Last couple of years, a lot of young people on TikTok and Instagram have been at worst faking, or at best play-acting, various mental disorders, such as the dissociative identity disorder.
I think this isnât anything new. When I was younger older kids were really into schizofrenia - they read One Flight Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and then for a period of time pretended to be severely psychotic, or romanticised it. Some of that fad translated into heavy psychedelics use and idealisation of mdma and therapy as an accessory to ones identity. Younger people sought identity through being psychotic, even through faking mental illnesses of the most severe nature or drug addictions. Being not right in the head was something they aspired to.
Later, in my later teens, this changed. And everyone was into pretending to be a savant due to Asperger. I canât remember the movies that inspired all of this. Beautiful mind was one, then some movie with Tom Cruise and Hoffman. Not being psychotic, but special - was something to aspire to as an identity. Being self diagnosed as high functioning autistic was not taboo - it gave people flair and set them apart. Neurotypical became a word in popular culture.
Now kids are doing the same thing but switched over to neurological problems, not mental illnesses or developmental problems. Itâs the same thing. But itâs evolving.
One can say itâs all about identity and trying to self define by romanticising the âotherâ, the outcast, the atypical.
But I have a different theory about it. Itâs completely uneducated, just personal opinion. Whatâs interesting to me is the evolution of that trend, that I think happened right after the boomer generation.
There are countless academic and popular books and studies proving that the boomer generation was unique in that it was the first truly narcisstic generation. I am absolutely not dissing on them as a generation, there are good and bad folks there, as in any cohort. I donât personally think they are any worse or better than any other generation. That would be ageism and Iâm not about that.
All that I am saying is that our culture changed a lot. Shame as a typical response of a parent towards a child emerged almost as a tool in raising kids. We shame poor people, we shame rich people, we shame people ecologically, we shame them economically. We install guilt for historical crimes on the left, and at the same time install guilt about having guilt on the right. And nowhere is a freedom of choice, and acceptance of nuance and complexity of life.
There is a growing tendency to use moral absolutism even when discussing politics - a topic that is so nuanced and so in the grey area, that itâs almost laughable at how black and white we see it. And we shame people who have a different stance on an issue that cannot be resolved or is simply to complex to have a scientific opinion on. For example socio-economics. We hate people for being capitalists, we shame them for being left wing - and we fail to accept that the whole system is beyond our comprehension and any opinion is an estimate that shouldnât carry a moral judgement. We are narcisstic beyond words in that we think we understand the world completely... We attribute moral judgement everywhere, we are taking a moral stance, where there should be moral ambiguouity.
In that context, each and coming generation since the â60s is presented with more and more guilt and internalised shame as a backdrop of their personalities. And that evolution of reaching out to disfunction as the new normal is, at least in my experience, the only non shaming place in the world that young people can occupy.
We have extremely big tolerance and empathy towards those people that suffer neurological problems, diagnosable mental health issues, or cognitive disfunctions. We exonerate murderers on account of childhood trauma, we understand and tolerate aggression and learning deficits in those with ADD. We medicalised empathy.
This empathy towards the abnormal is so rare in everyday life. Just think about it, all of us grow up thinking we need to succeed, we need to learn, we watch Elon Musk talking about his work ethic. We internalise so much shame about being not good enough, about not being the smartest... and here is a disorder that is completely devoid of that expectation. Itâs so fucking obvious people will jump into it, and institutions broaden the diagnostic criteria - because that is the only safe space to be that is free of our shaming, judgmental culture.
Obviously the kids doing this on tik tok are an extreme case and a minority. But they do show a trend and are just extreme expressions of a global sentiment.
What these kids are doing is a proof of our failing efforts as a culture to be good parents, teachers, friends and fellow human beings. Identity through disfunction as it brings the only chance to catch a breath in this unending parade of installing expectations and shame and black and white political and economical morality. Tourette for these kids is the only acceptance towards spontaneity, joy, and chaos - qualities that we fail to accept in them, and we fail to accept in ourselves... watch parents in a park, they truly hate it when a kid is having âtoo much funâ and is âtoo spontaneousâ. They say: donât yell, why are you so loud? good children should be able to focus on a book, not run around like monkeys. did you have too much sugar?
This repeated day in and day out, in big and small things, over decades, will kill your spontaneity. It will kill your soul with shame.
Everyday life entrenches them into their escape into the illusion of meeting some arbitrary and ever changing âdiagnostic criteriaâ that will shield them against our mockery. Because it fucking does! And here we are, making more fun of them on this sub.
We shouldnât laugh at them at all, or even their parents. We should take a look at the world we actively create. We should truly look at ourselves first and how we operate with shame, subconscious self-mockery and lack of nuance in almost everything we do - would we be able to dance like crazy in front of thousands of people without a âget out of jailâ card of a mental problem or addiction? When was the last time you danced around people without alcohol? At what point in life did we lose that ability? Kids see their parents not being able to experience unfiltered joy and take it to heart... Are we spontaneous and carefree? Can our kids emulate a healthy relationship with the ecstasy of joy without a crutch of alcohol, drugs, or other excuses? - we can see when these kids do what they do itâs a failed attempt at being loved and accepted for being who they are.
In other words, if faking mental illness, drugs, video game addictions and political or social fanaticism are a better imaginary place for receiving unconditional love to a child than their family or culture is - it doesnât tell us the child is crazy; it tells us the modern family and culture are.