Sociogenic Illness, and Why it Scares Me

It's a hot topic right now. With the rise of TikTok, came an obvious rise in people, (especially young females, it has been noted) experiencing tic-like symptoms. They treat it like Tourette's. They're convinced it is Tourette's. But the doctors notice that things don't quite add up. They bring up sociogenic tics, and suddenly, the tics are gone.

Let me explain a little, for those who don't know. Sociogenic illness is basically when a non-contagious illness, usually mental or neurological in nature, spreads through many people, thanks to our brains picking up behaviours from those around us. I don't know much more of the science of it, but I imagine its a survival thing.

Sociogenic tics have been becoming all more common recently. I imagine it could also be said that sociogenic DID is also becoming common, but more on that later.

I think I briefly shared why i think this is happening in my post on "fake disorder cringe" and I will go into that a little bit later on in this post too, but for now, I want to give my theories on why it happens.

Todays generation of kids, have grown up on social media. They were thrown into those murky depths from the moment they came out of the womb. One of the key features of most social medias, is the presence of some form of like button, comments, and views. These different types of interaction, show attention. It shows peoples attention to you. And the more views and like you have, the more attention is going to you. When your posts go viral, people all over the world, are paying attention to you. Majority of the time, these people who go viral are praised. They're praised and rewarded for going viral. Be it through money, or simply social status, they get rewarded.

And so kids see this, and its natural human nature to want to be rewarded, right? They're taught that those who are good valuable humans are rewarded. So therefore, they learn that to be considered a good, valuable human, you need to go viral on social media.

And what types of posts often go viral? Awareness posts. People like to share and like and comment on awareness posts, to boost it up the algorithm and get it seen by more to spread more awareness. And they go viral.

Social media has been both good, and terrible for the Tourette's community. Thanks to social media, a lot more awareness has been spread, showing that its not just shouting profanity and rude things. Showing that its much more than that. And yet at the same time its brought a lot of pain and suffering, with people online triggering much more harmful and horrible tics (e.g. Sweet Anita, a popular streamer with Tourette's, did not have an n-word tic until she started streaming. And then that tic got her in trouble despite her not having any control over it); A lot of fake claiming, since tics are easy to fake, and have no outward visible cause, people will tell popular creators with tics, that they're faking it for views and attention (same goes for basically any disabled creator...); and of course, people actually faking it and making a mockery of it.

The thing that scares me about sociogenic illness, is that people might start using as an excuse to bully and fake claim. As I said before in the other blog post ("Fake Disorder Cringe" and Why It Needs To Stop) , I don't think this bullying and harassing should be happening at all, but it makes it so much work, when people are fake claiming people who have sociogenic illness. "But why? calling them out is how you cure them, right?" I hear you crying. Yes, but there's a difference between gently point it out and harassing them, and also, its not up to you to "call them out" when all you've seen is what you see on the screen, compared to that persons doctor, who sees them in person, and knows much more about them than you do.

And having a sociogenic illness is not faking. This is the biggest distinction that needs to be made. Faking is intentionally pretending to have a disorder when you know you don't, for the sake of attention or whatever. Sociogenic illness is being genuinely convinced you have such a disorder, and genuinely experiencing the symptoms. It's important to understand that those tics, or whatever, feel very real to the person experiencing them. They feel like genuine tics, because the brain is a wonderful thing, and it can make you believe anything it wants to.

I'm scared that now people will see someone talking about their experiences with a sociogenic disorder, having the bravery to talk about those experiences online knowing it could be misinterpreted, only for people to laugh at them and bully them for "faking".

I shall say this once, and I hope you can spread this message, as it is very important:

Sociogenic or psychogenic illness IS NOT FAKING.