Misinterpreted thread titles

The “Worried well” is a medical industry term for healthy people overly concerned with maximizing their health. They never met a supplement they don’t think they need or a test they’re not willing to pay extra for. Just in case.

There’s an entire medical almost charlatan shadow industry catering to both feeding and assuaging those worries.


“Data hunger” is a business term that ties in with the desire to computerize and quantify everything. Those “how did we do?” surveys we get with every purchase now are an example of business’s data hunger. The motto is “If we had more data we could make better decisions”. Which is a little bit true, but lots of businesses are way past diminishing returns.

Lotta people are getting on the same bandwagon. How did I sleep last night? Don’t think about your experience; instead consult your FitBit and connect it to an app to track your sleep. Which might provide more insights if you track your diet too. And your steps. And.

But don’t forget your money. How about you track everything to the penny every day? Just in case.

The compulsion to collect info that’s probably useless but sounds useful is data hunger.


Obviously as applied to health, there’s lots of ways for worried well people to convince themselves they have data starvation and so begin to track everything they can think of that touches health.

Lotta ways to sell unhelpful things to those fools.

Sorry that I failed to know that these phrases are not as common knowledge as I thought.

I’ll emphasize the healthy but anxious over the maximization side of the worried well.

And data hunger, more metrics more better always, is not only a problem because it distracts from the data that does matter, useless, but because it not infrequently misleads, is potentially actually harmful. But it is a spreading mindset.

Does that concern me? Sure. I’d consider sleeping on it but my watch might not like what it does to my sleep score! :grinning_face:

That was very informative, thanks. So the “worried well” are what we now call hypochondriacs?

Overlapping Venn diagrams. I think of hypochondriacs as more disabled by it? The worried well are mostly functional and a very large group. Maybe hypochondriacs are the peak of a worried well pyramid? A spectrum condition!!

And here I am, just now slapping my forehead, realizing that “well” in the phrase is meant as an adjective (short for “the people who are well”) rather than a noun (I was envisioning some sort of reservoir or pit full of worries—“throw your worries down the Worried Well”).

I thought it was well as an indicator of degree: the worried well are the significantly worried. Yes, “well worried” would be a more typical use, but the whole title was undecipherable gibberish to me, so…

Anyone ever try selling crap from comics?

I got five bucks for a lemonade stand that says “The Doctor Is In,” but no one wants my box of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.

This one Help me find a photographer is an example of unskilled title-writing.

They’re not looking to hire a photographer to shoot some event or portrait for them. Which is what I thought. And probably most of you.

What they meant was “Help me find the artist who shot this particular obscure photograph”.

This one could go both ways:

David Bowie - what am I missing

A new fan who is already fully under Mr. Bowie’s spell and is wondering what other works and rarities of his are worthy of acquiring, or someone who has sampled enough of his work to know it isn’t doing much of anything for him.

Spoiler time: I am betting the latter:

More the latter, yes, but more from a “What influence has he had and what is his current footprint in popular culture” than a “I’ve tried some of his stuff and I still don’t get it”, tho there is an element of that there as well.

unlike my previous post, this is an example of skilled title-writing: Meet the many mini men manifesting magic mushroom.

To which I responded …

Greenland (the movie)

I clicked expecting (and kind of hoping for) a speculative thread about the making of a future movie about the whole ‘trump threatening to take Greenland one way or another’ fiasco. Complete with plot / genre ideas (I was immediately imagining a black comedy satire along the lines of ‘The Death of Stalin’). and casting thoughts.

Turned out it was just a question about an actual movie named ‘Greenland’ which I was not aware of, and its sequel.

Hey, that can still be done. Just start that as a new thread! ::))

A passionate anti-Trump rant from an unexpected quarter

I’m thinking e.g., the New Jersey 25-cent coin is angry…

Packing light.

I thought it was a pun on “packing heat”, but instead of having a gun on their person they had a flashlight, and it was a play on “light” and “heat”.

Even upon reading the OP, I continued in the misinterpretation, since the OP mentioned “packing lighter” and I’m like “oh, I get it now, they want to pack a cigarette and/or fire lighter for light and heat”.

Airplane simulators: How can they be trusted?

They can’t! An airplane simulator broke my heart-- left me for an actual pilot. “You’re a rank amateur who can barely tell your pitch from your adverse yaw. You’ll never be able to work my yoke like he can!”