Free Your Next-Door Neighbor Is a Dragon by Zack Parsons

believe that an evil force is manipulating the world, that a malign intellect is responsible for their woes.
    I recognized the same desperation in dozens of other anti-aspartame devotees on the Internet. Some of them were conspiracy theory kooks, but many of them were people suffering from real problems who turned to the aspartame groups to explain the unexplainable. The case against aspartame was sold on peer pressure combined with a bewildering amount of allegedly scientific information.
    Even I found it difficult to sort through which doctors were credible and which were just claiming credibility to line their pockets or empower themselves. It was easy to sympathize with people struggling with mystery illnesses, easy to understand how they could be made into believers.
    It is the case with many of the subcultures born or nurtured on the Internet that devotion to the subculture can spread like a disease into the real world. There are hundreds of accounts of well-meaning anti-aspartame activists evangelizing to relatives and even strangers with serious illnesses. It’s one of the favorite subjects on forums devoted to the dangers of aspartame.
    The results of this evangelizing can be mixed.
    “I recognized the signs right away,” wrote one Internet poster. “Her daughter looked very sickly and was complaining of joint pain and weakness. Her mom said she had lymphoma and I saw she was drinking a Diet Sprite. Believe me I tried to warn her, but she wouldn’t listen. No matter what I said about the phenyl she wouldn’t listen. The stewardess asked me to calm down and I told her what was happening, and she gave me a look like she knew but there was nothing she could do. I had to sit there and watch them poison their child on the plane. It was an unpleasant flight.”
    When confronted with contradictory findings from reputable sources, the anti-aspartame activist hardens his or her position and decries the sources as tainted by connections to “Big Aspartame.” On the Internet they retreat to their topic-specific forums, where the rare opposing viewpoints are offered by easily dismissed newcomers or those curious about aspartame who dare to question the one-sided research.
    The attitudes set up a members-only mind-set. Those who understand that aspartame is a real danger are the insiders, and those who don’t understand are either ignorant or part of the aspartame conspiracy.
    “We live in a world of sweet lies,” Dr. Schwab said as she followed me to my car. “Deadly lies. But if you see the lie, you can beat the lie.”
    I didn’t know how to answer, so I just waved good-bye.
    Congratulations, You Are Special and Horrible
     
    Dr. Schwab, Leslie, and the Internet’s anti-aspartame movement convinced me they are suffering from Internet hypochondria, but they have as much in common with conspiracy theorists. I wanted real hypochondriacs and all these ladies were giving me were some convoluted stories involving Donald Rumsfeld and creepy medical testing.
    The stack of papers Dr. Schwab gave me didn’t convince me any better than the anti-aspartame websites. There were no believable links between aspartame and the hundreds of physical ailments reported by supposed victims. The multilayered aspartame conspiracy became more improbable and convoluted the more I read.
    I was waiting for a poisoned spy dart straight out of a Robert Ludlum book to shoot through a window and hit me in the neck. No doubt some shadowy aspartame agency taking me out for knowing too much.
    Only, I didn’t know too much. I felt like I knew less than when I started. Figures, dubious data points about brain cancer, maybe, but I wasn’t any closer to the Internet hypochondriac.
    I needed classic hypochondriacs, not people talking about the Trilateral Commission and the New World Order. I needed people with no ailments who believed they had a real medical condition. I needed to talk to people drowning in the fathomless ocean of medical information