A 37-year-old woman has started on the long road to recovery after emerging from a four-year clickbait induced coma.

Since 2012, Clara James has been kept in a private room at Nottingham’s Queen’s Hospital, where she was permanently sat in front of a laptop that was always plugged in to ensure the chain of clickbait never stopped.

“We had to ensure no break in the flow of clickbait,” said Clara’s attending physician, Doctor Fitzgerald. “Although it was the clickbait that was responsible for Clara’s descent into a completely internalised mental state, if it stopped in any way she would lose the only thing that constituted her reality. She’d have been plunged into an eternal darkness so total that we may never have reached her again.

“It was a very tricky process. We had to constantly update the laptop’s software so that it could cope with the changing nature of the internet, without Clara noticing. There was a very hairy moment when we updated to Windows 10 but fortunately we got through it.”

Clara is currently undergoing physical rehabilitation, and is looking forward to rebuilding her relationship with her family. In an exclusive interview with the Sceptical Poet, she said:

“It was a nightmare. I was just checking Facebook, like I did every night before bed, when I noticed a friend had shared an article about the ‘Ten Best Ways to Ride a Bike’. I thought, I didn’t know there were different ways to ride a bike! So I clicked on it for a look. There was another page that said ‘click here’ for the article, so I did that, then there was another page with lists of other articles. One was about how ‘You’ll Never Believe What Friends‘ Courtney Cox Looks Like Now’. I don’t even like Friends, but I clicked on it anyway, I have no idea why, I just couldn’t help myself. I thought I would only be on there for five minutes. Oh god, it never ended, it just never ended.

“‘The 50 Weirdest Victorian Cat Photographs’, ‘The Real Story Behind Ryan Reynolds’ Foot Fetish’, ‘Why Emma Watson Won’t Eat Rupert Grint’s Bolognese Anymore,’… article after article after article. Most of them I never even got to read, and when I did they went on for page after page of terribly long load times. It was horrible. I lost track of reality completely.

“But you know what really pisses me off? I never got to read ‘The Ten Best Ways to Ride a Bike.”

Fortunately, this is a problem Clara doesn’t have to worry about anymore as her leg muscles have atrophied, but it is hoped that Clara’s plight will encourage internet users to act more responsibly in the future and to not be seduced by the lure of behind the scenes information or weird photographs.

Click here for the real story behind all those clickbait links.