I suspect people knowingly lying about it are fairly rare. Especially for adolescents, I think a lot of them really are having serious mental health issues caused or exacerbated by being isolated from their real life peer groups for so long. And they're on the internet looking for alternative social connections, and the algorithms are recommending that stuff to them.
Including TikToks that tell them to listen and react to a song to see if you're autistic or have ADHD or something. So they record themselves reacting with whatever behavior they're told to.
And for the DID, I can kind of see kids without much life experience maybe mistaking different moods for whole different personas, so if they've got a bunch of internet 'friends' who have this cool and interesting disorder that gets them a lot of attention, it might be pretty tempting.
Oh I agree, I presume most are indeed Larping it in some form or another. I was thinking about, but didn’t mention, how research on hypnotism show a percentage of people are highly suggestible, especially in group environments where they already ready to participate, and part of being a good hypnotist was finding those people in the crowd. I presume the effort to make a video and TikTok it is a good filter.
(Although it’s not like I’ve seen any of the videos or watch tik tok).
Really so long as they aren’t snorting tide pods as part of their persona, it’s probably not the worst trend… I bet there’s at least one middle manager out there somewhere that snorted a worm and almost choked to death, on a dare.
It's not the worst for them, but they're perpetuating a lot of ridiculous and insulting stereotypes (everything seems to manifest as acting like a toddler), and making things more difficult for people who really do have whatever condition it is.
It's not the worst for them, but they're perpetuating a lot of ridiculous and insulting stereotypes (everything seems to manifest as acting like a toddler), and making things more difficult for people who really do have whatever condition it is.
I've a friend on the autism spectrum, functional enough to hold down a steady technical job, they absolutely do not talk about it to people new to them because of all the idiots diagnosing themselves with a web form.
__________________
Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
Yeah, it used to be mostly just unrepentant assholes self-diagnosing to evade criticism, and now it seems to be mostly adult babies or something (maybe we could call that uwutism).
I'll bet you could track the stereotype trends back to popular media somehow.
This morning, I looked at the phrase "molestation charges" for a solid 15 or 20 seconds, trying to figure out what mole stations are and how that guy ran up enough of a bill to be in trouble.
I've been wanting ice cream, but dairy makes me pretty sick anymore, so I decided to go buy some ice cream (a pint each of coffee and pistachio) PLUS some Lactaid just for a special occasion. So I get home and figure on planning for ice cream day.
Nope. The Lactaid says a pill gives you a 30-45 minute window. So now I feel like I have to plan an ice cream half hour instead. The pressure!
It’s interesting how conspiracies form, according to a video I watched, an article about Glitter made the rounds of reddit conspiracy due one little ambigious comment that could be wound into a crazy yarn.
When asked who the Glitter industries biggest customer was, the journalist was told that the Glitter Industry knew but wouldn’t tell them who because they wouldn’t like their name out there, but it wasn’t some strange ingredient, if you looked at it up close you could recognize it as glitter.
Boom, massive speculation ensued! Weapons, could it be weapons? Maybe in our food? What sinister motive must the largest glitter buyer have, and what are they planning!?
Answer, Profit without consequences.
Full answer
The boating Industry. There’s apparently a popular glittery paint job style that just takes buckets and buckets of glitter, and the boating industry would really like everyone not to think about the potential for ocean contamination when upselling the shinny cool looking paintjob.
Tom Scott did a video on the last gravity powered hanging bucket quarry conveyor in Britain but claimed the footage was unusable in the main video due to rain. As proof it exists, he posted the whole 18 minute journey.
Semi-related, find your jam on Virtual Railfan's YouTube channel. There are always a bunch of livefeeds of stations with varying noise and activity levels, so you can find the one right for you. (For some probably stupid reason, it's important to me that the footage is live instead of prerecorded.)
OMG, though, it's bliss once you find the right one.