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It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness

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Re: It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness

#221

Post by simiones »

niom wrote: post #188
throwaway049 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'The last several decades' is an odd specification. Are you saying there was a point in the quite recent past when this was different?

Yes. Outright bans and persecution of homosexuality is relatively new. Effeminate gays were practically eradicated, Europe had the Nazis do it, the US had the lavender scare (because gay=communist), the Soviets under Stalin did much like the Nazis. This is why gays reinvented themselves into the hypermasculine leather culture starting in the 50s. It's why older gay men have negative attitudes towards younger effemina…

> Outright bans and persecution of homosexuality is relatively new.

In most of Europe at least, homosexuality could not be openly practiced for most of the middle ages. There were certain exceptions, but it was not generally considered acceptable, and it was persecuted by the church or other moral authorities, at the very least as ostracism if not outright legal punishments - usually seen as a deviant sexual act, which were also routinely punished. Since the states were far weaker than modern states, it wasn't as systematic and universal as the Nazis attempted, but it was still happening.

Even in societies we perceive as more open such as ancient Rome, homosexual acts were often not explicitly accepted as normal, except for some we today would (rightly) consider abhorrent - adult men having sex with teenagers, but never the other way around.

Re: It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness

#222

Post by adolph »

indigochill wrote: post #72
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #34

From my reading of the article (which is hard to parse not being an expert) it seems there is a German YouTuber with Tourette's who also on his YouTube shows displays non-tourette's tics. And these tics are being copied by other young people watching his shows, and being presented as Tourette's until they arrive at the clinic where these experts go "hang on this kid does not have Tourette's but does have tics similar…

There may be a relation to military conditioning. I spent just a single week at a military academy introductory program in high school and when I returned home I was "uncontrollably" (if I thought about it I could avoid doing it, but if I was on autopilot it happened by itself) squaring my corners and calling my family "sir" and "ma'am". The thing was, those patterns were my entire life for that week, and they were v…

After your first sentence I thought the next would be “uncontrollably dropping two f-bombs for every noun and one for every verb” but the classic hallway “at ease, make way” is good fun too. It was hilarious how it could travel in waves up a hall ahead of the drill like a preceding shadow. My floor was enthusiastically and maliciously conformant and loud about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning

Re: It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness

#223

Post by rendall »

refurb wrote: post #149
maxbond wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gender identity and sexual orientation are different concepts. Exploring gender identity is not the same as exploring sexuality. Children are constantly exploring identity, as I'm sure you have observed. For instance, I am a straight man, but when I was a child I sometimes stole my mother's lipstick and tried to put it on, or I would play with Barbie dolls. I saw that other people incorporated these activities in the…

For instance, I am a straight man, but when I was a child I sometimes stole my mother's lipstick and tried to put it on, or I would play with Barbie dolls. I wouldn't see trying on lipstick or playing with Barbie dolls as "exploring a gender identity" as neither of those are exclusive to one gender, even in a heteronormative world.

I dunno. My social set would never discourage a child from this at all. However, of those of us who had children, only one (out of, like 50+ children in our extended set) was gender non-conforming boy at 3 and liked to wear girl's clothes and play with dolls.

Re: It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness

#224

Post by maxbond »

throwaway27727 wrote: post #114
maxbond wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your being willing to speak your mind without hiding behind vaguery. We can risk a karma hit together. You are referring to a myth called "Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria," which has been debunked. Gender identity is not a socially transmitted pathology. I don't believe you meant this in a hateful way, but let me explain what the problem is with this idea. This is sophistry about how LGBTQ people should rem…

> which has been debunked That is, unfortunately, not an argument. To apply your line of thinking to the OP, would you say that "children displaying Tourette's symptoms from watching a YouTuber is a reversal of cause and effect"? The OP does not make that conclusion, and most of this comment section accepts that as well. I, like GP, would be interested to hear how this would be reconciled.

Highlighting a comment that does a better job: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33879534

This is a valid criticism. What you have highlighted is a shortcoming in my ability to elucidate this topic.

My comment is more an invitation to explore the argument yourself. This isn't a formal debate where I've shown up prepared with notes, I didn't know I'd be speaking about this topic today. If I tell you what I know, you can think about whether it makes sense to you, and you can use extract search terms to research and learn more. You don't have to take my word for anything, but I don't have to remember how I learned something to participate in a casual forum conversation either.

