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A mysterious wave of severe tics swept through teenagers worldwide, baffling neurologists until investigators uncovered a digital culprit reshaping adolescent behavior in real time.

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[-] jtrek@startrek.website 16 points 21 hours ago

Müller-Vahl asked the obvious follow-up question. What she found was that almost every patient in the outbreak had been watching a small number of Tourette influencers with very large followings who documented their own tics on YouTube and TikTok.

Why the fuck do these influencers exist.

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 28 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

to help expose people with tourette's to those who don't know what people with tourette's live like so that more people can treat them with dignity.

[-] jtrek@startrek.website 19 points 18 hours ago

When I read "influencer" I read it as like "grifter". I concede what you're describing may not be bad.

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 10 points 18 hours ago

Yeah. Think of it like this : influencer is a broad stroke term for basically, internet celebrity. They are able to influence people within the audience they have built for themselves, and are aiming to get their influence to more people to say something.

Now, they usually make money by lending that voice to companies in exchange for money. But, some are doing it to further other agendas, positive or negative.

And sometimes, there's a synergy. For example, Northernlion can be seen as an indie games influencer. Sometimes, companies pay him to play a game during a stream. He's upfront about the sponsorship, but it can be an interesting game to want to play. And sometimes, he doesn't know what game to play, since he streams most days as a regular ass job. So the "paid suggestion" helps him fill the time.

Others are not so scrupulous, and are exploitative.

[-] trolololol@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago

If you replace the word influencer by religion etc your post could belong to a history community

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 4 points 14 hours ago
[-] garbagebagel@lemmy.world 24 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Because people with tourettes also have right to be content creators if they want to be?

[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 8 points 18 hours ago

So it was Munchausen's by internet?

this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
132 points (90.2% liked)

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