The Breakfast Club of Social Media
TikTok scares the living shit out of me.
My niece suggested I hop on to see what she was up to so I did.
I read a list somewhere that posited that
Faceborg=Boomers
Twitter=GenX
Instagram=Millennials
TikTok=Zoomers
I was greeted with a bizarre mix of videos ranging from college women in bikinis stating "This is for the older men," grown women dancing around in bikinis, fucked up videos of a mass of ticks on some Vietnamese kid clustered like an ascot, grotesque pimple-popping videos, Marvel memes, and at least five different kids with Tourette's Syndrome explaining how people treat them badly.
"What the Bleeding Christ is THIS?"
Like all social media it was strangely addictive and suddenly I realized I'd been sitting and scrolling this random effluvia for nearly an hour. Looking up and away from my smartphone, my eyes blinking that "Where am I?" and "What day is it?" stupor associated with coming to after an especially potent spoon of heroine, I immediately deleted the app. I almost tossed my phone away like I was holding a snake.
No offense intended toward my niece but that shit was creepy.
Later that day I wondered about the content. Why was that the menu served to me? What was it the algorithm that dictated I should see what I saw? The college girls and grown women make sense: I'm an older guy on TikTok. Why else would I be there? The ticks and pimple-popping was a mystery. The MCU stuff made complete sense.
Wait. FIVE kids with Tourette's? What are the odds of that?
I remember when I was a teenager, looking to fit in and be popular on some level. We all do. It's a normal behavior of the trouser ape to mimic those we see receiving social status. It's why the goth kids dressed in black, the preppie kids wore polos, the jocks wore their letter jackets everywhere.
When I was eleven years old my mother would cart my sister and I to church. The bribe to go was that following the dry Lutheran lecture we would head to the Rose Bowl and have a buffet breakfast. We couldn't resist.
Now, my sister and I always argued afterwards about who would sit in the shotgun seat. I knew it was coming so I would leave the restaurant pretending to be a mentally challenged kid. I'm not proud of it but, hell, I was a kid. While the impression itself was not specifically funny, the horrified looks of other diners as my mother smacked the little retarded boy on the head, yelling "Goddamnit, Donald! Stop it and get in the car!" was comic gold.
Bizarrely, there is an explanation for the burst of Tourette's Syndrome on TikTok and it has to do with two new things in our daily lives: the rise of the Grievance Industry and a brand new disorder aptly named Mass Social-Media Induced Illness.
A study published recently reported the first outbreak of “a new type of mass sociogenic illness… spread solely via social media.”
Faking illnesses is nothing new—some of those who do it have a recognized mental illness known as Munchausen’s syndrome, or ‘factitious disorder.’ Those with this complex psychological disorder feign or deliberately induce symptoms of illness in themselves.
Research began when a high number of young patients were referred to a Tourette’s clinic when traditional medical treatments like anti-psychotic drugs failed to improve their condition. When it was discovered that the patients presented symptoms identical to those of Tourette's sufferer Jan Zimmerman, a German YouTuber, the researchers realized the problem: the patients did not actually suffer from Tourette’s, but were mimicking Zimmerman’s vocalized tics that they saw on his videos. Not long after which, “a rapid and complete remission occurred after exclusion of the diagnosis of Tourette's Syndrome”.
Wannarexia is a pejorative term and, says Urban Dictionary, is “an imaginary disease most commonly found amongst preteen to teenage, overweight females who claim to have the eating disorder anorexia, but they do not meet the criteria.” It continues, “In fact, they do not have an eating disorder at all. Most wannarexic people feel that anorexia is a ‘quick fix' to lose weight and that it is glamorous.”
In 2014, there was Belle Gibson, the cancer patient who survived her battle with a brain tumor after cutting out gluten and dairy. She became a popular wellness warrior with a cookbook published. She was then "diagnosed" with other cancers. Gibson finally admitted it had all been a lie.
