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The AFU and Urban Legend Archive AFU afu addict
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The AFU and Urban Legend Archive AFU afu addict
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From: splinter@panix.com (Tom Cikoski)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: AFU Addiction
Date: 2 May 1995 19:27:14 -0400
A recent post in this newsgroup on the subject of Internet Addiction
has prompted this much more germane version. Our subject: "The affliction
that dare not speak its name..."
AFU Addiction
As the incidence and prevalence of AFU Addiction Disfunction (AAD) has been increasing exponentially (or is it geometrically?) (uh, hyperbollically?), a support group, The AFU Addiction Recovery Gang Bang (AARG!) has been established. Below are the official criteria for the diagnosis of AAD and subscription information for the AARG!. Locate your check book.
AFU Addiction Disfunction (AAD) - Diagnostic Criteria
A maladaptive pattern of AFU use, leading to clinically significant
impairment or distress as manifested by three (or more) of the following,
occurring at any time in the same 12-month period, or five for the price
of two-fifty (offer ends 12/31/95):
(I) 1. tolerance, as defined by any of the following:
(A) A need for markedly increased amounts of time
on AFU to achieve satisfaction, or even just to catch up
(B) markedly diminished effect with continued use
of the same amount of time on AFU and/or diminished
respect for oldhats or the chubby
(C) markedly increased propensity to shout "BULLSHIT!"
to perfect strangers whose conversation is overheard on
public transportation, in rest rooms, on phone taps, etc
(D) irrational need to read *every* thread on AFU *every* day
(E) uncontrollable impulse to post lame one-line followups,
or, for that matter, lame multi-line originals
(F) obsession with travel to distant cities just to drink beer
and/or, by parallel reasoning:
2. intolerance, as defined by any of the following:
(A) Absence of consciousness for prolonged periods at night
(B) Trolling your in-laws/children/budgeriars/etc
(C) Cecil B. DeMille
(II) withdrawal, as manifested by any of the following
(A) the characteristic withdrawal syndrome (no, not "early withdrawal"!)
(1) Cessation of (or pulsation in) AFU use that
has been lacrimose, saturnine, meretricious,
pusillanimous, sapient, ersatz, and/or recondite.
(2) Two (or more) of the following, developing within
several days to a month after Criterion 1:
(a) psychomotor agitation ("trembling")
(b) anxiety ("dread")
(c) obsessive thinking about what is happening
on AFU ("paranoia")
(d) fantasies or dreams about AFU ("masturbation")
(e) voluntary or involuntary typing movements
of the fingers ("really bad trembling")
(f) bed wetting when not in bed ("golden humidity")
(g) playing with your mouse while your workstation
is powered off ("virtual AC/DC trembling")
(h) playing with someone else's mouse ("trespass")
(i) trying to mate your mouse with another's mouse
("abusive displaced genital affective thing")
(3) The symptoms in Criterion 2 cause distress or
impairment in social, occupational or another
important area of functioning, such as:
(a) decline in bowling score
(b) deterioration in handwriting or hairstyle
(c) unable to pee your name in the snow
(d) send Get Well cards to people who aren't ill
(e) blink car lights at strangers or at deer
(f) check hard drives for Good Times virus
(h) urge to call people "morons"
(i) loud singing about self-pollution
(j) people urged to call you "a moron"
(k) loud self-pollution
(l) pollution of others, especially morons
(B) Use of AFU is engaged in to relieve or avoid withdrawal symptoms
or, to enhance or stimulate withdrawal symptoms. Pick one.
(III) AFU is often accessed more often, or often for longer periods of time
than often was intended. That is, you can't seem to get off'n.
(IV) There is a persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down
or control AFU use, or, to cut down or control AFU users.
(V) A great deal of time is spent in activities related to AFU use
(e.g., buying PvdL books, telnetting to cathouse, proving that 9.999...=10,
obsessive obloquy, notching your Johnson, provoking Barbara, &c.)
(VI) Important social, occupational, or recreational activities are ridiculed,
given up or prorogued because of AFU use. Conversely, the inverse.
(VII) AFU use is continued despite knowledge of having a persistent
or recurrent physical, social, occupational, financial, geological,
political, musical, perorational, astrophysical, or psychological
problem that is likely to have been caused or exacerbated by
AFU use (sleep degradation, "marital difficulties", frigidity, insincerity,
nymphomania, satyriasis, elephantiasis, electrolysis, lateness for
early morning appointments, earlyness for late night disappointments,
neglect of occupational duties, forgetting to let the dog out, feelings
of abandonment in significant others, adoration of insignificant others,
aimlessness, listlestness, homelessness, mass murder, Vicki in .sig, etc)
If *you* fit the above profile, to any degree, you need *our* help.
Subscribe to the AFU Addiction Recovery Gang bang (AARG!) by e-mail:
twelve-steps-to-AFU_ectomy_AARG!@alt.folklore.suburban.d
Oh, and our sincere apologies to Ivan Goldberg <psydoc@netcom.com> from whom some of the above was stolen^H^H^H^H^H^Hadapted under the satire and parody provisions of the Berne Convention (i.e., fair use) and who is obviously and sincerely trying to help solve a real problem. We hope he, unlike *some* self-helpers we've met, has a sense of humor.
( )_( )
\. ./
_=.=_
" -- But, just between us Psych Majors, does having the afflicted
join _An_EMail_List_ really get at a recovery? Does the AA serve
Sharpe's or O'Doul's at its meetings? Is the Pope Catholic?
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