Question 883: In case I don't see you

X delusion is a controversial type of delusion in which patients believe their lives are reality television shows. The term was coined in 2008 by brothers Joel and Ian Gold, who are both psychiatrists, after the film X.

There have been over 40 recorded instances of people suffering from the X delusion. The Gold brothers are the foremost researchers on the subject. They have met since 2002 with over a dozen individuals, primarily white men between 25 and 34, suffering from the delusion. They have reported that one patient traveled to New York after 9/11 to make sure that the 2001 terrorist attacks were not a plot twist in his personal X, while another traveled to a downtown Manhttan Federal building to seek asylum from his show.

One of Gold's patients, an upper-middle class Army veteran who wanted to climb the Statue of Liberty in the belief that doing so would release him from the "show", described his condition this way:

I realized that I was and am the center, the focus of attention by millions and millions of people ... My family and everyone I knew were and are actors in a script, a charade whose entire purpose is to make me the focus of the world's attention.

The choice of the name "X Delusion" by the Golds was influenced by the fact that three of the five patients initially treated for the syndrome explicitly linked their perceived experiences to the film.

Which film/syndrome?
Answer: The Truman Show, for those of you who haven't watched it, you are missing something in life.