It is a thing! I had no idea. On a superficial level (I'm no student of Falkieology, nor of mental health), it's the same phenomenon -- online oversharing, grandiosity, gullibility, clutter, self-indulgence, flouting standards of appearance on the one hand (which you'd think would indicate someone unconcerned with others' perceptions, i. e. a rugged individualist) but extreme sensitivity on the other.
That Susan Boyle my mom kept trying to get me to watch was diagnosed with Asperger's. I bet you could find a professional to put Falkie somewhere on the spectrum if you looked hard enough -- whatever he's suffering from is pathological in the loosest sense of the word, causing harm to his well-being.
At risk of incurring the wrath of Onan (I hope it's not in the biblical sense), it seems to me that the use of the term "diagnosis" in this area has more in common with older classification systems than it does with, say, a cancer diagnosis. It does little to explain the mechanism or indicate a clear course of treatment. It's a lot more like in the old days when you might excuse someone's inappropriate fits of anger by saying he was choleric, and people would nod their heads and pretend that meant something useful.
Does anyone know if Falkie was a weird, precocious, bullied kid?
