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Many young people diagnosed with Tourette’s after watching a YouTube channel

236 points by mellosouls 5y ago

nightcracker 5y ago
It's a bit of a catch 22. On a surface level one might say that they are faking having Tourette's, and that they are completely healthy. But look a bit deeper and you realize that a mentally sane person would not copy the tics from a YouTube personality and keep the schtick up all the way to the doctors. So no, it's not Tourette's but yes, these people need help.
- deleted 5y ago
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- geerlingguy 5y ago
  The article mentions one danger of potential misdiagnosis: the medications for treatment of Tourette's, if applied incorrectly, have sometimes severe side effects. But one other danger from this phenomenon is the overuse of already-stretched-thin counselors and therapists. If you've tried to acquire any mental health services over the past year... every counselor and organization seems severely overloaded and under-staffed.
- totetsu 5y ago
  To some degrees sanity is defined by alignment with surrounding norms. If your peers Norms are going to extremes to do things for the lols, you might end up at the doctor's.
- ptoo 5y ago
  I don't think mimicking someone's Tourette's, which is what these children are doing, makes them mentally unwell. It's very possible that they are simply attention-seeking or enjoy the idea of being special. It reminds me of the relatively new phenomenon of a community on YouTube where kids faking multiple personality disorder upload videos displaying their "systems", and each persona in the system has some time on the camera before being taken over by other competing personae. Most people are in agreement that these kids are faking it, and it doesn't necessarily follow that they shouldn't be deemed "sane". It's more likely that they don't value the time of medical doctors and are willing to mimic a YouTube celebrity's tics for self-serving reasons, even if it is wasting their parents' money and the time of others.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    This has also become a debate/problem in some segments of the aspergers/autism community where you have kids on TikTok pretending to be autistic. Perhaps this is the end result of valorizing difference.
    - Morizero 5y ago
      > Perhaps this is the end result of valorizing difference. What a weird way to try to tie this to modern politics. You do realize that the movie "Sybil" had a similar effect (people copying a mental condition) in 1976, predating any kind of acceptance movement?
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        I was worried that comment might be read this way, and of course copycat syndrome is something that has been with us for a long time. To be clear, this is an extremely small cost to pay for difference to be broadly accepted.
    - OneEyedRobot 5y ago
      >Perhaps this is the end result of valorizing difference. Oooh, I think I'm going to steal that. To be fair, maybe it's just another mechanism for culture transfer. Hours per day on a phone filled with highly evolved addiction algorithms are proving their value, God knows what the future will bring. If kids never absorbed silly things, we'd never have had bellbottoms.
      - fortran77 5y ago
        > we'd never have had bellbottoms. Those were appropriated from the Navy. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell-bottoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell-bottoms
    - faeriechangling 5y ago
      This is a direct consequence of society giving aid to autistic people while reducing stigma, it is practically obvious that more people are going to consequently try and fit that label. What we see is this phenomena where autistic people today have less actual impairments, who might even take offense to the idea that they are impaired, but with more tiktok videos of "stimming" and flapping their hands on YouTube. An emphasis on the preformative over the substantive. There has even been a counter-backlash in this community that too much funding is going towards people with few impairments, and too little funding is going for people so disabled they're completely unable to be independent.
- stinos 5y ago
  you realize that a mentally sane person would not copy the tics from a YouTube personality Food for thought. Is there really such a thing as a mentally sane person? Anyway the first thing which came to my mind when I read this was not 'mentally insane' but 'oh, puberty'. I'm not claiming all of this is completely normal, or all of these are pre-adult (heck even adults are still known to copy other's behavior) but I'm also quite careful of leaning towards the claim that all these people need help.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    > Is there really such a thing as a mentally sane person? Yes.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      Everyone I know can receive a series of true facts and come out of that believing something false!
- IshKebab 5y ago
  > and keep the schtick up all the way to the doctors It's perfectly normal to keep up a lie alive to an extreme degree just to avoid having to awkwardly admit you were lying. Think about the rape accusers who take it all the way to court before eventually admitting they made it up, or all of the married people who keep up the pretence of religion to avoid awkwardness with their actually-religious partners. On a more innocuous level, every one has bullshitted to avoid revealing that they don't know someone's name because it has got to the point that saying "sorry I don't know your name" would be too embarrassing.
- slightwinder 5y ago
  > a mentally sane person would not copy the tics from a YouTube personality A sane adult, sure. Kids? Hell no. Doing stupid things is a basic right of childhood. Kids always need help from adults in general, but I would not read to much in this single case. Overall from the kids perspective this seems rather harmless as nobody was harmed.
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larsiusprime 5y ago
Howdy, I've been diagnosed with Tourette's for 23 years. Including coprolalia and all the """fun""" symptoms (narrator: they were not fun). I read the paper behind this phenomenon last week and wrote some thoughts to a friend, reproducing here. From the paper: > Thirdly, patients often reported to be unable to perform unpleasable tasks because of their symptoms resulting in release from obligations at school and home, while symptoms temporarily completely remit while conducting favourite activities. I was conclusively diagnosed back in the stone age before smart phones were a thing and the internet was still dial-up, and even I got this neverending skepticism from teachers and classmates in the run-up to my diagnosis. "Hey Lars, how come your tics disappear when you're playing video games, but they flare up when it's time for a math test? PRETTY CONVENIENT!" Well, because tics are brought out by anxiety and vanish when a patient goes into a "flow state," -- this is super well established. On the other hand, the rest of the diagnostic criteria for this phenomena seems very reasonable to me, and I also am totally ready to believe that an induced faux tourette's syndrome would absolutely present this way. And then there's this one: > Fourthly, in some patients, a rapid and complete remission occurred after exclusion of the diagnosis of Tourette syndrome. So apparently when a doctor in a white coat tells these people they definitely don't have Tourette's, the behavior stops? They also kind of bury the lede with this one: > While it appears that age at onset is very similar in different countries with a preponderance of adolescents and young adults, gender distribution seems to be different: while half of our patients are male, the group of Davide Martino and Tamara Pringsheim at the University of Calgary in Canada reports a female to male ratio of about 9:1 I've always heard that the sex ratio of Tourette's diagnosis is like 1:10 skewed towards males (looking it up it looks like it's actually 1:4.3 favoring males). So a sudden swing in the sex ratio for a disease that's long been presumed to have some kind of male-associated underlying genetic basis that lines up with a prominent female influence seems like pretty strong evidence for their theory. So I don't have the medial training to validate the clinical methodology, but from knowing what real tourette's syndrome feels like from the inside, this seems plausible. TL;DR -- these kids aren't getting tourette's from the internet, but it does seem like they're experiencing a real phenomenon that they need real treatment for. The correct first step is accurately diagnosing them with whatever this new thing is. Maybe some kids are just faking, maybe some others have genuinely convinced themselves they have something going on and this manifests in weird behaviors (which qualifies as a real condition in my eyes). Believe me, you absolutely do not want to be prescribed powerful brain medications unless you really need them.
