Why is popping zits so fun

Safe dangers: Advancements of society have kept most people out of morgues and hospitals on a day-to-day basis, causing humans to seek horror in other places. For the same reason we like roller coasters—they allow us to feel fear without real danger—watching gross extractions lets us experience disgust at a safe distance. These people experience stress relief, their worries expelled from their minds like pus from a pimple.

Some people even fall asleep to the soothing sound of pimple popping. For many, pimple popping is one of these triggers! For these people, popping videos bring immense pleasure.

It may be strange to think of Dr. You can even cut yourself some slack when it comes to popping your own zits. Contact us at letters time. By Markham Heid. Get our Health Newsletter. Sign up to receive the latest health and science news, plus answers to wellness questions and expert tips.

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The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox. Popping zits is a bad idea that almost always does more harm than good. Reputable sources by reputable, I mean the kind you wouldn't trust for anything except beauty advice present a laissez-faire policy when it comes to pimples.

Be Zen about your zits, they say. But I can't. I love to pick at my zits. Whiteheads, blackheads, big ones, small ones; I revel in pressing the side of my nose or the fleshy part of my cheek so that whitish pus spews from a singular pore. I keep on picking until my skin is puckered with telltale splotches on my forehead and hot pink demilunes that follow the curves of my nose. Once, I burst a capillary that now sits permanently on my face—it required expensive laser treatments that were, sadly, ineffective.

I've got other scars, too. After popping, I always feel an impertinent sense of accomplishment for having removed debris from the depths of my pores, followed by uneasy depression reflecting on the damage I have caused. What I think of as skin care is actually, objectively, skin abuse. There are a lot of reasons why I might pick at my face. Genetics, possibly? I remember my mom perched on the countertop, red and splotchy from picking.

Perhaps it's instant gratification. Popping a zit means purging exactly what's bothering me and washing it down the drain. If only insurance premiums, taxes, and my biological clock were so easy to resolve. After decades of picking I decided to explore, with the help of experts, why zit-popping is so endlessly tempting.

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