Obsessions. We all have them. (If you’ve been reading Brain Pickings long enough, you know some of our more esoteric ones include bookshelves, data visualization and David Byrne.) But, historically, obsessions have either been banished to reclusive clubs or shoved under the carpet altogether. No more — it’s a sickness is a bold celebration of obsessions through short tribute films in which people get to, quite simply, geek out about what they’re passionate about.

We believe that no one is ever more interesting than when they talk about what they love. To do your sickness justice is to own it. It is to prove how dedicated and enthralled you are with it. It is to geek out.”

From to Harry Potter to E. E. Cummings to the 80’s, a multitude of obsession groups spanning the serious (gay rights), the necessary (The Beatles) and the tongue-in-cheek (robot uprising) already exist and you can start a new one of your own anytime. Obsessions can be captured in anything from text to image to video, making the platform a Tumblr-like digital scrapbook for your fiercest fixations.

The lounge section features obsession-confessions by celebrities and micro-celebrities, from Jason Bateman’s fixation on classical music (we love you, Jason) to Marisa Tomei’s obsession with hula hoops to Seth Herzog’s devilish lust for deviled eggs.

Beautifully filmed and irreverently candid, the videos are just the kind of thing to put you at ease with your own obsessions by offering a very human angle on famous people’s.

it’s a sickness is part cathartic celebration of our obsessions, part hallmark of the universal need to define and differentiate who we are through what we do and own, part charming zoetrope of human eccentricity.

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