There’s this new affliction going about.

Everyone seems to be talking to themselves and I think it has something to do with smoking, perhaps a side effect.

You know how it is, you are walking by and someone near you starts talking.  You think they are talking to you, but they are not.

And then they take a puff of a cigarette.

It’s not an uncommon assumption.

But the thing is, if you take a closer look you notice they have a Bluetooth device in their ear and they are really talking to someone out there in cyberspace.

Or for the uninitiated, they’re talking on their mobile phone.

Not many years ago men in white suits would be collecting these people and taking them to an asylum typically called Bellevue.  The stuff of 1950’s horror films.  You really didn’t want to be caught talking to yourself.

It, of course, has a number of symptoms, this condition we’ll call cybersickness.  Like, for instance, wandering aimlessly and either bumping into people or in front of cars on the street.

Is it the voices in their head telling them what to do?

Can we say we have just created a viable excuse for these people, or should they be locked up?  Maybe we’re too late because I think a lot of them are already living in their own world.