5 ms·

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 atten

by 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.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    > with more tiktok videos of "stimming" and flapping their hands on YouTube. I do wonder why people view this as offensive or obviously fake though. I am a pretty well-adjusted adult who has not been formally diagnosed with anything, and I still "flap hands" when I am in private/can hide it from others. It's hardly performative.
    - faeriechangling 5y ago
      I think what really strikes me is that the most common form of "stimming" I've seen in the wild is the leg bounce. I've seen various other kinds of "stims" from autistic people from verbal, to tapping their fingers, to playing with a pen, to using an actual toy, to squirming around a bit, to standing on their tiptoes. You also mentioned that you flap hands in private, that's the other thing, traditionally people have had this desire to "blend in" even when they DO flap their hands and avoid doing so. However if you go onto tiktok, you primarily are going to see the stim that everybody knows that real autistic people™ have. There is even some far-left advocacy within this community about having "loud hands", and even said activists have expressed discomfort with "staged stimming" https://www.autistichoya.com/2012/01/having-loud-hands.html https://www.autistichoya.com/2012/01/having-loud-hands.html https://www.autistichoya.com/2018/10/neurodiversity-needs-shoes-off-fists-up.html https://www.autistichoya.com/2018/10/neurodiversity-needs-sh... It's just a very bizarre thing that when you're on tiktok, people desire to share what makes them look the most autistic. The other genre is incredibly attractive women getting indignant about people believing they are not autistic because they are incredibly attractive women. I get this sort of twilight zone vibe going into autism tiktok where everything seems slightly wrong.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ravenstine 5y ago
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I know I've inherited personality quirks, tics, and ways of speaking from notable figures because either I thought they were funny or simply because their tics and catch phrases have a quality much like that of an "earworm". Mimicry certainly doesn't have to indicate a psychological condition beyond perhaps having a bad habit, which everyone has every now and then. The internet is just amplifying some of these inate human characteristics at the same time that we have gotten really good at pathologizing everything and labeling ourselves.
- darkerside 5y ago
  meme: (n) an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation
jl6 5y ago
They're smart, not insane. They have figured out how to use YouTube to monetize the "everything is valid" wave.
mc32 5y ago
Maybe doing a cross cultural study would help determine if it’s mimicry (a social phenomenon) or there is something else by going to cultures that are different from ours and seeing if some of their kids get affected. Indonesia, Congo, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, etc.
- atatatat 5y ago
  Why would they want that?
ezconnect 5y ago
I had a classmate in elementary that faints almost everyday when the teacher is not around and gets well very fast once a teacher is called or get nears. We are all just kids and we thought she was very unwell. She likes being attended to we didn't knew it back then.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  Relevant to the overall thread, perhaps: Fainting couches were a thing in Victorian times IIRC.
rasz 5y ago
Let me mimic mental disorder so I can be a punchline to weekly idiot doing stupid things mashup videos? or worse pr0n mashups like Sweet Anita? I dont see it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pessimizer 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 depends on what you mean by mentally unwell. If mentally unwell means that they are unhappy, a danger to themselves or others, or having difficulty functioning in the world in an acceptable way - then being attention-seeking to that degree is also clearly being mentally unwell. If mentally unwell means that there's some physical problem with their brains, then very few people who are mentally well are provably mentally unwell. I would prioritize for help a malingering Tourette's sufferer whose life is falling apart because of that over an "authentic" Tourette's sufferer who has found strategies to cope with the disease in their daily life. The question shouldn't be to determine if they're really mentally unwell, but to determine whether their illness springs from the same causes that treatments that assume this is a physical problem are effective on, or from different causes (e.g. lack of/need for attention) which might yield to different treatment.

by ptoo 5y ago

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.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  > with more tiktok videos of "stimming" and flapping their hands on YouTube. I do wonder why people view this as offensive or obviously fake though. I am a pretty well-adjusted adult who has not been formally diagnosed with anything, and I still "flap hands" when I am in private/can hide it from others. It's hardly performative.
  - faeriechangling 5y ago
    I think what really strikes me is that the most common form of "stimming" I've seen in the wild is the leg bounce. I've seen various other kinds of "stims" from autistic people from verbal, to tapping their fingers, to playing with a pen, to using an actual toy, to squirming around a bit, to standing on their tiptoes. You also mentioned that you flap hands in private, that's the other thing, traditionally people have had this desire to "blend in" even when they DO flap their hands and avoid doing so. However if you go onto tiktok, you primarily are going to see the stim that everybody knows that real autistic people™ have. There is even some far-left advocacy within this community about having "loud hands", and even said activists have expressed discomfort with "staged stimming" https://www.autistichoya.com/2012/01/having-loud-hands.html https://www.autistichoya.com/2012/01/having-loud-hands.html https://www.autistichoya.com/2018/10/neurodiversity-needs-shoes-off-fists-up.html https://www.autistichoya.com/2018/10/neurodiversity-needs-sh... It's just a very bizarre thing that when you're on tiktok, people desire to share what makes them look the most autistic. The other genre is incredibly attractive women getting indignant about people believing they are not autistic because they are incredibly attractive women. I get this sort of twilight zone vibe going into autism tiktok where everything seems slightly wrong.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ravenstine 5y ago

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I know I've inherited personality quirks, tics, and ways of speaking from notable figures because either I thought they were funny or simply because their tics and catch phrases have a quality much like that of an "earworm". Mimicry certainly doesn't have to indicate a psychological condition beyond perhaps having a bad habit, which everyone has every now and then. The internet is just amplifying some of these inate human characteristics at the same time that we have gotten really good at pathologizing everything and labeling ourselves.

darkerside 5y ago
meme: (n) an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation

jl6 5y ago

They're smart, not insane. They have figured out how to use YouTube to monetize the "everything is valid" wave.

mc32 5y ago

Maybe doing a cross cultural study would help determine if it’s mimicry (a social phenomenon) or there is something else by going to cultures that are different from ours and seeing if some of their kids get affected. Indonesia, Congo, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, etc.

atatatat 5y ago
Why would they want that?

ezconnect 5y ago

I had a classmate in elementary that faints almost everyday when the teacher is not around and gets well very fast once a teacher is called or get nears. We are all just kids and we thought she was very unwell. She likes being attended to we didn't knew it back then.

a9h74j 5y ago
Relevant to the overall thread, perhaps: Fainting couches were a thing in Victorian times IIRC.

rasz 5y ago

Let me mimic mental disorder so I can be a punchline to weekly idiot doing stupid things mashup videos? or worse pr0n mashups like Sweet Anita? I dont see it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

pessimizer 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 depends on what you mean by mentally unwell. If mentally unwell means that they are unhappy, a danger to themselves or others, or having difficulty functioning in the world in an acceptable way - then being attention-seeking to that degree is also clearly being mentally unwell. If mentally unwell means that there's some physical problem with their brains, then very few people who are mentally well are provably mentally unwell. I would prioritize for help a malingering Tourette's sufferer whose life is falling apart because of that over an "authentic" Tourette's sufferer who has found strategies to cope with the disease in their daily life. The question shouldn't be to determine if they're really mentally unwell, but to determine whether their illness springs from the same causes that treatments that assume this is a physical problem are effective on, or from different causes (e.g. lack of/need for attention) which might yield to different treatment.