Why Are Cyst-Popping Videos So Popular?

My daughter and I frequently enjoy watching programs such as Embarrassing Bodies, 24 Hours in A&E, and Monsters Inside Me together — so when "Operation Kill George" popped up (pun fully intended) on my YouTube suggestions, it wasn't all that weird that I clicked on it. Operation Kill George isn't an old assassin movie, but a video in which something that was dubbed the "biggest cyst on the planet" was slowly removed. Though the video lasts almost a full 10 minutes, every time the yellow goo ceased to come out a while, I was convinced the cyst was now empty, only to be surprised by more. 

The first time I watched "Kill George", I was quite certain that we had stumbled upon an obscure video based solely on our search and watching history. Fascinated by the fact that the cyst was given a name and that it was seemingly never ending, I watched that video twice more, once out of sheer curiosity and once when I was stressed and unable to go to sleep. I discovered that I found the music from Apocalypse Now combined with the squeezing motion strangely soothing. 

Not only that, there's a subreddit solely devoted to cyst-popping videos, as well as entire YouTube channels. (The uploader of "Kill George", ProjectKillGeorge, meanwhile, only ever offered that one video.) It's not just me, then. Watching cyst-popping is rather a popular past-time. Why, though? I wasn't certain why Kill George was quite that compelling to me when I first watched it, and definitely didn't understand why it has that much of a following: in the cyst-popping world, it has even been dubbed a "classic". Watching cyst-popping is a strange phenomenon. It may not even be the best way to remove a cyst — while removing a cyst sack and all may eliminate it forever, just popping one is quite likely to result in recurrence. More than that though, watching cyst popping in action is really nothing short of what's best called "gross". 

Why, then, do we watch it in such overwhelming numbers?

Gotta Love A Good 'Accident'

Even those who would think me and countless others weirdos for watching such videos as Kill George have, most likely, watched their fair share of medical dramas, medical reality TV, and televised surgery. When we've seen car crash sites and other accidents up close, we have also, probably, stopped to watch — even when there was nothing we could do to help. Why? Humans are, it seems, drawn to doom on the most primordial of levels. 

Cyst-Popping Videos: From Learning Experience To Stress Relief

Disgust, Relief, And Medical Care

Trypophobia is a proposed term for the irrational and intense fears of holes. This, too, is something that has been floating around the web in recent times, complete with pictures of hole-containing flowers Photoshopped onto people's hands, shoulders, and even eyes. Though some of these images come complete with super-imposed worms crawling out, those aren't even necessary to induce a strange disgust; the holes are quite enough by themselves. Once again, I've found myself browsing through these images, and they have a surprising amount in common with the cyst-popping videos. I don't have the least amount of hole-phobia, but holes in your own body where they aren't supposed to be? Well, that signifies that there's something wrong. No wonder that people are drawn to them.

Cyst popping concretely brings us into contact with something that is quite frightening, could happen to any of us, and yet isn't life-threatening. Could it be that watching cyst-popping videos helps us deal with the fact that every last one of us has frail and fallible bodies that could give us pain and disgust at any time? Could cyst-popping allow us to play out our flight or fight response with regard to our medical fears in a safe setting? I think so.

Ultimately, we humans, as inherently empathetic beings, can also easily imagine that having a pressure-filled and uncomfortable cyst ultimately relieved would feel quite amazing. As the cyst-popping comes to a conclusion, we feel relieved on behalf of the patient being shown in the videos we watch and then experience stress alleviation by proxy.

Soothing Repetitive Action

Watching the popping of cysts isn't a "disgusting, yet can't look away" experience for everyone, however. One interesting tidbit about SteadyHealth, a seemingly humble health website that's one of many, is that we were the website on which one striking new phenomenon was first discovered. One SteadyHealth user initially dubbed this phenomenon a "weird sensation that feels good". Since given a name —  sensory Meridian response (ASMR) — this feeling is caused by watching, hearing, or smelling certain things. Some describe ASMR as a "brain orgasm", and it's more commonly triggered by people whispering, brushing their hair, and turning the pages of books. Once someone experiences this tingling feeling, they'll go to great lengths to find it again. 

I think the closest I personally came to experiencing ASMR was an Indian head massage. However, it doesn't come as a surprise to me that some people may experience this "weird sensation that feels good" while watching a cyst-popping video. Cyst popping, then, though akin to watching a car crash play out for some, may indeed be a soothing experience to some, one that even offer some a "brain orgasm". It has been well-established that humans will go to much greater lengths to avoid pain than to experience proactive pleasure, so that this repetitive pain-relieving action turns out to be a source of relaxation to some should not really come as much of a surprise. 

READ 'Head Orgasm': The Story Of A Strange Sensation That Took Over The Internet

Those of us who occasionally watch cyst-popping videos may have quite diverging reasons, then, ranging from the care for other human beings to pain relief, and from learning something to experiencing neurological ecstasy. As one friend of mine likes to point out frequently, "humans are weird". While they remain so, cyst-popping videos are likely to increase in popularity.