Magnificent obsessions

November 16, 2006
LiveWire

YOUR friends don't understand you, your workmates think you're a weirdo and you've taken to hiding away to spend solitary moments with your Precious. Thanks to the internet, pursuing your obsession now needn't be a solitary pleasure.

Whether it's Elvis sightings, spotting aliens or just plain trainspotting that gets your juices flowing, the internet is tailor-made for connecting you with those precious few who can truly understand your passion. The internet has shrunk the planet so much that your fellow obsessives are easily googled.

Obsession has always been with us in various forms, from the harmless to the seriously weird, from the ditzy to the dark and downright dangerous. The melting pot of cyberspace makes no judgements. A particular keyword combination can prompt search engines to deliver sites about gaming legend Dungeons and Dragons next to sites about sadism, canaries next to cannibalism, pirates next to pornography.

Some obsessions are mainstream: our obsession with all things celebrity doesn't just flood through the TV, radio and the newsstands, it also generates obscene amounts of net traffic.

According to the 2007 Guinness Book of Records, the most googled celebrities this year were Brad Pitt and Janet Jackson, with Paris Hilton and the Baywatch man himself, David Hasselhoff, not far behind.

Celebrity stalking reaches disturbing heights on the Manhattan-based gawker.com gossip site, which allows users to report real-time celebrity sightings, upload mobile phone pictures and even label the location where the celebrity was spotted on to a map displayed on the site's "Stalker" section.

Unhealthy? Probably, says US writer Norman Solomon, who says that the flip-side of celebrity obsession is contempt for "average" people.

"The slippery slope of fame fixation puts our sense of human proportion on the skids," he says. "The danger is that when celebrities matter more, the rest of us matter less."

Other obsessions are far less new-fangled. Advocates of the planet Nibiru claim that interest in their particular object of affection dates back thousands of years. Depending on which theory you choose to make your own, Nibiru is either the ancient Babylonian name for Jupiter or an as-yet undiscovered planet orbiting our solar system backwards, or the home of Jelaila Starr, an alien trapped in the body of a woman in Kansas, who has become a galactic messenger.

If you are willing to fork out an estimated $US2300 ($A3000) for her Starseed training, Jelaila Starr can make you a galactic messenger too.

Those on the outside looking in might find these obsessions a little peculiar but most are fairly harmless, according to Professor Alex Blaszczynski, a psychologist specialising in obsessive behaviours.

Professor Blaszczynski heads the department of medical psychology at Sydney's Westmead Hospital and specialises in impulse control disorders, such as gambling.

"An obsession in layman's terms is an excessive preoccupation with a particular topic. That's different from an obsessive-compulsive neurosis," he says.

"When you're talking about an obsession with trainspotting or another hobby, the person has an interest and spends a lot of time and money pursuing that. It's not a disorder unless it is characterised by a failure to resist behaviour that causes harm to themselves or others."

The line between a hobby, an obsession and a psychological disorder can be difficult for even the experts to pin down, and it seems to depend on the effect your interest has on the people close to you.

Professor Blaszczynski says internet obsessions are usually more of a problem for the subject's nearest and dearest.

"People around them may complain or say that they are spending too much time on these things, but that's a value judgement," he says. "However, if a person finds that their hobby causes them to constantly neglect their family or work or other obligations, then it becomes more of an impulse control disorder."

Developing a strong interest in a particular pursuit is a normal human trait going back to prehistory, he says. "There may even be some biological basis for hoarding behaviours."

But what comes first - the obsession or the net? Are people developing obsessions because they've discovered websites about topics they may never otherwise have thought about? Or is it their own interest that causes them to seek out others?

"The internet is just a tool to supplement people's interest," Professor Blaszczynski says. "But the nature of the internet does allow greater opportunity to access odd and esoteric sites. You can get hold of violent pornography, sites about anorexia, pedophilia sites and so forth.

"If you have a proclivity towards these odd behaviours, then quite clearly you can satisfy your urges, whereas in the past you might have been unable to."