bob229 5y ago
This is fake news. We all know that social contagion like this doesn’t hapen, the trans rights activists have made that clear
api 5y ago
When I read the title I had the thought that someone had concocted some kind of adversarial neural network attack on humans that could be delivered by video, like in Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Reminds me of this oddity: https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/jumping-frenchmen-of-maine/ https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/jumping-frenchmen-of-... Are there such things as mimetic diseases? We have definitely seen that alarmingly insane quasi-cults like Qanon or flat Earth can spread entirely via social media, so that isn’t too far away. The jump would be to something not requiring conscious thought or belief at all, something that fully bypasses the neocortex. If that is actually possible I can see a future where everyone runs smart content filters (maybe AI powered) and curated whitelists before viewing things. Maybe there could be mental techniques for handling “cognitive hazards” that could be learned too. I feel like some mystical traditions have inklings of that like “visualize a white light around you” or “as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” Maybe that stuff fires up some anti-malware in your brain. At least there is already a symbol: https://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/264113001 https://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/264113001
- zdkl 5y ago
  I was about to jump in with the term "cognitohazard", from SCP lore. Imagine a future where you'd hear something like "Welcome to the Antimemetics Division. No, this is not your first day." (@qntm is a terrific story writer and also brought us hatetris) https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub
  - api 5y ago
    We are so, so close to that. Political parties and nation states now effectively have memetic warfare arms in the form of very advanced and soon AI augmented PR and propaganda agencies. Where there is attack there must also be defense. Arms races tend to push innovation, which is why I now wonder about actual adversarial attacks on the brain that can bypass choice and thought entirely and even cause illness. That would be the logical endpoint, sort of like how the hydrogen bomb was the outcome of the bombing arms race. If it’s possible I predict it will be discovered in the next 25 years. We may see a video that sends people to the hospital that appears, say, right before an election and is targeted at the opposing side.
nailer 5y ago
There’s a school in Brighton where 76 students - 1/20 of the entire student population- declared themselves trans or gender fluid. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-groups-under-fire-for-huge-rise-in-child-referrals-2ttm8c0fr https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-groups-under-fire-f...
- input_sh 5y ago
  Well fortunately those aren't comparable to tourette's, since they're not illnesses.
  - MillenialMan 5y ago
    That's sort of an arbitrary distinction. Both are abnormal presentations that cause significant problems in day-to-day life and consequently have clinics set up to treat the issue. Whether the issue is voluntary for a particular patient is also similarly important in assessing an appropriate treatment modality. Putting the obvious political agenda aside, I would argue teenage girls faking tourettes is pretty much the same phenomenon as teenage girls faking gender dysphoria. It's not helpful to pretend that faking tragic mental conditions isn't a phenomenon among teenagers.
    - standardUser 5y ago
      "Both are abnormal presentations that cause significant problems in day-to-day life" The same was one-hundred percent true about homosexuality for nearly all of human history in most societies. If the "day-to-day problems" are because other people are mindlessly hateful and intolerant, who exactly has the mental health issue? In terms of homosexuality, we now largely agree it is the bigots, not the queers, who have the problem.
      - MillenialMan 5y ago
        Many groups are social pariahs, none have a suicide rate close to the transgender community. Dysphoria by itself is clearly horrible to deal with, that's why people are willing to have double mastectomies in the pursuit of easing their mental pain. A vaginoplasty is incredibly invasive and isn't going to have a meaningful impact on day-to-day social judgement. I really don't buy the claim that it's purely or even primarily about acceptance. I would also point out that the the trans community themselves are advocating for greater access to treatment, not less. It's really not the same as the gay rights movement. Unlike gay people, treatment is literally one of their objectives.
themgt 5y ago
A similar one I just became aware of is Dissociative Identity Disorder, or multiple personality disorder. There seems to be a huge surge of people doing TikToks etc showing themselves going through identity changes (often "rapid switching"), some with hundreds of thousands or millions of views and seemingly a lot of supporters. There's a whole huge sort of jargon/ontology to this intersecting with other ideas and people identify as a "system" e.g: Systems, Collectives, and/or Plurals are those who experience being more than one entity in one physical body [1]. Systems are under the neurodivergent umbrella, and are not inherently LGBT+, but being plural can impact sexuality, romantic orientation, attraction, identities, and/or gender (such as with systemfluid). Systems can also commonly intersect with LGBT+ experiences[2]. The experiences may overlap to the point of ones queer identities being a large part of headmates, such as within queergenic systems. I am not quite sure what to make of all this, but we live in interesting times. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rapid+switching https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rapid+switching https://lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/System https://lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/System https://www.inputmag.com/culture/dissociative-identity-disorder-did-tiktok-influencers-multiple-personalities https://www.inputmag.com/culture/dissociative-identity-disor... https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-did-influencers-of-tiktok-and-the/id1504298199?i=1000530029977 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-did-influencers-of...
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  Fascinating.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  This used to be thing back in the LiveJournal days; I remember people claiming to have a baby personality and typing in mock baby talk, as well as a bunch of "otherkin" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin).
- rdimartino 5y ago
  Yes, I stumbled upon some of these same community discussions happening on Twitter and Tumblr. It was really interesting to read about the in-fighting about traumagenic vs endogenic DID. This discussion of real or imitated Tourette’s reminds me of that. https://pluralpedia.org/w/Traumagenic https://pluralpedia.org/w/Traumagenic https://pluralpedia.org/w/Endogenic https://pluralpedia.org/w/Endogenic
oxymoran 5y ago
The problem with TikTok is that it promotes the silly and the stupid. At scale, that makes society silly and stupid.
- bsksi 5y ago
  That's a problem with social networks at large. At least before the stupid or degenerate were ashamed of themselves. Now everybody can find a circus of freaks to belong to, which makes them believe their behaviour to be appropriate.
  - krustyburger 5y ago
    I’m not sure Linkedin has quite the same effect on people that Tiktok seems to. Certain social networks have a culture of amplifying drivel.
    - junon 5y ago
      Have you seen LinkedIn recently? It's all of the Facebook garbage just moved to a new home. Most of the content on there has little to nothing to do with the professional world.
      - lobocinza 5y ago
        It's filled with fake stories of hard-work and leadership.
  - derefr 5y ago
