TikTok Is Causing A Mass Psychosis

[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?

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