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TikTok Is Causing A Mass Psychosis


3m read
·Nov 4, 2024

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[Music] In June 2019, Kirsten Muellerval, a psychiatrist at Hanover Medical School and head of its Tourette's outpatient department, noticed unusual symptoms in her new set of patients. To begin with, all of them were teenagers, and they were suffering from sudden and uncontrollable ticks, even though none of them had any history of the condition. They were all shouting different kinds of obscenities. Muellerval consulted her tight-knit group of global Tourette researchers and found out that her newest patients were not unique. It seemed that a shift in patients and symptoms was happening all over the world.

What was even more surprising was that it was happening at the same time. But what really puzzled Muellerval was that most were repeatedly shouting the same phrase: "You are ugly." As it turned out, this phrase was the key to understanding the strange spike in cases. Four months before the mysterious global outbreak, a 20-year-old German suffering from Tourette's named Jim Zimmerman launched a YouTube channel and a TikTok page detailing what it's like to live with his condition. He immediately became a social media sensation, gathering more than 2 million subscribers on YouTube and millions of views on TikTok, where he shows his viewers how his condition can force him to blurt obscene words or experience uncontrollable ticks and convulsions.

Zimmerman had the tendency to blurt out the phrase "you are ugly," one that he shared with all new style patients suddenly appearing all over the world. After making this connection, researchers found that all the patients who suddenly claimed to have ticks were also fans of Zimmerman. Muellerval confronted her distressed patients and told them that none of them actually had Tourette's. Most of them recovered immediately, but despite their recoveries, this case presented researchers with an unprecedented psychological mystery, showing how imagined symptoms can spread purely from TikTok videos.

While these teenagers didn't suffer from Zimmerman's condition, something triggered their minds to believe that they did. Suddenly, all of them simultaneously and independently developed these TikTok ticks. With TikTok becoming one of the most used social media apps today, it's becoming even more important to consider: could TikTok be causing a mass psychosis?

Before you answer that, I want to take a moment to thank the sponsor for today's video: Masterworks. For all the progress the human race has made on this planet, we still haven't figured out how to tell the future. As a result, we're burdened with the worries of what it might be. So, to help future generations, we rely on art to pass down our history and information.

Thanks to Masterworks, we can also rely on to invest in the future. Looking at the last two years, it's obvious that no matter how much we think we know about the future, we can never accurately predict it. Even tech companies that alter the way we live on a daily basis have been wrecked by volatility in the last year, with experts like JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon predicting that stocks could drop yet another 20 percent. Yet the value of art has been less affected by this carnage.

Morgan Stanley reports that the average painting is selling for 26 percent more at auction than this time last year, and Bank of America believes high net worth investors will continue to buy art despite larger economic concerns. The logic is that art's low correlation with traditional equities gives the potential to help insulate a portfolio from volatility. The value of growth investments of the last 20 years might sink in the near future, but fine art from artists like Picasso, Monet, and Basquiat, who remain timeless and valuable, just check the numbers.

Earlier this month, Masterworks sold a painting for a 17.8 return and have brought net returns of over 17 percent to their investors on seven of their last eight sales. And they're just getting started; over 550,000 people have joined the platform so far. If you would like to get started investing in your favorite pieces of art, subscribers of Aperture get priority access via the li...

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