    No, just unmoderated social networks. One of the longest-running types of “social network” (going for centuries now!) is the academic journal—but those have the explicit goal of sanity cross-checking anything submitted to them before allowing it in, so they result in something else being promoted. (I don’t want to say it's “good, rational discourse” that journals promote, because that doesn’t seem to be exactly what comes out of journals; they do have their own incentive structures that bias "the conversation" in specific directions, even besides the ones that are extrinsically imposed upon them by academic hierarchy.)
olingern 5y ago
It seems that the mind can absorb much more than we previously thought from observation. I wonder how the human brain perceives gameplay characters vs humans in a video
- teddyh 5y ago
  This has also been observed by the author of The Inner Game of Tennis. In a talk by Alan Kay, Alan Kay shows a clip in where the author of that book (whose name I do not remember) was challenged by some TV team to teach tennis to some lady who had never been physically active at any level. They showed him doing it, and then he explained to the TV team how he did it. IIRC, one thing he did was that, while distracting the woman with conversation, he did the correct movement with a racket, and made sure she saw him. Then he asked her to perform some very simple actions with a racket, and she unconsciously copied his movement form more or less perfectly.
  - a9h74j 5y ago
    Related: Estimates of 20 Mbits/sec of visual bandwidth, versus 20 bits/sec of [attention?]. Or compare the non-verbal synchrony of a good pair in conversation, versus a written transcript.
antattack 5y ago
We all make gestures, look left, right up or down, squint, have a narrator in one's head, sometimes clap, smack forhead when trying to get a thought formed, access memory, formulate a sentence, or express feelings. Perhaps what we diagnose as Tourette on the low end is like above but overwhelming and more involuntary? Perhaps people who acquire it via mimicry are in the category where movements are not entirely involuntary, but perhaps feel good and help them think or function maybe to relief stress or anxiety on subconscious level.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Sounds familiar. In the UK, young people referred for "gender treatment" has increased from 97 in 2009 to 2,510 in 2017-2018, an over 4,000 percent increase in 10 years.
- wallmountedtv 5y ago
  This has more to do with the growing acceptance of being transgender rather with there suddenly being more transgender individuals. Its a very common pattern to see in healthcare as acceptance grows around a health related issue. An example would be autism. It had the same kind of "sudden growth" back in the 1980s when diagnosis became more accepted and practiced. But there didnt suddenly exist more autistic people than before. Just more people who got it diagnosed and help from their doctors.
  - dukeofdoom 5y ago
    "That which is rewarded will be repeated". Imagine if the catholic church approved stigmata as a way of showing one's devotion. I suspect the number of people suddenly getting scars on their hands would sky rocket. Doubt any of them would actually be channeling Jesus.
    - kongin 5y ago
      I have a theory of signalling for mental health. There are very few conditions that are real and they have easily detectable and unambiguous physical signs, e.g. epilepsy. The rest of them are ways for people to show distress, either positive or negative. The positive side would be stigmata 'look at me and how holy I am' the negative would be witches 'look at me and how unholy I am. Transgenderism moved from the negative distress to the positive distress pile in less than 5 years last decade and people are having a hell of a time dealing with it. The 'acceptance' of deviancy isn't helping, it's just pushing people to become more extreme in what they do to show their dislike of current society.
- input_sh 5y ago
  Wow, I was not aware! That's awesome! I hope my country will catch up with you one day.
bmc7505 5y ago
"You're a hacker, that means you have deep structures to worry about, too." "Deep structures?" "Neurolinguistic pathways in your brain. Remember the first time you learned binary code?" "Sure." "You were forming pathways in your brain. Deep structures. Your nerves grow new connections as you use them - the axons split and pushed their way between the dividing glial cells - your bioware self-modifies - the software becomes a part of the hardware. So now you're vulnerable - all hackers are vulnerable - to a nam-shub. We have to look out for each other." "What's a nam-shub? Why am I vulnerable to it?" "Just don't stare into any bitmaps..." ― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash. (1992) "The paraphrase of Gödel's Theorem says that for any record player, there are records which it cannot play because they will cause its indirect self-destruction." ― Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. (1979)
- myWindoonn 5y ago
  Sure, and see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story) But, uh, any evidence that that's real? We should be careful with Gödel's results here; the Gödelian incompleteness of the human mind is that a human cannot consistently believe that everything they believe is true. It has nothing to do with sanity and perception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxastic_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxastic_logic
  - bmc7505 5y ago
    I think if you take these parables literally, there probably isn't a single input that will reliably cause the mind to self-destruct, but they are a cautionary warning. The internet gives plenty of evidence to support the theory that memetic hazards (1) exist, (2) are more transmissible than widely believed and (3) repeated exposure will cause cognitive malfunction.
    - vermilingua 5y ago
      What evidence are you referring to? Trying to search for this is impossible, keeps throwing SCP results.
h2odragon 5y ago
In the 70's, many young people behaved in incredibly odd and harmful ways after seeing similar behaviors on TV. it was called "Disco". Fortunately, after a few years, the symptoms faded and the victims took up more socially useful behaviors, like snorting cocaine and creating stock market scams.
swayvil 5y ago
David Langford explores this idea a bit in his scifi short story BLIT https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story)
WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
HN folks here are proposing that countless young kids could universally mimic a specific symptom set so precisely, that it concerns actual experts. I've been to endless elementary school plays; I've seen that kids really don't have the refined performance skill to pull this off. One might but not scores.
- batch12 5y ago
  The article suggests that the cause is psychological. It isn't suggesting that this is a performance, but something involuntary and not Tourette's.
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    I was referring to HN'rs reaction to the article, not the article itself.
- larsiusprime 5y ago
  From the paper: > Although some patients indeed suffered in addition from mild Tourette syndrome, for all newly emerged symptoms, it could be clearly ruled out that they were tics for several reasons: (i) onset was abrupt instead of slow, (ii) symptoms constantly deteriorated instead of typical waxing and waning of tics, (iii) “simple” movements (e.g. eye blinking) and noises (e.g. clearing one’s throat) were clearly in the background or completely absent, although being the most common and typical symptoms in Tourette syndrome, (iv) movements were mainly complex and stereotyped and predominantly located at arms and body, instead of at eyes and face, (v) overall, the number of different movements, noises, and words was “countless” and far beyond the typical number of tics in Tourette syndrome, and (vi) premonitory feelings were reported with atypical location, quality, and duration compared to tics in Tourette syndrome. Thus, worsening of pre-existing Tourette syndrome, for example due to COVID-19 pandemic as suggested elsewhere 4,5, can be clearly ruled out in our patients. I've been diagnosed with Tourette's for 23 years and the above is not what I would describe as "universally mimicking a specific symptom set precisely" That doesn't mean this kids aren't dealing with something real, but it means it's unlikely to be Tourette's. The lack of low-level background tics (blinks, throat clearing, facial grimaces) is a huge tell. The worst case scenario here is they get misdiagnosed with Tourette's and start treatment that a) won't help them and b) will give them terrible side effects. I've been through the roulette wheel of powerful brain meds, you do not want to go down that road if you don't have to.