That being said, I am starting to make an effort to catalog resources and be able to share them, because I do think it makes my comments better, but this is a work in progress. C'est la vie.

As to how this argument relates to the Tourettes-like symptoms discussed in the article, these are simply different phenomena. It's reasonable to observe this phenomenon and ask, "Does this apply to other phenomena?", and in the case of the increasing number of open trans people in our society, I'm telling you the answer is "no" and doing my best to explain why.

Re: It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness

#225

Post by red_admiral »

largepeepee wrote: post #92
bognition wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter hypothesis. For the last several decades society put massive pressure on kids to conform to heteronormativity. With these pressures lessening more and more people are feeling empowered to explore their sexuality. Social media is absolutely involved, but we really don't know what the base rate would be in a society devoid of this kind of pressure.

>For the last several decades society put massive pressure on kids to conform to heteronormativity. Only decades? You mean for all of history, where there are distinct roles mostly because of anatomy. In fact, it was only in recent decades with birth control that was there even an option for most women to take a different role for extended periods. I'll say the opposite is true, the last several decades did a great j…

I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

As far as "all of history" goes, ancient Greece for example tolerated a particular kind of "homosexuality", but not one we should try and emulate - it matched neither of two conditions in "consenting adults", for example.

While it's true that few if any societies other than "modern Western" would score as high as ours on Stonewall's diversity index, there were definitely ups and downs if you plotted things over time.

Go back several generations in the USA or Western Europe and it's absolutely normal for straight men to have close and emotional friendships for life; when photography was first invented, it was a thing that male BFFs had photos of themselves taken that I bet anyone today, if shown without context, would immediately pattern-match to "gay couple". I'm going to quote the "art of manliness" site, of all places, on this: https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/bosom-bu... (warning: images may be considered NSFW at your place of work, despite being absolutely non-pornographic as far as I can tell)

Some of these men were undoubtedly gay in the sense we understand the term, but the idea of having a close emotional bond with another man was certainly open to straight men too (and to some extent, also expected).

But then, to quote "The History of Male Friendships" linked on that page,

> First, men were free to have affectionate man relationships with each other without fear of being called a “queer” because the concept of homosexuality as we know it today didn’t exist then. America didn’t have the strict straight/gay dichotomy that currently exists. Affectionate feelings weren’t strictly labeled as sexual or platonic. There wasn’t even a name for homosexual sex; instead, it was referred to as “the crime that cannot be spoken.” It wasn’t until the turn of the 19th century that psychologists started analyzing homosexuality. When that happened, men in America started to become much more self-conscious about their relationships with their buds and traded the close embraces for a stiff pat on the back.

> [...]

> The man friendship underwent some serious transformations during the 20th century. Men went from lavishing endearing words on each other and holding hands to avoiding too much emotional bonding or any sort of physical affections whatsoever. Fear of being called gay drove much of the transformation. Ministers and politicians decried homosexuality as being incompatible with true manhood. And like most deviant behavior in the 1950s, homosexuality was associated with Communism.

So, once "gay" appeared on people's radar, heteronormativity shot through the roof and men were expected to be performatively straight, to prove themselves that they were not "tainted" by this new "affliction". That's where a lot of this pressure came from, it was definitely not constant throughout all of even relatively modern history.

Re: It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness

#226

Post by RocketOne »

ccity88 wrote: post #33

What's interesting to me is that if we're able to accept the idea that mass social media-induced illness can be developed just by virtue of video watching TikTok or YouTube, then this opens new doors to examining the behaviour of other illnesses such as gender dysphoria that are statistically over represented. This is probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, because nobody wants to confront the idea that we can _…

This is exactly what I thought of when I saw "social media-induced illness": MSMI

I saw this in the school I led, especially in young girls. One of them starts cutting, suddenly we have multiple girls cutting. One of them struggles with bulimia, suddenly the guidance counselor is reporting that she has an inordinate number of girls coming in for counselling about bulimia.

I dont think its any different with claiming to be transgender. And my current school counselor contact confirms that - for every one child she sees that she believes may actually struggle with body dysmorphia and she believes may be trans, there are 10 more coming in because its the 'thing' to be. These are usually kids who are troubled and are desperately seeking attention and care, legit needs, but going about it the only way they see that's acceptable. They gain attention, they gain power, and in an odd way, status among their peers for 'being who they are.'

