Her YouTube channel has, at the time of writing, over four million subscribers and two and a half billion views. Thanks to her videos, she reportedly earns about $4,350 a day. She has become a celebrity with her own line of skincare products, appearances on all kinds of TV programs, a show of her own on TCL, and even a board game called Pimple Pete, created by Spin Master. She goes by "Dr Pimple Popper" and is a dermatologist who turned her profession into a show that's hard to resist. And what does she do? Popping disgusting pimples and pustules on camera!
Dr. Pimple Popper and the Videos That Make Us All Vomit
Her videos are vomit-inducing. They truly are, even though we find them fascinating. Episode after episode, she pops all sorts of skin bumps. From blackheads and boils to cysts and fatty tumors, and even more serious things whose pronunciation I can't manage. From inside those filmed bodies come the most disgusting substances a human being can imagine. Yellowish fluids, bloody fats, oily muds, putrid thick bodily milks. And yet, we can't stop watching. Welcome to the world of "Dr Pimple Popper".
It all began, according to the very words of Dr. Sandra Lee (that's her name), when she shared a video of a blackhead extraction on her social media. Overnight, that simple operation went viral. Millions of people had seen and shared her feat. Without understanding it, she then started researching and found entire communities, on Reddit and beyond, dedicated to sharing similar videos.
That was when she realized there was an untapped niche on the Google video site (as she called it), something nobody was exploiting consistently. And in a true eureka moment, the light bulb went on: she began offering her services at big discounts, and even for free, to patients who allowed themselves to be filmed during the procedure. Thus, since 2015, the "Dr Pimple Popper" channel has been on its way to success.
Why We Enjoy Dr. Pimple Popper's Videos
There are several theories about why the hell we enjoy watching such disgusting things. Some specialists agree it may be something inscribed in our evolutionary heritage, something that helped our ancestors enjoy expelling infections, parasites, and other ugly things from the bodies of their contemporaries, in order to prevent greater evils and fight potentially lethal diseases.
There are also those who point to empathy, to putting ourselves in the skin of those who are being cured. Seeing how that disgusting matter is expelled from a body allows us to access the feeling of expelling our own impurities from our own bodies. An "empathic purge", so to speak.
Personally, I wouldn't rule out morbid curiosity. That thing that makes us stop for a few seconds to see if we can catch a glimpse of the corpse of the suicide victim who threw himself under a train on our way to work, or that forces us to keep our eyes open when one of the characters in a horror movie is dismembered.
Be that as it may, what Dr. Sandra Lee has achieved is truly epic. She has not only managed to capitalize on her profession beyond logical limits, but she has also been able to help a lot of people who otherwise couldn't access her treatments. A virtuous circle that has rewarded her not only with fame and money, but also with professional satisfaction and millions of satisfied fans. A win-win situation, if you ask me.