mFixman 5y ago
Are tics really that big of a deal? I had an abnormally large amount of visible tics when I was growing up as a teenager. This got my parents worried despite assurances from doctors, but they all went away when I grew up along with my raspy voice and terrible propensity for acne. This seems like a moral panic like fidget spinners back in 2017, and it doesn't answer an important question: what's the problem if teenagers are subconsciously copying tics from a YouTube star?
- larsiusprime 5y ago
  I've had diagnosed tourette's for 23 years and yes, tics are a big deal, then and now. Maybe your experience was different from mine, but mine was hardly positive. Teachers hate you. Classmates hate you. You get detained and questioned by airport security. You get detained and questioned by police. Weird pentecostal* ladies subject you to ad-hoc exorcism rituals. Weird liberal* ladies subject you to ad-hoc herbal cleansing rituals. Weird foreign* ladies pop random pills in your mouth thinking you're having an epileptic attack Everyone finds you annoying and thinks you're looking for attention. Even when people understand you and try to accommodate you, you are slowly wearing away their patience and you KNOW it. I would not wish that on my worst enemy. ------- * no shade meant to non-weird pentocostal people or religious people in general (I'm religious myself); just this one particular one * no shade meant to non-weird liberal people * no shade meant to non-weird foreign people * no shade meant to ladies in general, it's just a coincidence it's always been ladies; mostly probably because they're just trying to help and that's sweet in its own way
  - exolymph 5y ago
    Thank you for sharing this. Interesting and unexpected. I'm sorry that you've had to deal with all these frustrating experiences.
  - bserge 5y ago
    That actually sounds interesting. I've had breakdowns in public, crying and yelling, I've stood on a bridge trying to jump, I've been drunk off my ass stumbling, been talking to myself and kinda barking at strangers, sleeping on benches and not once has anyone talked to or approached me. Which is normal, who in their right mind would do that. Just kinda paints a different picture of humanity in your head than someone who's been helped.
post_break 5y ago
There is a subreddit called fake disorder cringe full of people faking stuff. Makes my stomach turn seeing it all while they fleece for donations.
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rito_ 5y ago
Hey @dang , why am I shadow banned, and how do I get it lifted?
okareaman 5y ago
Another strange internet phenomenon is Tulpas, or imaginary friends that are real to those that have them. https://old.reddit.com/r/Tulpa/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Tulpa/
dang 5y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20210904142459/https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tourettes-youtube-jan-zimmermann http://web.archive.org/web/20210904142459/https://www.wired....
effnorwood 5y ago
Fuck!
ezekiel68 5y ago
The phenomenon I find most baffling is the insistence that we not be concerned, in any way, about that percentage of apparent cases where the person is faking a condition / system / syndrome. As if this causes no harm whatsoever to the person (themself), families, and society. Isn't this its own condition which merits study and (separate) classification / treatment?
- swayvil 5y ago
  To induce mental disease via the internet. That might be a thing now. It may already be happening to millions of people. That's a really big deal. A way bigger deal than a bunch of kids trying to get attention by faking whatever.
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    That is also the premise of these three great films, inducing disease/mind-control via digital communication: 1. Videodrome 2. They Live 3. Pontypool (which heavily references SnowCrash, the book) It would not surprise me if this becomes a concern this century (e.g., digital manipulation of the brain remotely).
    - swayvil 5y ago
      I totally agree. And I have watched all 3 of those. Pontypool. Woo! What a crazy idea. Bookwise, I recommend QNTM's "There is no Antimemetics Division" and Langford's BLIT.
      - SavantIdiot 5y ago
        Never heard of those last two, thanks for the tips!
        swayvil 5y ago
        This is interesting https://modelelearning.com/2017/11/02/you-gotta-believe-me/ https://modelelearning.com/2017/11/02/you-gotta-believe-me/
raffraffraff 5y ago
It's time to take the batteries out of the internet and put it up on the top shelf. The kids need to go outside and play in the dirt.
- nixpulvis 5y ago
  I'll do what my Mom always did and blame the parents.
  - Krasnol 5y ago
    And you'd be right. It is the parents responsibility and they fail often. My SO works in a kindergarden and has to attempt to fix this. Luckily the fact that parents now have to leave their kids there for most of their wake hours does help. At least in good kindergardens. You can ask around, you'll see the problems that new media, as a tool for parents to keep their kids off their hands causes everywhere. Those ticks are just the peak of the ice berg here because there is no way around recognising the tool. The other damage is more subtle. We'll be faced with generations of media zombies and it's kinda frightening. I've seen a kid once left alone with a tablet in the waiting room while they've been visiting the doctor. I've been passing by and usually I say "hi" or something like that to the waiting patients but this kid didn't even blink. I've watched it over half an hour and it didn't move at all. Than the parent came out, said no word, grabbed the kid, the kid the tablet without it's eyes from it and they just floated out. This is 21st century parenting for you...
  - tootie 5y ago
    My mother was a special Ed teacher for years. Specifically for kids with emotional/personality disorders. She always dreaded parent teacher conferences because the parents were bigger, louder versions of her disordered kids. But despite what you might think, it's less about the kids being raised wrong and more about genetics. Bad parenting is usually a result of the same behavior problems afflicting the kids.
- tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
  Touch grass, as they say
ewanmcteagle 5y ago
Sounds related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  The article calls it that. > Mass sociogenic illness – also known as mass psychogenic illness or historically called mass hysteria – spreads like a social virus.
fouc 5y ago
Some parallels between people with this "condition" and anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers
willcipriano 5y ago
Similar events in human history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases
bobthechef 5y ago
Mass sociogenic illness. This seems to describe a good deal of the mass hysteria during this pandemic (behavioral psychology has been again weaponized against the populace). Truly freaky stuff like open hostility toward the unvaxxed in the media, even wishing them death. Psychotic.
godmode2019 5y ago
Related: Motherless Brooklyn 2019 https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0385887/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0385887/
makeitdouble 5y ago
> “Heil H*tler” That’s unfortunate. IRL I can’t imagine people getting stuck on this if they understand it’s a tic and are familiar with the person. When going online or through any automatic scanning mechanism though, it must become a hell to get away from automatic flagging, shadow banning etc.
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anaphor 5y ago
One of the people quoted in this article, Robert E. Bartholomew, also wrote a book on the Havana Syndrome, which is most likely another case of mass psychogenic illness. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030407452 https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030407452 I've been reading it, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  Absolutely unsupported take on Havana Syndrome. These are trained CIA case officers and embassy personnel with measurable brain damage.
  - anaphor 5y ago
    I'm assuming you've read the book and have looked at all of the arguments and evidence in it, otherwise this might seem like an uninformed opinion.
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      I have been following this topic closely and am in that community. No I have not read the book, but if it mirrors your short summary, I stand by my assertion. Thank for the book recommend, I’ll take a gander.

