I Know You Want To Squeeze 🤏 It
Believe it or not, there is an entire subculture of people really passionate about popping pimples.
Sandra Lee, a dermatologist in Southern California, calls them “popaholics” and their sickening 🤢, yet somewhat intriguing obsession with watching 👀 others do the dirty deed - “popaholicism”. She is giving them exactly what they want - “pops” oozing blackheads, whiteheads and cysts of all sizes, shapes, and colours.
Lee, a cosmetic and surgical dermatologist in the United States better known as “Dr. Pimple Popper”, has gained widespread attention on social media. She has posted countless videos 📹 showing her removing poppable things from her patients’ bodies. She has her own show on TLC today by the same name - providing a deeper dive into her patients’ lives and the up-close and personal procedures she performs on them.
Why would people watch that?
Heather Berlin, a neuroscientist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, said that “it is a normal behaviour to want to remove bumps from your skin” because those bumps could be parasites or other things. Hence, she said it makes sense that human beings evolved in a way that such behaviour can be pleasurable 😌 to them.
Berlin said that popping pimples or watching others do it stimulates the nucleus accumbens, the reward center in the brain 🧠 that receives dopamine and gives people “a little hit of pleasure” for some people. However, the behaviour may seem disgusting 🤢 to others. She stated a different part of the brain called the insular cortex is activated in those cases.
Lee said she realised that there was a market for pimple-popping videos several years ago when she created an Instagram page as “a little window 🪟 into my world as a dermatologist”. She said her page had not attracted any significant attention until she posted a video of a blackhead extraction. People went nuts 🤪 over it. Lee thought it was very strange, but she did it again, and the same thing happened.
She knew that not everyone likes popping and that she gets two ends of the spectrum - people who are obsessed 🤩 with it and people who are disgusted 🤢 by it. That was how it grew, too, because either way, people would tag their friends to show them and that was how it got bigger.
The irony should escape no one that people who bemoan marketing are publishing their messages on a marketing platform. Marketing is unseemly and gross. You are responding to comments, nurturing relationships 🤝, and putting your work out there by using tools to publish, share, and distribute it, which is… you guessed it, marketing.
Spoiler alert!!
There is nothing inherently unseemly about the discipline of marketing. Only how it is used, or how often it is abused. We use social media to give voice 🗣 to the voiceless and under-represented communities. Money 💰, advocacy, and awareness for the causes we believe in are raised when we use marketing, advertising, and publicity tactics.
So, is this gross? Are you willing to paint a broad brush of an entire discipline because people within chose to be shady? Would you say all physicians are unseemly because of those who practice in areas for which they are not board-certified because the money is too good?
Why not use every weapon ⚔️ in our weaponry for that purpose? A resume is marketing. A job interview is marketing. The things we do to attract people to our work is marketing. We are constantly pitching ourselves, putting ourselves forward, shining a light 💡 on our talent and hard work. There is no nobility in uninformed arrogance. There is a difference between “I do not know how”, “I am not good at it”, or “I do not want to do it” as opposed to “ew, marketing is gross”.
Marketing is not gross
It is the intention of the marketer that damages the practice. Shady people who use it for duplicitous, self-serving-at-the-expense-of-others are gross. People who market fake products, like weight-loss lollipops 🍭, are gross. People who publish false product claims are gross. Marketers who prey on our worst insecurities, or uphold antiquated cultural and societal norms - are gross.
Then again, there will always be people who are sociopaths, people who argue caveat emptor or rail against the ills of capitalism. You cannot please everyone in the comments section. One person’s gross is another person’s open season or drug 💊.
Yes, this may sound shocking, but there are people and companies that have a snake oil-free agenda. There are marketers who believe in their products and services and the inherent value in them. There are artists who want to expose people to their work. There are small business owners who want to support 💪 their families and their community, and they are not unseemly for using tools to attract customers.
At AK47™, we hold on to our word, and we stay true to our morals and values as that is our “popaholicism” 🤩😎.
References:
Bever, L. 2018, July 20. The grossest show on TV stars a dermatologist known as Dr. Pimple Popper. Here’s why people like it. The Washington Post.
Sullivan, F. 2019, March 27. Stop Saying Marketing is Gross. Medium.
