rant · moment 12 of 23
Social Contagion and Disorders as Community
from #274 - Tourettes Gang | The Tim Dillon Show · #274
3 min
Tim theorizes that kids fake or amplify disorders online to find community since technology has flattened personalities, and connects this to non-binary identification trends and old social contagion panics around gay people.
- Tim describes TikTok communities where people claim autism or Asperger's and perform stimming behaviors together because they see it as popular and interesting.
- Technology has flattened everyone's ability to develop distinct personalities, so kids now acquire disorders as a way to distinguish themselves socially.
- Online, people bond primarily over shared suffering and problems rather than shared interests, which shapes how kids choose which disorders to adopt.
- Tim addresses social contagion—a term people avoid because it was historically used against gay people to dismiss their identities as mere peer pressure.
- He recalls coming from a time when being gay was actually special, before entire college classes started identifying as non-binary.
- Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar was good for seventh-grade goth closeted gay guys discovering they could crush pills and snort them.