236 points by mellosouls 5y ago

It's a bit of a catch 22. On a surface level one might say that they are faking having Tourette's, and that they are completely healthy. But look a bit deeper and you realize that a mentally sane person would not copy the tics from a YouTube personality and keep the schtick up all the way to the doctors. So no, it's not Tourette's but yes, these people need help.

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geerlingguy 5y ago
The article mentions one danger of potential misdiagnosis: the medications for treatment of Tourette's, if applied incorrectly, have sometimes severe side effects. But one other danger from this phenomenon is the overuse of already-stretched-thin counselors and therapists. If you've tried to acquire any mental health services over the past year... every counselor and organization seems severely overloaded and under-staffed.
totetsu 5y ago
To some degrees sanity is defined by alignment with surrounding norms. If your peers Norms are going to extremes to do things for the lols, you might end up at the doctor's.
ptoo 5y ago
I don't think mimicking someone's Tourette's, which is what these children are doing, makes them mentally unwell. It's very possible that they are simply attention-seeking or enjoy the idea of being special. It reminds me of the relatively new phenomenon of a community on YouTube where kids faking multiple personality disorder upload videos displaying their "systems", and each persona in the system has some time on the camera before being taken over by other competing personae. Most people are in agreement that these kids are faking it, and it doesn't necessarily follow that they shouldn't be deemed "sane". It's more likely that they don't value the time of medical doctors and are willing to mimic a YouTube celebrity's tics for self-serving reasons, even if it is wasting their parents' money and the time of others.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  This has also become a debate/problem in some segments of the aspergers/autism community where you have kids on TikTok pretending to be autistic. Perhaps this is the end result of valorizing difference.
  - Morizero 5y ago
    > Perhaps this is the end result of valorizing difference. What a weird way to try to tie this to modern politics. You do realize that the movie "Sybil" had a similar effect (people copying a mental condition) in 1976, predating any kind of acceptance movement?
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      I was worried that comment might be read this way, and of course copycat syndrome is something that has been with us for a long time. To be clear, this is an extremely small cost to pay for difference to be broadly accepted.
  - OneEyedRobot 5y ago
    >Perhaps this is the end result of valorizing difference. Oooh, I think I'm going to steal that. To be fair, maybe it's just another mechanism for culture transfer. Hours per day on a phone filled with highly evolved addiction algorithms are proving their value, God knows what the future will bring. If kids never absorbed silly things, we'd never have had bellbottoms.
    - fortran77 5y ago
      > we'd never have had bellbottoms. Those were appropriated from the Navy. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell-bottoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell-bottoms
  - faeriechangling 5y ago
    This is a direct consequence of society giving aid to autistic people while reducing stigma, it is practically obvious that more people are going to consequently try and fit that label. What we see is this phenomena where autistic people today have less actual impairments, who might even take offense to the idea that they are impaired, but with more tiktok videos of "stimming" and flapping their hands on YouTube. An emphasis on the preformative over the substantive. There has even been a counter-backlash in this community that too much funding is going towards people with few impairments, and too little funding is going for people so disabled they're completely unable to be independent.
stinos 5y ago
you realize that a mentally sane person would not copy the tics from a YouTube personality Food for thought. Is there really such a thing as a mentally sane person? Anyway the first thing which came to my mind when I read this was not 'mentally insane' but 'oh, puberty'. I'm not claiming all of this is completely normal, or all of these are pre-adult (heck even adults are still known to copy other's behavior) but I'm also quite careful of leaning towards the claim that all these people need help.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  > Is there really such a thing as a mentally sane person? Yes.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Everyone I know can receive a series of true facts and come out of that believing something false!
IshKebab 5y ago
> and keep the schtick up all the way to the doctors It's perfectly normal to keep up a lie alive to an extreme degree just to avoid having to awkwardly admit you were lying. Think about the rape accusers who take it all the way to court before eventually admitting they made it up, or all of the married people who keep up the pretence of religion to avoid awkwardness with their actually-religious partners. On a more innocuous level, every one has bullshitted to avoid revealing that they don't know someone's name because it has got to the point that saying "sorry I don't know your name" would be too embarrassing.
slightwinder 5y ago
> a mentally sane person would not copy the tics from a YouTube personality A sane adult, sure. Kids? Hell no. Doing stupid things is a basic right of childhood. Kids always need help from adults in general, but I would not read to much in this single case. Overall from the kids perspective this seems rather harmless as nobody was harmed.

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larsiusprime 5y ago

Howdy, I've been diagnosed with Tourette's for 23 years. Including coprolalia and all the """fun""" symptoms (narrator: they were not fun). I read the paper behind this phenomenon last week and wrote some thoughts to a friend, reproducing here. From the paper: > Thirdly, patients often reported to be unable to perform unpleasable tasks because of their symptoms resulting in release from obligations at school and home, while symptoms temporarily completely remit while conducting favourite activities. I was conclusively diagnosed back in the stone age before smart phones were a thing and the internet was still dial-up, and even I got this neverending skepticism from teachers and classmates in the run-up to my diagnosis. "Hey Lars, how come your tics disappear when you're playing video games, but they flare up when it's time for a math test? PRETTY CONVENIENT!" Well, because tics are brought out by anxiety and vanish when a patient goes into a "flow state," -- this is super well established. On the other hand, the rest of the diagnostic criteria for this phenomena seems very reasonable to me, and I also am totally ready to believe that an induced faux tourette's syndrome would absolutely present this way. And then there's this one: > Fourthly, in some patients, a rapid and complete remission occurred after exclusion of the diagnosis of Tourette syndrome. So apparently when a doctor in a white coat tells these people they definitely don't have Tourette's, the behavior stops? They also kind of bury the lede with this one: > While it appears that age at onset is very similar in different countries with a preponderance of adolescents and young adults, gender distribution seems to be different: while half of our patients are male, the group of Davide Martino and Tamara Pringsheim at the University of Calgary in Canada reports a female to male ratio of about 9:1 I've always heard that the sex ratio of Tourette's diagnosis is like 1:10 skewed towards males (looking it up it looks like it's actually 1:4.3 favoring males). So a sudden swing in the sex ratio for a disease that's long been presumed to have some kind of male-associated underlying genetic basis that lines up with a prominent female influence seems like pretty strong evidence for their theory. So I don't have the medial training to validate the clinical methodology, but from knowing what real tourette's syndrome feels like from the inside, this seems plausible. TL;DR -- these kids aren't getting tourette's from the internet, but it does seem like they're experiencing a real phenomenon that they need real treatment for. The correct first step is accurately diagnosing them with whatever this new thing is. Maybe some kids are just faking, maybe some others have genuinely convinced themselves they have something going on and this manifests in weird behaviors (which qualifies as a real condition in my eyes). Believe me, you absolutely do not want to be prescribed powerful brain medications unless you really need them.

