Virtually healed

Thanks to the internet, you can visit a doctor online and suffer an illness of your choice: obesity, depression, suggestivitis, failure to contribute to society, et cetera.

Also, since every person has different needs and preferences when it comes to health care, these medical-service sites enable you to find a high-quality, virtual doctor whom you can trust and depend upon. In order to do that, you must first state your personal goals on the medical site: do you want to live, or die? Do you want to prevent illnesses, or get them? Depending on your preferences, you shall get a doctor - an unemployed one if your choices are second rate. Despite concerns over lack of qualifications of such doctors, most experts agree that online medical services have "nothing to lose" by hiring them. "What's the worst that can happen?" asks one unemployed doctor, eager to help me out virtually. "It's not like I am doing complicated surgery - just normal, everyday doctor stuff: asking patients on WhatsApp if they smoke, and if they smoke, telling them not to smoke. We are not here to ruffle any feathers. We just want a job," he says. Economists believe this job creation will be a "huge stimulus" for the economy, with the added advantage of unemployed youth getting more time on Skype, a video calling service, to chat up their patients (victims). "If you are webcam-shy, you can show us where it hurts on a virtual doll. It's cheaper," says the unemployed doctor. It should be noted that online doctors, unlike real-life ones, can't poke people with sharp objects, administer nasty medicine, or give enema, for they are on Hypocritical oath.

It's quite possible that these online health professionals have been kept out of your insurance network for good reasons. So ask them straight up if they have ever killed a patient on purpose. Don't take "resuscitation over Skype" for an answer, just go to the medical site, and self-diagnose yourself.

On clicking through to the site, you will be deluged by ads for invasive surgery: don't get daunted, just click the symptom checker and your gender, and click on the part of the body you want your affliction to come from. Or, if you know the name of the disease you want to have, just choose it: acne, for not washing your face; body odour, for not washing your body; AIDS, for not washing in shower but washing in Jacuzzi. Now, you will be presented with a list of possible problems. Don't hesitate to exaggerate: the more fudged-up the illness, the more e-sympathy on Facebook. Always choose the worst possible symptoms, even if you're not completely sure they apply to you or what they mean. Once you have reached the end of the selection process, you will have an exact definition of the problem that affects you. Or, just pick one that sounds cool - cyber sickness, for example.

So now you are special, you are awesome, and you have an awful disease to explain away your failures on the internet. One of the joys of such victimhood is you can brag about it, you can make memes on your crippled body, and you can squat on an online begging site. If people criticise you or make fun of you, remember, they are not criticising the content of your begging plea: they're just being insensitive. So hide behind your illness, use it to explain your actions, recruit others (unemployed doctors, preferably) to spam and troll the offenders. After all, you are the one who has to suffer through your self-diagnosed virtual illness: others have no right to say you are making stuff up to get online attention - even if you are.

ashish.sharma@bsmail.in