Google Doccing

The title of this post is the next candidate in my eternal quest to coin a term. When I succeed, I will finally be able to move on to my next life goal, which is even more difficult, because it will require the services of a midget.

We all know what google stalking is. But there's something else that lots of people are obsessed with that lacks a brilliant "internism."

Google doccing is the activity of diagnosing yourself by searching the web for symptoms of your likely psychosomatic problem. Typically, the google-doccer concludes that they are afflicted with a disease that affects about 1 in 1,000,000 people, since that is the only disease which actually may manifeste every single one of the systems that the hypochnodriac believes they are experiencing.

Google doccing itself will probably become a medically recognized obsessive compulsive disorder category. If it's not already. I know many people who've convinced themselves that they have any of of HIV, Parkinson's, an ebola infection, and lupus, to name just a few. Trust me. If a disease affects pygmys in New Zealand 99% of the time, and actually has only been diagnosed conclusively a couple hundred times in the last century, you probably do not have it.

Google doccing. Got kind of a ring to it, doesn't it? As of now, I'm the first to document its use online. Urban dictionary doesn't know about it. Though there are five google hits for the quoted term, all of them seem to have to do with using Google Documents. Which is obviously a far less hilarious and disturbing than the act of freaking yourself out by looking at horrible pictures of rashes, and comparing vague lists of disturbing symtoms to yourself.

So start talking about google doccing. But I'd suggest seeing someone with an actual medical degree, before you conclude that your disorder can only be cured with experimental drugs mail-ordered from China.