bob229 5y ago

This is fake news. We all know that social contagion like this doesn’t hapen, the trans rights activists have made that clear

api 5y ago

When I read the title I had the thought that someone had concocted some kind of adversarial neural network attack on humans that could be delivered by video, like in Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Reminds me of this oddity: https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/jumping-frenchmen-of-maine/ https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/jumping-frenchmen-of-... Are there such things as mimetic diseases? We have definitely seen that alarmingly insane quasi-cults like Qanon or flat Earth can spread entirely via social media, so that isn’t too far away. The jump would be to something not requiring conscious thought or belief at all, something that fully bypasses the neocortex. If that is actually possible I can see a future where everyone runs smart content filters (maybe AI powered) and curated whitelists before viewing things. Maybe there could be mental techniques for handling “cognitive hazards” that could be learned too. I feel like some mystical traditions have inklings of that like “visualize a white light around you” or “as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” Maybe that stuff fires up some anti-malware in your brain. At least there is already a symbol: https://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/264113001 https://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/264113001

zdkl 5y ago
I was about to jump in with the term "cognitohazard", from SCP lore. Imagine a future where you'd hear something like "Welcome to the Antimemetics Division. No, this is not your first day." (@qntm is a terrific story writer and also brought us hatetris) https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub
- api 5y ago
  We are so, so close to that. Political parties and nation states now effectively have memetic warfare arms in the form of very advanced and soon AI augmented PR and propaganda agencies. Where there is attack there must also be defense. Arms races tend to push innovation, which is why I now wonder about actual adversarial attacks on the brain that can bypass choice and thought entirely and even cause illness. That would be the logical endpoint, sort of like how the hydrogen bomb was the outcome of the bombing arms race. If it’s possible I predict it will be discovered in the next 25 years. We may see a video that sends people to the hospital that appears, say, right before an election and is targeted at the opposing side.

nailer 5y ago

There’s a school in Brighton where 76 students - 1/20 of the entire student population- declared themselves trans or gender fluid. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-groups-under-fire-for-huge-rise-in-child-referrals-2ttm8c0fr https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-groups-under-fire-f...

input_sh 5y ago
Well fortunately those aren't comparable to tourette's, since they're not illnesses.
- MillenialMan 5y ago
  That's sort of an arbitrary distinction. Both are abnormal presentations that cause significant problems in day-to-day life and consequently have clinics set up to treat the issue. Whether the issue is voluntary for a particular patient is also similarly important in assessing an appropriate treatment modality. Putting the obvious political agenda aside, I would argue teenage girls faking tourettes is pretty much the same phenomenon as teenage girls faking gender dysphoria. It's not helpful to pretend that faking tragic mental conditions isn't a phenomenon among teenagers.
  - standardUser 5y ago
    "Both are abnormal presentations that cause significant problems in day-to-day life" The same was one-hundred percent true about homosexuality for nearly all of human history in most societies. If the "day-to-day problems" are because other people are mindlessly hateful and intolerant, who exactly has the mental health issue? In terms of homosexuality, we now largely agree it is the bigots, not the queers, who have the problem.
    - MillenialMan 5y ago
      Many groups are social pariahs, none have a suicide rate close to the transgender community. Dysphoria by itself is clearly horrible to deal with, that's why people are willing to have double mastectomies in the pursuit of easing their mental pain. A vaginoplasty is incredibly invasive and isn't going to have a meaningful impact on day-to-day social judgement. I really don't buy the claim that it's purely or even primarily about acceptance. I would also point out that the the trans community themselves are advocating for greater access to treatment, not less. It's really not the same as the gay rights movement. Unlike gay people, treatment is literally one of their objectives.

themgt 5y ago

A similar one I just became aware of is Dissociative Identity Disorder, or multiple personality disorder. There seems to be a huge surge of people doing TikToks etc showing themselves going through identity changes (often "rapid switching"), some with hundreds of thousands or millions of views and seemingly a lot of supporters. There's a whole huge sort of jargon/ontology to this intersecting with other ideas and people identify as a "system" e.g: Systems, Collectives, and/or Plurals are those who experience being more than one entity in one physical body [1]. Systems are under the neurodivergent umbrella, and are not inherently LGBT+, but being plural can impact sexuality, romantic orientation, attraction, identities, and/or gender (such as with systemfluid). Systems can also commonly intersect with LGBT+ experiences[2]. The experiences may overlap to the point of ones queer identities being a large part of headmates, such as within queergenic systems. I am not quite sure what to make of all this, but we live in interesting times. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rapid+switching https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rapid+switching https://lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/System https://lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/System https://www.inputmag.com/culture/dissociative-identity-disorder-did-tiktok-influencers-multiple-personalities https://www.inputmag.com/culture/dissociative-identity-disor... https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-did-influencers-of-tiktok-and-the/id1504298199?i=1000530029977 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-did-influencers-of...

0xdeadb00f 5y ago
Fascinating.
ceejayoz 5y ago
This used to be thing back in the LiveJournal days; I remember people claiming to have a baby personality and typing in mock baby talk, as well as a bunch of "otherkin" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin).
rdimartino 5y ago
Yes, I stumbled upon some of these same community discussions happening on Twitter and Tumblr. It was really interesting to read about the in-fighting about traumagenic vs endogenic DID. This discussion of real or imitated Tourette’s reminds me of that. https://pluralpedia.org/w/Traumagenic https://pluralpedia.org/w/Traumagenic https://pluralpedia.org/w/Endogenic https://pluralpedia.org/w/Endogenic

oxymoran 5y ago

The problem with TikTok is that it promotes the silly and the stupid. At scale, that makes society silly and stupid.

bsksi 5y ago
That's a problem with social networks at large. At least before the stupid or degenerate were ashamed of themselves. Now everybody can find a circus of freaks to belong to, which makes them believe their behaviour to be appropriate.
- krustyburger 5y ago
  I’m not sure Linkedin has quite the same effect on people that Tiktok seems to. Certain social networks have a culture of amplifying drivel.
  - junon 5y ago
    Have you seen LinkedIn recently? It's all of the Facebook garbage just moved to a new home. Most of the content on there has little to nothing to do with the professional world.
    - lobocinza 5y ago
      It's filled with fake stories of hard-work and leadership.
- derefr 5y ago
  No, just unmoderated social networks. One of the longest-running types of “social network” (going for centuries now!) is the academic journal—but those have the explicit goal of sanity cross-checking anything submitted to them before allowing it in, so they result in something else being promoted. (I don’t want to say it's “good, rational discourse” that journals promote, because that doesn’t seem to be exactly what comes out of journals; they do have their own incentive structures that bias "the conversation" in specific directions, even besides the ones that are extrinsically imposed upon them by academic hierarchy.)

