LET'S IMAGINE THAT THE BLOGGER WHO GOES BY THE NAME CYXYMU goes the shrink and confides, ''Doc, I think Soviet-style spies are messing with me. They've hacked into my computer and it's affecting hundreds of millions of Internet users worldwide."

The most likely response from the shrink? That the blogger, a 34-year-old economics professor from the republic of Georgia, certainly is suffering from paranoid personality disorder, "characterized by an extreme level of distrust'' with "unfounded suspicion that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving him or her."

Poor Cyxymu. The doc would write him up as some delusional nut and slap with one or more of the many disorders that include "paranoia" on the checklists of the psychiatric community.

Meanwhile, the maligned Mr. Cyxymus really IS being targeted by unknown agents who are bombarding "millions of spam e-mail messages" to social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and other services with junk messages."

Unbeknowst to the shrink and even Mr. Cyxymus, the "blitz was an attempt to block the professor's Web pages, where he was revisiting the events leading up to the brief territorial war between Russia and Georgia that began a year ago."

The moral of the story? Yes, sometimes people are mentally ill and delusional about some imaginary private war against them. And then sometimes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you.