Napoleon Syndrome by Proxy

Entertaining new post by skippy today about bloggers suffering from a newly identified disorder that is known to affect only bloggers...

the first manifestation of this new strain was seen with the announcement over at eschaton of "blogroll amnesty day." without exhibiting any previous symptoms, atrios succumbed to an incomprehensible psychotic break that allowed him to see his blogroll as a tool for his own use, as opposed to the industry-wide accepted vision of blogroll as community support. since the appearance of symptoms was first officially observed at eschaton, this lead to the informal designation of the malady as the "duncan black plague."

the same outbreak went on to affect markos moulitsas and general jc christian, who also, operating under the delusion that their blogs were not beholding to the larger progressive identity, purged their rolls of the medium and smaller sites that make up the infrastructure of blogtopia, and yes, we coined that phrase.

bloggers infected with *napolean syndrome by proxy have lost the ability to empathize with their peers, and indeed believe that they no longer have peers. a general numbness of feelings with respect to democratic, egalitarian and liberal idealstowards individual people sets in. a sense of gradiose superiority overwhelms the bloggers, cutting them off from the reality of their situation: they are just guys with a web site.

a similar yet slightly different manifestation can be seen demonstrated by chris bowers at mydd. bowers recently began to exhibit bizarre behavior, claiming with a straight face that he wanted to be "an active member of the small clique, coterie or circle that identified the possibility for massive change and precipitated its manifestation." even worse than the strain of nsbp that has befallen moulitsas or black, this eruption is creating the delusion that chris is forefront of some sort of revolution, leading the rabble to throw off the "shackels of the elite" (we're not making this stuff up, folks). he no longer accepts the reality that he is, as stated above, just a guy with a web site.

(*Takeoff on Munchausen Syndrom by Proxy, for anyone who hadn't heard of that before.)