olingern 5y ago

It seems that the mind can absorb much more than we previously thought from observation. I wonder how the human brain perceives gameplay characters vs humans in a video

teddyh 5y ago
This has also been observed by the author of The Inner Game of Tennis. In a talk by Alan Kay, Alan Kay shows a clip in where the author of that book (whose name I do not remember) was challenged by some TV team to teach tennis to some lady who had never been physically active at any level. They showed him doing it, and then he explained to the TV team how he did it. IIRC, one thing he did was that, while distracting the woman with conversation, he did the correct movement with a racket, and made sure she saw him. Then he asked her to perform some very simple actions with a racket, and she unconsciously copied his movement form more or less perfectly.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  Related: Estimates of 20 Mbits/sec of visual bandwidth, versus 20 bits/sec of [attention?]. Or compare the non-verbal synchrony of a good pair in conversation, versus a written transcript.

antattack 5y ago

We all make gestures, look left, right up or down, squint, have a narrator in one's head, sometimes clap, smack forhead when trying to get a thought formed, access memory, formulate a sentence, or express feelings. Perhaps what we diagnose as Tourette on the low end is like above but overwhelming and more involuntary? Perhaps people who acquire it via mimicry are in the category where movements are not entirely involuntary, but perhaps feel good and help them think or function maybe to relief stress or anxiety on subconscious level.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Sounds familiar. In the UK, young people referred for "gender treatment" has increased from 97 in 2009 to 2,510 in 2017-2018, an over 4,000 percent increase in 10 years.

wallmountedtv 5y ago
This has more to do with the growing acceptance of being transgender rather with there suddenly being more transgender individuals. Its a very common pattern to see in healthcare as acceptance grows around a health related issue. An example would be autism. It had the same kind of "sudden growth" back in the 1980s when diagnosis became more accepted and practiced. But there didnt suddenly exist more autistic people than before. Just more people who got it diagnosed and help from their doctors.
- dukeofdoom 5y ago
  "That which is rewarded will be repeated". Imagine if the catholic church approved stigmata as a way of showing one's devotion. I suspect the number of people suddenly getting scars on their hands would sky rocket. Doubt any of them would actually be channeling Jesus.
  - kongin 5y ago
    I have a theory of signalling for mental health. There are very few conditions that are real and they have easily detectable and unambiguous physical signs, e.g. epilepsy. The rest of them are ways for people to show distress, either positive or negative. The positive side would be stigmata 'look at me and how holy I am' the negative would be witches 'look at me and how unholy I am. Transgenderism moved from the negative distress to the positive distress pile in less than 5 years last decade and people are having a hell of a time dealing with it. The 'acceptance' of deviancy isn't helping, it's just pushing people to become more extreme in what they do to show their dislike of current society.
input_sh 5y ago
Wow, I was not aware! That's awesome! I hope my country will catch up with you one day.

bmc7505 5y ago

"You're a hacker, that means you have deep structures to worry about, too." "Deep structures?" "Neurolinguistic pathways in your brain. Remember the first time you learned binary code?" "Sure." "You were forming pathways in your brain. Deep structures. Your nerves grow new connections as you use them - the axons split and pushed their way between the dividing glial cells - your bioware self-modifies - the software becomes a part of the hardware. So now you're vulnerable - all hackers are vulnerable - to a nam-shub. We have to look out for each other." "What's a nam-shub? Why am I vulnerable to it?" "Just don't stare into any bitmaps..." ― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash. (1992) "The paraphrase of Gödel's Theorem says that for any record player, there are records which it cannot play because they will cause its indirect self-destruction." ― Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. (1979)

myWindoonn 5y ago
Sure, and see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story) But, uh, any evidence that that's real? We should be careful with Gödel's results here; the Gödelian incompleteness of the human mind is that a human cannot consistently believe that everything they believe is true. It has nothing to do with sanity and perception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxastic_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxastic_logic
- bmc7505 5y ago
  I think if you take these parables literally, there probably isn't a single input that will reliably cause the mind to self-destruct, but they are a cautionary warning. The internet gives plenty of evidence to support the theory that memetic hazards (1) exist, (2) are more transmissible than widely believed and (3) repeated exposure will cause cognitive malfunction.
  - vermilingua 5y ago
    What evidence are you referring to? Trying to search for this is impossible, keeps throwing SCP results.

h2odragon 5y ago

In the 70's, many young people behaved in incredibly odd and harmful ways after seeing similar behaviors on TV. it was called "Disco". Fortunately, after a few years, the symptoms faded and the victims took up more socially useful behaviors, like snorting cocaine and creating stock market scams.

swayvil 5y ago

David Langford explores this idea a bit in his scifi short story BLIT https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story)

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago

HN folks here are proposing that countless young kids could universally mimic a specific symptom set so precisely, that it concerns actual experts. I've been to endless elementary school plays; I've seen that kids really don't have the refined performance skill to pull this off. One might but not scores.

batch12 5y ago
The article suggests that the cause is psychological. It isn't suggesting that this is a performance, but something involuntary and not Tourette's.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  I was referring to HN'rs reaction to the article, not the article itself.
larsiusprime 5y ago
From the paper: > Although some patients indeed suffered in addition from mild Tourette syndrome, for all newly emerged symptoms, it could be clearly ruled out that they were tics for several reasons: (i) onset was abrupt instead of slow, (ii) symptoms constantly deteriorated instead of typical waxing and waning of tics, (iii) “simple” movements (e.g. eye blinking) and noises (e.g. clearing one’s throat) were clearly in the background or completely absent, although being the most common and typical symptoms in Tourette syndrome, (iv) movements were mainly complex and stereotyped and predominantly located at arms and body, instead of at eyes and face, (v) overall, the number of different movements, noises, and words was “countless” and far beyond the typical number of tics in Tourette syndrome, and (vi) premonitory feelings were reported with atypical location, quality, and duration compared to tics in Tourette syndrome. Thus, worsening of pre-existing Tourette syndrome, for example due to COVID-19 pandemic as suggested elsewhere 4,5, can be clearly ruled out in our patients. I've been diagnosed with Tourette's for 23 years and the above is not what I would describe as "universally mimicking a specific symptom set precisely" That doesn't mean this kids aren't dealing with something real, but it means it's unlikely to be Tourette's. The lack of low-level background tics (blinks, throat clearing, facial grimaces) is a huge tell. The worst case scenario here is they get misdiagnosed with Tourette's and start treatment that a) won't help them and b) will give them terrible side effects. I've been through the roulette wheel of powerful brain meds, you do not want to go down that road if you don't have to.