Much has been made of "internet addiction". In 1995 US psychologist Kimberly Young established a clinic to treat addicts, the Centre for Online Addiction. Other clinics have been set up since then, including a game addiction clinic, which opened in Amsterdam in July.

According to that clinic, about 20 per cent of all gamers develop a dependency on gaming. Even the Chinese government has taken action, opening a clinic for internet addiction at the Beijing Military Region Central Hospital in March 2005.

Most of the internet addicts treated at these clinics are involved in cybersex, cyber affairs and online gaming addictions - harmful behaviours, unlike trainspotting or Elvis sighting.

But without a doubt there is a dark side to obsessions on the net, and the gambling and pornography sites that stretch their tentacles towards unsuspecting net surfers can ruin lives, as David Denby discovered.

In the book American Sucker, Denby chronicled his downfall - his marriage failed, he gambled his life savings on dotcom stocks, and he began a six-month obsession with internet porn.

"Obsession leads not to satisfaction but to more obsession," Denby writes of internet porn, "which so easily feeds the desire for more ... you enter a porn site, try to back out and get sent not to the previous screen but spilled sideways to another erotic site."

Obsession with online gaming can even be fatal - there have been reports of at least three deaths in Korea and others in China during marathon online gaming sessions that have been directly attributed to gaming addiction. Reuters reported the case of a 28-year-old South Korean man who lost his job because of his gaming addiction and died of heart failure last year after playing online battle simulation games almost non-stop for 50 hours.

Meanwhile, the dark underbelly of the net is frequented by people with unhealthy obsessions who gather to encourage and reinforce each other's strange passions. Pedophile rings are the most cited example, but other harmful groups also exist.

There are groups of anorexics who form online communities encouraging each other to evade treatment; there are online suicide pacts formed between strangers who meet online.

Even cannibals use the web to sate their desires - the notorious German cannibal Armin Meiwes was convicted of murdering and eating Bernd Brandes, after Brandes responded to Meiwes' online posting seeking a young man for "slaughter and consumption".

Although the darker obsessions are the ones that excite media interest, internet obsessives are often sociable types engaged in rewarding personal exchanges, according to Bruce Arnold, director of internet research consultancy Caslon Analytics.

He points out that there is a long and respectable history of collecting strange objects and meeting other enthusiasts. "People with obscure interests such as collecting Pez containers or Tupperware have communicated with each other in the past in a range of ways, from putting ads in Women's Weekly magazines in the 1950s to publishing railway magazines in the 1920s."

Joining a community of likeminded people who are interested in the same subject can turn an otherwise solitary pastime into a rewarding social outlet, Mr Arnold says.

"People have been exchanging information about all sorts of obscure interests in the past - it's just that the internet makes it easier on a global scale for people with common interests to find each other."

The term "virtual community", coined by US author Howard Rheingold, describes social groups that interact via the net. Rheingold's 1993 book Virtual Communities chronicles various online social groups, such as The Well, and various MUDs (multi-user domains), such as Dungeons and Dragons, where gamers meet online.

In 2001, Google's acquisition of the archives of Usenet - the internet's earliest global bulletin board - made 700 million messages freely available to obsessives everywhere, and millions more are added daily.

Whatever your eccentricity, with Google Groups, Yahoo Groups and online communities for every interest you could imagine - and quite a few you've never thought of - you'll never walk alone while you have access to the net.

Getting connected

Every breath you take

Celebrity sightings in New York are mapped in real time and mobile phone snaps of hapless stars uploaded: http://gawker.com/stalker -

Watching your search

Watch the search terms roll past: http://dogpile.com/info.dogpl/searchspy

Rubber band man

The world's largest rubber band ball: http://recordball.com

and others: http://sudftw.com/rubberbandball.htm

Trainspotting

For railway enthusiasts everywhere.

http://steamengine.com.au/railways/are

http://nrea.org.uk

http://railfan.net

Look to the skies

For fans of alien sightings: auforn.com - Australian UFO Research Network

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Westallhighschoolufo

Australia's own Roswell incident: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~vufors/history.htm

