Origins -- How and Where It Was First Diagnosed
JDOCD was first recognized as an actual affliction in the late summer of 2003 on the Johnny Depp Zone and I am the one who gave it the official title.
Being fairly new to the internet and chat forums (and somewhat shy by nature), I had originally decided to just browse the Johnny Depp fansites to learn more about this amazing actor. The JD Zone stood out for the maturity and humor that was evident on the message boards.
I had been a lurker on the JDZ for a while when I noticed something unusual. Computers crash! [1]
And they crash often !!! Especially if you are constantly downloading pictures, videos, trailers, sound bites, interview clips, etc. and saving them to your hard drive.
I also noticed that many of the posts made by the other JD fans sounded as if they could have been written by me. Particularly, the ones dealing with overwhelming compulsive urges that forced them to check in several times a day to the Zone, or comments dealing with computers crashing from the weight of all the Johnny jpeg files. [2]
I started to experience a feeling of comradery ... a sense of kinship with these other fans. I knew that I had reached a crossroads in my life. Something had changed within my core being. I came to realize that I had, without a shadow of a doubt, lost my mind.
a) I was lurking on a website.
b) I was lurking on a website devoted to a movie star.
c) I was even interested in any star at all. (Viggo who?)
d) The only stars I'd ever been fascinated with, prior to this, were the ones in Orion's belt.
My desire to be part of the Johnny Depp Zone eventually overcame any and all sense of reasoning and I decided to join in the fun.
Not only was this totally out of character for me, but my family noticed the changes in me immediately and were becoming increasingly worried about the amount of time I was spending on the phone talking with computer technicians. [3]
They were also very concerned with the fact that I was staying up past midnight chatting with the other Zoners. My family needs to get a life.
Words that my children had never in their lives used before were cropping up in everyday conversations. Words like "Bellevue", "middle-age crisis" and "disconnecting the internet".
I was only mildly aware of these whisperings behind my back, because I was so intent on discussing the really important issues of the day, such as how much we all loved the last time Johnny was on David Letterman and how really cool his clothes were and how cute it is that he always wears the bracelets, with the little pink hearts, that his daughter made for him and how he seemed so at ease and not as nervous as he usually is when he does those interviews, especially when David was teasing Johnny about the vitamin powder in his suitcase and Johnny was talking about coming down with a cold and then he was telling David about the time that his daughter asked him whether God has a maid and how having a little one-year-old boy in the house is like living with a drunk because his son is always bumping into things and falling down ... ???
Where the heck was I?
Oh yeah....how this JDOCD all came about.
Well, after several months of Johnny 'surfing', I couldn't help but notice a disturbing trend. The other Zoners also started talking about how their families and friends were recommending that we get some serious psychiatric counseling as soon as possible, because there was something (according to them) terribly wrong with us.
So I did what any seriously afflicted person -- whose family is threatening to have her committed -- would do. I named the disorder.
After all, I couldn't have some psychologist [4] somewhere taking credit for naming an illness that my friends and I had created.
I mentioned my theory to the group ... that we were all maybe suffering from a serious debilitating addiction. They reacted immediately by throwing me off the site. I couldn't blame them really. No one wants to hear that they're mentally unstable.
Eventually, after a couple of weeks (during which time there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, begging, pleading and finally bribing) they took me back into the fold. We all decided that perhaps we'd feel better if the entire group shared our worst symptoms. The infamous JDOCD list was created on that fateful day in 2003.
It provided much comic relief and an incredible release of built-up anxiety and tension (which was caused mainly by our families constantly complaining that they were tired of eating cold cereal for supper, because we hadn't cooked a meal for them in months).
As it turned out, we (the JDZers) arrived at a very special place and concluded that there was, in fact, nothing wrong with us at all. We were simply suffering from....Johnny Depp Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
[1] Dell computers suck
[2] Windows Millennium -- also -- sucks
[3] Average amount of time spent on each call to a Dell technician? 1 hour and 45 minutes.
[4] Named George. You don't know him.
L. Griffin