mFixman 5y ago

Are tics really that big of a deal? I had an abnormally large amount of visible tics when I was growing up as a teenager. This got my parents worried despite assurances from doctors, but they all went away when I grew up along with my raspy voice and terrible propensity for acne. This seems like a moral panic like fidget spinners back in 2017, and it doesn't answer an important question: what's the problem if teenagers are subconsciously copying tics from a YouTube star?

larsiusprime 5y ago
I've had diagnosed tourette's for 23 years and yes, tics are a big deal, then and now. Maybe your experience was different from mine, but mine was hardly positive. Teachers hate you. Classmates hate you. You get detained and questioned by airport security. You get detained and questioned by police. Weird pentecostal* ladies subject you to ad-hoc exorcism rituals. Weird liberal* ladies subject you to ad-hoc herbal cleansing rituals. Weird foreign* ladies pop random pills in your mouth thinking you're having an epileptic attack Everyone finds you annoying and thinks you're looking for attention. Even when people understand you and try to accommodate you, you are slowly wearing away their patience and you KNOW it. I would not wish that on my worst enemy. ------- * no shade meant to non-weird pentocostal people or religious people in general (I'm religious myself); just this one particular one * no shade meant to non-weird liberal people * no shade meant to non-weird foreign people * no shade meant to ladies in general, it's just a coincidence it's always been ladies; mostly probably because they're just trying to help and that's sweet in its own way
- exolymph 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing this. Interesting and unexpected. I'm sorry that you've had to deal with all these frustrating experiences.
- bserge 5y ago
  That actually sounds interesting. I've had breakdowns in public, crying and yelling, I've stood on a bridge trying to jump, I've been drunk off my ass stumbling, been talking to myself and kinda barking at strangers, sleeping on benches and not once has anyone talked to or approached me. Which is normal, who in their right mind would do that. Just kinda paints a different picture of humanity in your head than someone who's been helped.

post_break 5y ago

There is a subreddit called fake disorder cringe full of people faking stuff. Makes my stomach turn seeing it all while they fleece for donations.

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rito_ 5y ago

Hey @dang , why am I shadow banned, and how do I get it lifted?

okareaman 5y ago

Another strange internet phenomenon is Tulpas, or imaginary friends that are real to those that have them. https://old.reddit.com/r/Tulpa/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Tulpa/

dang 5y ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20210904142459/https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tourettes-youtube-jan-zimmermann http://web.archive.org/web/20210904142459/https://www.wired....

effnorwood 5y ago

Fuck!

ezekiel68 5y ago

The phenomenon I find most baffling is the insistence that we not be concerned, in any way, about that percentage of apparent cases where the person is faking a condition / system / syndrome. As if this causes no harm whatsoever to the person (themself), families, and society. Isn't this its own condition which merits study and (separate) classification / treatment?

swayvil 5y ago
To induce mental disease via the internet. That might be a thing now. It may already be happening to millions of people. That's a really big deal. A way bigger deal than a bunch of kids trying to get attention by faking whatever.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  That is also the premise of these three great films, inducing disease/mind-control via digital communication: 1. Videodrome 2. They Live 3. Pontypool (which heavily references SnowCrash, the book) It would not surprise me if this becomes a concern this century (e.g., digital manipulation of the brain remotely).
  - swayvil 5y ago
    I totally agree. And I have watched all 3 of those. Pontypool. Woo! What a crazy idea. Bookwise, I recommend QNTM's "There is no Antimemetics Division" and Langford's BLIT.
    - SavantIdiot 5y ago
      Never heard of those last two, thanks for the tips!
      - swayvil 5y ago
        This is interesting https://modelelearning.com/2017/11/02/you-gotta-believe-me/ https://modelelearning.com/2017/11/02/you-gotta-believe-me/

raffraffraff 5y ago

It's time to take the batteries out of the internet and put it up on the top shelf. The kids need to go outside and play in the dirt.

nixpulvis 5y ago
I'll do what my Mom always did and blame the parents.
- Krasnol 5y ago
  And you'd be right. It is the parents responsibility and they fail often. My SO works in a kindergarden and has to attempt to fix this. Luckily the fact that parents now have to leave their kids there for most of their wake hours does help. At least in good kindergardens. You can ask around, you'll see the problems that new media, as a tool for parents to keep their kids off their hands causes everywhere. Those ticks are just the peak of the ice berg here because there is no way around recognising the tool. The other damage is more subtle. We'll be faced with generations of media zombies and it's kinda frightening. I've seen a kid once left alone with a tablet in the waiting room while they've been visiting the doctor. I've been passing by and usually I say "hi" or something like that to the waiting patients but this kid didn't even blink. I've watched it over half an hour and it didn't move at all. Than the parent came out, said no word, grabbed the kid, the kid the tablet without it's eyes from it and they just floated out. This is 21st century parenting for you...
- tootie 5y ago
  My mother was a special Ed teacher for years. Specifically for kids with emotional/personality disorders. She always dreaded parent teacher conferences because the parents were bigger, louder versions of her disordered kids. But despite what you might think, it's less about the kids being raised wrong and more about genetics. Bad parenting is usually a result of the same behavior problems afflicting the kids.
tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
Touch grass, as they say

ewanmcteagle 5y ago

Sounds related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness

ceejayoz 5y ago
The article calls it that. > Mass sociogenic illness – also known as mass psychogenic illness or historically called mass hysteria – spreads like a social virus.

fouc 5y ago

Some parallels between people with this "condition" and anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers

willcipriano 5y ago

Similar events in human history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases

bobthechef 5y ago

Mass sociogenic illness. This seems to describe a good deal of the mass hysteria during this pandemic (behavioral psychology has been again weaponized against the populace). Truly freaky stuff like open hostility toward the unvaxxed in the media, even wishing them death. Psychotic.

godmode2019 5y ago

Related: Motherless Brooklyn 2019 https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0385887/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0385887/

makeitdouble 5y ago

> “Heil H*tler” That’s unfortunate. IRL I can’t imagine people getting stuck on this if they understand it’s a tic and are familiar with the person. When going online or through any automatic scanning mechanism though, it must become a hell to get away from automatic flagging, shadow banning etc.

deleted 5y ago

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anaphor 5y ago

One of the people quoted in this article, Robert E. Bartholomew, also wrote a book on the Havana Syndrome, which is most likely another case of mass psychogenic illness. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030407452 https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030407452 I've been reading it, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more.

imwillofficial 5y ago
Absolutely unsupported take on Havana Syndrome. These are trained CIA case officers and embassy personnel with measurable brain damage.
- anaphor 5y ago
  I'm assuming you've read the book and have looked at all of the arguments and evidence in it, otherwise this might seem like an uninformed opinion.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    I have been following this topic closely and am in that community. No I have not read the book, but if it mirrors your short summary, I stand by my assertion. Thank for the book recommend, I’ll take a gander.