Lucy Vickery

Competition: Modern maladies

In Competition No. 2712 you were invited to come up with your own additions to the ever-lengthening list of modern maladies.

issue 10 September 2011

In Competition No. 2712 you were invited to come up with your own additions to the ever-lengthening list of modern maladies.

The assignment was prompted by reports in the Daily Mail and New York Times of the growing epidemic of Fear of Missing Out. Scourge of Generation Facebook, FOMO has at its roots the relentless bombardment, courtesy of social media, with evidence that your ‘friends’’ lives are so much better in every respect than your own.
The best of your contemporary maladies appear below and earn their authors £25 each. John O’Byrne grabs the bonus fiver.

Chronic Acronym Disorder (CAD), aka Initial Abominable Meaning (IAM), is a common problem among individuals, and is characterised by the consistent inability to form a word sufficient for meaningful communication/textual intercourse. The orthographic pain can be chronic and 4EVER, coz it’s usually related to the inability to tnk clearly. BTW, certain acronym-friendly gizmos (with the i-prefix) tend to exacerbate the condition. Sometimes the symptoms  are provoked by religious fervour (OMG!). Anxiety caused by a stressful event such as a business presentation can aggravate the disorder. If diagnosed L8, it can result in severe SMS. FOI, CAD/IAM should be treated on a 121 basis and can be relieved by Occupational Enlarged Database (OED) treatment in an approved AFZ (Acronym Free Zone).
John O’Byrne

Anna S introduces herself thrice within ten minutes. No amnesiac, she suffers from reiterative format syndrome, one of several conditions brought about through excessive exposure to daytime television. That the condition is in its early stages can be deduced from the fact that there remains a smattering of content between Anna’s rigid yet breezy itinerary of teasers and recaps, albeit mostly concerning her recent viewings of unaffordable properties and the valuation of broken family heirlooms by camp antique experts.

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