
