'I Have Cancer,' the TikTok Star Said. Then Came the Torrent of Hate

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/nyregion/sydney-towle-cancer-videos-tiktok.html

by whyenot • 1 year ago

7 11 1 year ago

ivape5• 1 year ago

I suppose this demonstrates that the entire institution of Influencing is a corrupt one. Most people that are struggling with a disease are not exactly in presentable form, or ever were when they were fine, so this kind of fan-fare is not even possible for the vast majority of sufferers. So, that's one side of it. The other side of is, what do the consuming audience want exactly? Obviously most people don't want to be reminded of pain, so hard to watch videos of people in a hospital are not going to trend unless they have some marketable quality to it (are you cute?). So the whole institution is disgusting from all angles.

Cancer is very serious, it has to be treated with a certain honor. I can see how people are off put by it being thrown into the Influencer grinder. Likewise, those who consume this content are also parasitic and it shows. Reminds me a little bit of the Terri Schiavo horror show, where her vegetative state was used for politics. Some things are sacred.

It's impossible to paint the woman in question as wrong or bad because she is the one with cancer. Yet, I can't seem to entirely absolve her and it's not her fault. It's the whole thing, her, the fans, the mechanism and the phenomena of Influencing is just gross. Sometimes you have to realize the situation is bigger than big, and influencing and trending videos are huge, but this cancer thing is bigger. To her credit and young people in general, I don't think they know how to handle serious life things outside of the social media framework (hey I just got shot, let me go live - no, maybe have a private call with your loved ones about your final moments). What do they really know about quiet despair or quiet hope? For every viral video she made in chemo, there's thousands of others who wish they could get such fan-fare or even anyone to care or visit them. So it's very much in poor taste.

How do you teach a generation that hasn't been taught anything? Where do you begin?

whyenot• 1 year ago

The way I see it, this is more of an indictment of Reddit and their slow response to enforce their existing rules on doxing and witch-hunting. The influencer did nothing wrong. She is just sharing her cancer journey. The fact that she does not look or act like someone with stage 4 cancer, that's not her problem.

ivape5• 1 year ago

Like I said, it's not easy to put any weight on her. But again, I see a weight here that needs to be put on something. Let's say she shares her cancer journey, and she gets tons of great support. I still think this is in poor taste because many people don't get that support. Part of decency is to know that "hey, not everyone will get this kind of support, so let me take my place with the others". I hope that paints the weight properly, without putting the weight on her. There's no absolving the toxic consumers of the content. Where do you even begin teaching someone that if you don't have something nice to say about cancer, don't say anything at all? The whole thing is problematic, and such a scenario wouldn't even exist if the general population did not have such allegiance to popularity.

duxup3• 1 year ago

Perspective about humanity on the internet is hard.

People are complex, they have different experiences, sometimes all at the same time. Someone can be suffering from cancer ... and go for a swim. This might be jarring watching one video to the next, but that's on the viewer to manage.

I think people expect managed tonal shifts like a movie or TV show, but that's not life.

The folks most active on the internet judgment train don't operate like that, it's all or nothing, you're great, or you're horrible. Anything that reminds the judgment bots of past bad behavior, even by other people, you're all possible suspects the moment they recognize some "clue".

It's sad / scary stuff. I think most internet users aren't that way, but the ones who are, seem to be inexhaustible.

Same on Reddit for leaving that sub up ...

'I Have Cancer,' the TikTok Star Said. Then Came the Torrent of Hate

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