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence: http://seti.org

For alien searches in Australia: http://ufo-alien-speak.4t.com

For aliens trapped on Earth:

Council of the Niburu Galactic Federation: http://nibiruancouncil.com

A Pleiadian trapped in a human body:

http://liashapiro.com

Conspiracy theories

Billed as the internet's most popular conspiracy discussion forum: http://abovetopsecret.com/forum

Elvis lives

For fans of the King not yet ready to let go:

http://elvislives.net

http://honorelvis.com/sightings.htm

http://elvissightingbulletinboard.com

Trainspotting
Trainspotting evokes images of socially inept men in cardigans wearing Coke-bottle spectacles while thumbing through old timetables.

But the international community of trainspotters attracts all types, insists railway enthusiast Trevor McKenna, right, who also manages the Railfan Shop in Melbourne.

For him, trainspotting is not just a hobby, it's a healthy business. The Railfan Shop sells railway memorabilia and books and has expanded its clientele way beyond the furthest reaches of VicRail.

"The internet brings international customers into our city shop every day," Mr McKenna says. "They buy signs, badges, model trams. We're developing a new website and thinking of ways to present Victorian railway collecting to the world."

Mr McKenna is an ex-rail worker and a member of the Association of Railway Enthusiasts, formed in 1961. He even lives near Puffing Billy in the Dandenongs.

But trainspotting isn't considered a strange hobby among his family and friends, he says. "What other hobby has more than 100 magazine titles?" he asks.

Mr McKenna agrees that the internet has played a large part in bringing enthusiasts together.

"There are dedicated chat rooms and reputations are made and lost in them. Everyone is always searching out forgotten branch lines that can only be observed by the enthusiasts."

Rubber band man

It started with a simple rubber band that grew and grew and grew. Now hundreds of people visit the virtual home of former Philadelphian mailroom worker John Bain.

Mr Bain holds the Guinness world record for building the world's biggest rubber-band ball.

It took him more than five years to create a ball weighing about 1400 kilograms from an estimated 850,000 rubber bands.

Although his job gave him easy access to rubber bands, he soon needed quantities beyond those any mailroom could subsidise and began writing to various rubber-band companies asking for donations to help him break the world record.

"The ball did become a bit of an obsession," Mr Bain says. It also attracted other obsessives. I still have people contact me all the time via my website. It seems I have started a bit of a rubber-band ball craze.

"There are about 10 people that are getting close to challenging my record and I receive dozens of emails on a weekly basis from individuals requesting tips and pointers for making their rubber-band balls bigger."

Mr Bain is thinking of retiring from rubber bands to move on to another project, but his legacy will live on.

Mr Bain's website (recordball.com) is now just one in a series of sites by rubber-band ball aficionados who have joined together to create a web ring.

Look to the skies

Australia's UFO watchers predate the internet by many decades. The first officially registered UFO group was probably the 1950's Australian Flying Saucer Bureau. But with sceptics everywhere, groups were a little shy about publicity and their history is hard to track.

At least two groups survive from those early days in Victoria - the local branch of the Australian UFO Research Network and the Victorian UFO Research Society.

UFO researcher George Simpson, above, is the Victorian director of AUFORN and says their web presence has made it easier for people to find them.

"We make good use of email and the web to keep each other informed and up to date," he says, adding that true believers can now find out all sorts of information about sightings that he says governments and the media have previously tried to keep secret.

There's an online bulletin board for those interested in Australia's biggest UFO mystery - a flying "object" that is said to have landed in front of 200 school students at Westall High School in Clayton in 1966.

"The Westall High sighting was a big cover-up," Mr Simpson says. "It's Australia's Roswell."

The network has a hotline - an 1800 number - for sightings and UFO conferences are held several times a year across the country, Mr Simpson says. These meetings are usually attended by around 200 people.

While his obsession has become his profession, Mr Simpson says he has also made some great friends. "My wife says I attract loopy people like a magnet," he says. "But most people in the network are serious about finding the truth."