Suicide contagion "is the exposure to suicide or suicidal behaviors within one's family, one's peer group, or through media reports of suicide and can result in an increase in suicide and suicidal behaviors. Direct and indirect exposure to suicidal behavior has been shown to precede an increase in suicidal behavior in persons at risk for suicide, especially in adolescents and young adults."
It reminds me of the pilot episode of Hulu's Helstrom, where Damon, the brother with the power to exorcise demons, is called in to help a couple whose child is possessed. After dousing the kid with holy water and causing him to convulse and scream in Latin, Damon confesses it was just tap water from the bathroom and that the kid is full of shit.
The kid saw it in movies, decided that it would garner him the attention of his absent parents, smeared his feces on his wall and learned some Latin. Violá! Little fucker.
Kids are clay. I'd suggest that most of these posers are not like Belle Gibson, not grifters looking to cash in on the social capitol associated with being disabled in some manner. They've discovered a brand new way to gain popularity. Instead of dressing all in black, wearing a polo shirt, or a letter jacket, they pretend to have an ailment. To be noticed. To get the shotgun seat on TikTok.
All of this causes the question to bang around my limited cranium space: what other examples of victimhood are so easily mimicked by the popularity seeking, completely normal teenagers? Once the Tourette's and faux anorexia has been discovered, what's next?
There has been extremely limited and wholly inconclusive research done to examine the effects of social media on the explosion of teenagers claiming to be gender nonbinary or transgender so whether or not society's more open-minded approach to gender switching is allowing children to embrace these ideas or the presence of being popular is certainly in question.
Social media’s newfound ability to hyper-target specific communities has only increased the likelihood of online users to stumble across this type of information and support, increasing the likelihood of young people in feeling comfortable and safe enough to take steps to achieve gender change. The issue lies in whether or not those young people are truly responding to personal identity issues, or a greater desire to attract attention, experience excitement and fit in to a rare and unique community.
While no conclusive studies can clearly demonstrate the causal connection between social media and the rise of white nationalist leanings in young adults, "some experts say social media algorithms are fueling a worldwide rise in extremist views or conspiracies by creating echo-chambers online. And while it's certainly not just boys who are affected by internet propaganda, in the US at least, it seems that it is driving young men in particular to lash out most violently."
A friend of mine, the parent of four children, admitted to me once that she thought she had important influence on her children and their social development until she sent them off to school. "As soon as they were surrounded by other kids, I was there to feed them and make sure they were safe. In terms of teaching them about life, that became the sole task of the random masses of other kids. Those lessons were rarely good ones."
As those involved in the critical social justice craze have adopted the online behaviors and strategies of the alt-right, indoctrination of bullies-by-proxy is yet another pose kids are learning.
Extreme Left rhetoric provides cover for not just people’s various pathologies — anxiety, depression, OCD — but bullying as well. Middle schoolers are well-known emotional terrorists when it comes to policing their non-conforming classmates’ behavior. Most kids grow out of it, both the bullies and the bullied.
Part of the reason kids do move on is that it’s a lot easier for an adult to see that teasing a kid for being fat or being mentally challenged is shitty (unless you happen to be an unnamed former president). Now that it’s shrouded in the language of heroes, bullying is positively reinforced.
All of this to say that, for most of us, change is scary. The kids are always going to be in the know about these changes because kids have no "good old days" to reflect upon. They have right now. The rest of us have some basis for comparison. Social media isn't wildly different than high school in the 80's—it's just faster with a ridiculously large student body to navigate.
In 1985, filmmaker John Hughes introduced the world to The Breakfast Club and put on film the stereotypes anyone familiar with the crushing existential nightmare of the American high school recognized instantly.
The Jock
The Rebel
The Beauty
The Nerd
The Outcast
Today, thanks to the expanded high school online, we have a new group:
The Mentally Ill
The Survivor
The White Nationalist
The Critical Social Justicer
The Outcast (there’s always an outcast…)
Me? I'm pretty sure I'm the janitor now.