Re: It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness

#227

Post by adolph »

werdnapk wrote: post #68

When I was in high school, one of the "popular" kids used to talk a bit odd on purpose and sure, it generated a bit of a chuckle at first, but he kept doing it and a lot of kids also adopted a similar vocal tic to seem like they were part of the cool group as well. Monkey see, monkey do.

The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a consciously learned accent of English, fashionably used by the late 19th-century and early 20th-century American upper class and entertainment industry, which blended together features regarded as the most prestigious from both American and British English (specifically Received Pronunciation). It is not a native or regional accent; rather, according to voice and drama professor Dudley Knight, "its earliest advocates bragged that its chief quality was that no Americans actually spoke it unless educated to do so". The accent was embraced in private independent preparatory schools, especially by members of the American Northeastern upper class, as well as in schools for film and stage acting, with its overall use sharply declining after the Second World War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent

Re: It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness

#228

Post by brookst »

nicoburns wrote: post #198
brookst wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> statistically over represented Over represented compared to what? The incidence of these disorders back when admitting them would get you bullied / raped / killed? An alternative explanation is that reducing the social straitjackets that enforced conformity is leading to greater diversity of human behavior. Maybe yes, maybe no, but it’s at least a hypothesis worth considering. BTW your point would be stronger witho…

> Over represented compared to what? In the case of gender dysphoria, the obvious comparison would be, compared to a society where one can subvert gender norms and be accepted without changing one's identity. The emergence of trans movement has created a space where gender-nonconforming people can find more acceptance, but it comes with own set of norms and requirements. One of which is that one must change their ide…

I kept waiting for you to support the “over represented” claim. Much disappointment.

Over represented compared to what real thing? What should the representation be, in terms of percent, compared to what we see today?

Re: It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness

#229

Post by amelius »

rubidium wrote: post #73
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #34

From my reading of the article (which is hard to parse not being an expert) it seems there is a German YouTuber with Tourette's who also on his YouTube shows displays non-tourette's tics. And these tics are being copied by other young people watching his shows, and being presented as Tourette's until they arrive at the clinic where these experts go "hang on this kid does not have Tourette's but does have tics similar…

All behavior is total behavior, so it doesn’t really matter. Article makes the point that this is attention seeking behavior and often used as an excuse to avoid unpleasant tasks. Whether the teens are aware they are choosing the tic, eventually it becomes habitual and they “can’t stop”. Except they can after meeting with a trained phycologist. Get to the root of the behavior and usually the behavior goes away.

Many OCD sufferers will not agree.

Re: It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness

#230

Post by niom »

red_admiral wrote: post #201
ccity88 wrote: post #33

What's interesting to me is that if we're able to accept the idea that mass social media-induced illness can be developed just by virtue of video watching TikTok or YouTube, then this opens new doors to examining the behaviour of other illnesses such as gender dysphoria that are statistically over represented. This is probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, because nobody wants to confront the idea that we can _…

I have gender dysphoria myself, and you get an upvote from me because I think you are speaking the truth in a way that would lead to better outcomes for many of the affected people, if one properly thought through the implications. I understand gender dysphoria (as opposed to body dysphoria/dysmorphia in a stricter sense) to be a mismatch between someone's own preferences, interests etc. inasfar as they touch on cate…

The "trans/gay/lesbian is cool now" explanation doesn't hold a lot of water to me. If I had the choice to not be gay, I wouldn't be. Life would be so much easier, emotionally and otherwise. Sex would be lower risk and it would be much easier to find a romantic partner. I spent a long time - two decades - suppressing it, as hard as I could, and it did not go away. Instead I was anxious and depressed. After I started to accept myself, those things became a lot better. I look forward to the day I come out.

Transitioning is 100x harder. The nonconformity is obvious. The antagonism directed at transitioning people is unavoidable, strong and potentially deadly - violent and lethal attacks on trans people are becoming much more common every year. Compulsory sterilization for people legally transitioning is still mandated in many countries and was only abolished in progressive countries in the last few years.

No, nobody is doing any of this because it's "cool".

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