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Notes -
On fakes and faking:
There are a few interesting patterns I’ve seen regarding discourse around certain things being “fake,” or that certain people are “faking” or have “faked” something, wherein one finds distinct claims being either accidentally mistaken or deliberately conflated. And while there are definite culture war examples — sometimes in multiple areas — my initial examples are going to be less so.
[1.] “Person X is faking (very real) condition Y” versus “Condition Y is fake”:
A notable fictional example is in the South Park episode “Le Petit Tourette,” wherein Cartman fakes having Tourette syndrome to get away with randomly swearing. To quote from the Wikipedia summary:
[2.] “Condition X is fake; those who claim to have it are perfectly fine” versus “Condition X is fake; those who claim to have it actually suffer from Condition Y”:
Here, my example is Morgellons. I remember one memorable comment online from a doctor (back when I first encountered this particular internet rabbit-hole), responding to one “Morgellons” sufferer’s claim that doctors ‘refuse to give them a diagnosis,’ that no, doctors have been giving them a diagnosis, the same diagnosis, over and over: delusional parasitosis.
[3.] “The video/book is fake, as in staged” vs. “The video/book is fake, as in nonexistent”:
Here, examples of the first are any “mockumentary” or “found footage” movie — i.e. “The Blair Witch Project” is fake. This is the sort of claim that moon-landing conspiracy theories make. The second example, in comparison, is saying that something is fake like the way “Goncharov” is a fake movie — it doesn’t actually exist, and anyone who claims to have watched it is lying (in the case of “Goncharov,” as part of the game/fun.) Generally, what I see here in terms of ambiguity/equivocation is someone making a claim of the second type which people then “debunk” as if they had made the first type of claim.
Thoughts?
The brain is an organ so obviously all psychiatric conditions (including “chronic fatigue syndrome”, “long COVID” and so on) are real medical conditions.
Rather, the term real or fake in this context typically serves to delineate conditions from which one could immediately recover if one’s psychological status altered favorably (however unlikely) from those from which recovery is not dependent upon psychological condition, like having your legs blown off in a bomb or dying from Ebola.
It is my firm belief that people with severe psychiatric disorders that appear to be permanent should essentially try the kitchen sink of pharmacology and related lifestyle alterations. Drop acid, try ayahuasca, stay at a Buddhist temple and meditate in silence for three months, change your diet radically, fast, don’t fast, exercise, try every kind of antidepressant, stimulant and so on, whatever.
But it must be acknowledged that these are only options precisely because an actual, biological ‘road to an early death’ (from an actual, physical medical condition that must be treated) is not guaranteed in all but the vaguest sense (like that mentally ill people lead generally shorter lives).
As @self_made_human says, a lot of sufferers of psychosomatic conditions are happy to hear that their bodies are healthy because it means they’re (probably) not going to get seriously ill or die very soon. This illustrates how bullshit the attempts by whiny sufferers of psychosomatic conditions to compare their situation to that of people dying from cancer or dealing with lifelong terminal health conditions actually are.
And I think that’s what annoys people in this aspect of the ‘real’ vs ‘fake’ debate. Being tired and fatigued for 10 years (but otherwise having decades of life left to live) isn’t the same as dealing with a terminal condition. I like life, and with (very) few exceptions I would rather live a worse life than die.
An issue here is that what people are exposed to mostly actually is "fake" (or mild) because it's mostly those people who have the energy and resources to advocate for themselves (or promote in the case of grifters). This goes for a ton of things, like autism. How much are you exposed to the mildly autistic nerdy guys and how much to the non-verbal people who need to be supervised and/or restrained 24/7 to prevent them from eating their own shit and stabbing themselves with sharp objects? (Actual example from my time working as a home carer).
How many people eating gluten free have celiacs and how many are just pretentious assholes?
How much is one exposed to the whiny Redditor/TikTok long covider and how much to the person who is about as functional as someone in the last week of their life with terminal cancer? I don't think anyone whose seen the latter in real life can believe it's fake or even psychiatric but people don't see that, how could they realistically?
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